Jan 27, 2018
I want to preface this by stating that Real Account influenced my decision to make a MAL account due to my utter disappointment and need to rant/review it somewhere.
Real Account has people competing for their lives in a social media death game which follows 2 simple but clever rules:
-Followers of a player who dies will also die
-Once a player hits 0 followers they will die
The game is also broadcast to the public allowing players to gain/lose followers throughout the game (except in special cases/rounds). Right off the bat Real Account delves into dark and deep topics - do you trust someone enough to stake your
...
life on theirs? how many of your followers really care about you? etc.
This is the very core of Real Account (at least for the first 30ish chapters of it) that makes Real account so interesting. The games usually involve the public, who get to keep their anonymity, as they judge the players by comparing their social media accounts to their real personalities. One of the key themes that works great with this is the players need to balance their dark secrets and controversies (with the controversial stuff garnering more attention and therefore better survival possibility) with keeping their few remaining followers. The games in Real Account are the driving force of creativity and are solved in clever but believable ways.
Now with all that said, it may be surprising to see my scoring. However about 30ish chapters in, the manga changes tone considerably with it's first big twist. The twist is separated into two parts, a character's past is revealed and a character suddenly changes drastically. I will say that the reveal of the character's past and how it effects the game (although it's kinda glossed over in a few panels) is awesome. Unfortunately the character that changes is not only come out of left field but cause the character to do one of the biggest anime-ass-pulls* of the series.
*Anime-ass-pull: when something so incredibly stupid happens, usually in anime/manga, that is overly complicated, ridiculous, or otherwise doesn't fit the tone of the story such that it completely breaks suspension of disbelief, even in the most silly series. This might be something major or minor but is used to advance the plot in a lazy way. Note there is probably a better word for this, but I had fun writing this description.
The tone of the series drastically shifts. Although it still contains its original themes, they are no longer as consistent and few and far between, instead favoring action and ecchi over psychological thriller. The side story plots become a mess of ideas that seemingly pop in and out for convenience sake, certain character motivations aren't believable, and plot holes are frequent towards the later half of the first arc.
There is one scene I feel the need to describe (with as little spoilers as possible) because it represents everything that is wrong with the story after the first twist: At one point two female characters need to cross an extremely shallow pool of water that blocks their way to the exit. The problem is the pool of water has a electricity flowing through it. However this electricity is coming from a cellphone - one that is already established to be in a water proof case. That aside, the cellphone somehow has enough charge to kill these characters, so in order to cross they decide to strip themselves of their swimsuits - in view of the public - in order to use the swimsuits as stepping stones to cross the pool. The worst part of this is that Real Account had used the topic of nudity and other lewdness spreading to the public (as one of those controversial topics that the public loves) multiple times, in much better ways.
Overall, Real Account was greatly enjoyable for the a decent amount of time, but it turned into a case of didn't know when to rest. What could have been a great story is overshadowed by how terrible the second half of the first major arc is. The main story has moments of brilliance but is weighed down by plot holes, pacing problems, and genre identity issues. I really wanted to like this manga but I feel 100x more disappointed in Real Account then I ever did for Death Note's second half. And perhaps the worst part of Real Account is that it's still going (at least past what I have read and what I've found translated). My personal wish is that this is adapted to a 1 or 2 season anime that rewrites the end because the enjoyment I got out of the beginning chapters raised my review score, but not by much: 4/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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