Death games. WARNING: THIS REVIEW AND MANGA IS FULL TO THE BRIM WITH EXTREME GORE AS ALL DEATH GAMES SHOULD BE. ADDITIONAL WARNING: ALSO ITS A DEATH GAME. When I read a death game manga theres one thing above all else that Im looking for. And thats death. 440https://i.ur.com/2xS1exz.png https://anilist.co/anime/99698/KingsGame/ sorry the only ousama game manga I reviewed was the one without the chainsaw https://anilist.co/manga/54836/KingsGame/ Characters dying. Usually in horribly brutal ways. Thats what Im primarily looking for in a death game. And while it may be perceived that I am actively searching for bad death games this is not the case. Death games dont automatically have to be bottom of the barrel trash. They really dont. 440https://i.ur.com/CRomAXW.png https://anilist.co/manga/72005/TorikagonoTsugai/ Yet... so often the only horror Im presented with from a death game is the realization that I am still reading the death game. No matter how much awful unneeded sexual content is included to get fanservice in there no matter how lame and boring the deaths are no matter how infuriating the characters are and how bad the writing is. I still dont drop the death game. But at the end Im typically just annoyed or flabbergasted at what I just read. So I just immediately fly right off the handle typing up a six thousand word long review in which I end by making a prayer to the almighty Dark Lord Satan to erase the piece of media I had just consumed. Thats not even hyperbole. https://i.ur.com/UgFOWeW.png https://anilist.co/manga/101223/TomoguiKyoushitsu/ What Im getting at is... this is a review of a very special death game manga. In that it has all of the features of these death games I fucking despise and honestly outdoes quite a few of them but the feeling I had at the end of the manga wasnt that of pure misery. But rather that of pure jubilation. ...I actually massively enjoyed reading this death game. Genuinely. 440https://i.ur.com/0nLLdEt.png Dumpster Diving I read this on a complete whim. If youre actively rooting around in the dumpster that is the horror genre sometimes you just have to take a chance. Sure theres a chance of getting horribly sick but youre hungry so you just gotta dive in and hope youll find something edibile. Today I ended up with Signal 100 by Arata Miyatsuki storyhttps://anilist.co/staff/119552/ArataMiyatsuki and Shigure Kondou arthttps://anilist.co/staff/119553/ShigureKondou. A death game manga. 440https://i.ur.com/zkbGjDN.png Immediately I was reeling with regret. This is just gonna be another one of those death games where the creators are just filled to the brim with absolute contempt towards high schoolers. https://anilist.co/manga/100164/IkenieTouhyou/ EDIT: Oops guess I had one more death game page to link to. But I didnt include an image to accompany it...? Totally forgot why I put this one here... And probably people they actually knew in their own experience with high school because lets be honest where else can this shit possibly come from? Seriously some of the most horrible shit Ive seen done in horror manga is usually done by high schoolers/teenagers. None of the characters are gonna be allowed to leave the school once the death games started the adult characters are going to be completely oblivious to whats going on theres going to be awful bully characters and theyre going to be comically extreme in their bullying 440https://i.ur.com/6oe3gBo.png theres going to be some dumb annoying death game mascot character thatll pop up every once in a while and say okay now were doing this blah blah blah and even though the cast is entirely of high schoolers theres for sure going to be completely and utterly unneeded sexual content because they have a required quota of fanservice pages and theyre going to fill it god damn it. NO MATTER HOW INAPPROPRIATE THE TIMING IS. 440https://i.ur.com/az7X71F.png If all of these things are in this death game then... why did I enjoy it so much despite it all? The Dead Word Puzzle Effect My brain was just constantly awash in a swirling tidal pool of conflicting emotions. Not since Dead Word Puzzle have I encountered a death game that caused me to struggle so much in figuring out if the creators were actually being serious. 440https://i.ur.com/qXwA9bB.png https://anilist.co/manga/90911/DeadWordPuzzle/ Im being fucked with right now. Theres no fucking way that this is real. 440https://i.ur.com/dcCsEQa.png The death here is... she... committed suicide by smashing her own face in with a chalkboard eraser? What??? Fucking what?????????? Well uh maybe the hypnosis gave her extra strength to assist in the task of killing herself?????????????????????????????????????? I mean thinking about it later on theres literally a character who just straight up rips their own face off so I guess thats not too extreme of a stretch. 440https://i.ur.com/pBd5iSO.png But no really I was honestly impressed that this death game really never eased up on the gore. If anything it just kept accelerating further and further until the end which is just one big huge bloodbath. Its exactly what I always want from death games of this caliber and I so rarely end up getting it. And if I do get it its Dead Word Puzzle and its a complete farce. This on the other hand is a full length death game and as such it had no business to be as riveting as I found it. Usually death games make it to the bottom of their bag of tricks and twists well before the end. But with this every single time I thought oh its gonna settle down now it just bitch slapped me with something new. And sure some of the twists I ended up predicting but there were others that just fucking came completely out of left field. 440https://i.ur.com/sGuUfCv.png The worst thing a death game can be is boring or one note. Because thats when they often become truly miserable and painful to read. Theres so many characters dying or characters actively scheming to kill other characters it never lets you get to that point. And a part of the reason for that is... The Rules The teacher of this class of students having been driven insane by being constantly abused and disrespected by all of his students for so long has them all gather in one classroom... to hypnotize them. https://i.ur.com/hGTTkYx.png Signal 100 Theres one hundred signals Do any of the hundred and the hypnosis is going to be triggered and youre going to immediately try to kill yourself. If youre not anywhere near a potential weapon or somewhere high youll just bite your tongue off. Or shove your fingers through your eyes. Or as I said before literally rip your own face off. And somehow unlike Dead Word Puzzle this never got old. Granted almost completely random suicides is way better than literally just random blood explosions but... 440https://i.ur.com/Y99kmjU.png Like the moment this series establishes that its just going to be characters suddenly deciding to kill themselves it first seized my full attention. Because Ive never experienced a death game that is just pure and utter chaos BECAUSE of its rules. Its far more often that its chaos because it has absolutely no established rules until its convenient to establish them. AKA right when a character breaks them. But with this right out of the gate were told no not only are there rules but there are a hundred of them. Were just not told them all. Or rather some characters know them and actively arent telling the others because itd give them an advantage which is way WAY better than just fucking horrible writing. 