Dec 3, 2016
Ousama Game is ambitious. It strives to be character-driven. And this clearly becomes challenging as we delve further into the story. With the mysterious entity "Ousama" being the prime antagonist that is responsible for the story to continue on as it is, the manga often tries desperately to keep the story intense by having melodramatic conflicts between characters, sporadic killings and the question "who is the Ousama?" hang perpetually over the heads of the readers. The story handles the first two issues surprisingly well and unfortunately, disappoints with the latter (which is the main complaint of most readers as well).
Ousama Game involves a variation
...
of the King's Game, except this time, the "King" reigns for the rest of the story and the people who're chosen for the challenges are revealed right off the bat. As usual, characters lose their shit and the inevitable philosophical soliloquies of "who can I trust?" and "who are the real monsters" begins to stir as the bodies start dropping. As far as a survival horror goes, its story runs pretty much the way you'd expect. As I mentioned before, there is a mystery as to who the "Ousama" is but it's disappointingly resolved with some pseudoscience. I'll go as far as to say that the resolution is its weakest link.
What Ousama Game surprised me with was its set of characters. They're students who behave like students, which is what mainly makes the manga so exciting to read. Their actions are reasonable given the context and even so, the manga still manages to be completely unpredictable at times because that's really what humans are like in the face of their impending deaths. They're irrational, fearful and desperate. Unpredictable. Even the MC himself is not an exception, which is something I'm quite happy with. As a result, their emotions feel real. They feel real. This is something that I think is integral in making a survival horror work and Ousama Game succeeds beautifully in that regard.
The art is crisp and clean. Being someone who's been drawing for over 7 years now, I'd say it's as good as your average shounen manga, which is - pretty good. The artist is able to depict grotesque scenes well without making it look too awkward, which is more than what I can say for most survival horrors.
Ousama Game is a refreshing read that falls short of what it wants to be. It's not clever and not all that enlightening. However, the people and the story itself is gritty and unforgiving.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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