440https://i.ur.com/QL4u3BM.png We get like a third of the rules at a time. The most important of which are of course 2 and 13. Dont try and tell the adults about the death game going on in school and also dont leave school because thats where pretty much the entirety of the manga is gonna take place. Like okay those are infuriatingly common staples in tons of death games manga. Then 1 is kinda weird... but refreshing. No violence. After all you dont want the students just murdering each other with brute force. 440https://i.ur.com/NO1csl2.png Rather you have students trying to get others killed by having them violate the rules. Hey everybody why dont you just all get on this bus and leave school together? But when that didnt work quite as well as he wanted it to the delinquent character instead just forced the girl who still trusted and liked him to touch his genitals rule 8 so she would decapitate herself by wrapping a chain around her neck and squeezing real fucking hard. 440https://i.ur.com/kwr9ENY.png Fucking what. And then the rest literally either dont matter or only exist to make a specific death happen. Like imagine if this death game never ended. I hope at no point in your life you require to physically have to touch money or oh no you just broke rule 33 and now I guess you have to kill yourself. I mean I guess Im kind of understating the gravity of rule 2. Forget about existing in normal society you literally have to live the rest of your life in your high school. ...These rules are insane. Batshit insane. And thats without going into how the other two thirds of the rules are used later in the manga. These rules are so batshit insane that the characters are actually understandably afraid to do anything after the first death happens. 440https://i.ur.com/B18c91Q.png Fuck what if walking breaks one of the hundred rules??? Which were shown is actually a genuine concern because rule 96 is literally youll die if take a step with your right leg? But rules like 75100 are used in a weird way because obviously every single character would have died in the first volume if that rule was in place from the start. Hell one of them is literally just standing? Are you standing up? Well I guess its time for you to kill yourself. And also in addition to these crazy ass rules you also have the existence of at least one character who is completely free of the rules. And as a result they are simultaneously chaos incarnate and a source of balance because when the fucked up characters are trying to get others killed they remind the others that oh hey remember that Im not beholden to rule 1. And by that I mean Ill murder the absolute shit out of you. That character worried the absolute shit out of me at first because they just seemed like such a cookie cutter death game character. He looks so bland he may as well as be a male death game protagonist. 440https://i.ur.com/P3kKtd5.png But very quickly my worries were soothed because it rapidly became clear that something was a bit off with him... The Best Worst Death Game Its not like theres a lot I could spoil. I mean its a death game right? But even so due to how much I actually enjoyed this one I dont want to break it down any further than I already have or go into detail about the twists. But its just so fucked up. Even though I enjoyed this manga there are still really some typical death gamey moments that are just purely awful. Granted while it does do me a favor and quickly vanquish the stereotypical death game character who wants to use the situation to literally get himself a harem... 440https://i.ur.com/S7nXBvA.png in a horribly fitting way... I cant really applaud it for that because later on the creators decide they do still need to include an attempted rape while the death game is actually going. After all there is the one that happens before the mangas start but that actually does tie into the plot. And its actually made even more fucked up when the plot gets back around to it. And who better to have it happen to than the female character whose mind has been broken because she had to do every form of bullying she ever did to the one girl to herself and it didnt even end the game. 440https://i.ur.com/Wo1FLnz.png So okay yes shes an awful human being. But shes been revenged and her mind has been shattered to dust. Cant that just be the end? Do we really need to bring the gym teacher back from before the beginning to have him attempt to rape her literally just because??? 440https://i.ur.com/94N7F1A.png I mean its at least prevented in the end I guess which is actually more than I can say about other death games but still god damn it. Just god damn it. Like can you just not? I mean... actually I guess they have to. They have a quota to fill after all. Fanservice by any means necessary... Still Trying To Wrap My Head Around It To be honest with you I wrote this review immediately after reading this so Im still mulling this series over in my head. It cant literally just be the gore. All the awful components of a death game that I hate are all still here. 440https://i.ur.com/si8LoOi.png ...Not gonna lie as a death game mascot the teacher who wants revenge on the class and kills himself at the start isnt bad. Even though if you pick at it it doesnt make any sense. Hes proven not to be a ghost hes talking to them all through the hypnosis he put them all through meaning he correctly predicted the final survivor out of thirty seven students ahead of time??? Yet for the first time a trashy death game actually managed to serve the purpose of a pageturner to me. ...My brain just broke. 440https://i.ur.com/JHfsdU3.png I have no better way of putting it. Hell I even liked the ending despite the fact its one of the most death gamey endings Ive ever seen. Its awful its terrible its gross its just fucking chaos from beginning to end... but its one of the very few death games that there is even a mere chance of me ever rereading. Its simultaneously the most entertaining death game Ive perhaps ever read yet also one of the absolute worst. Wait no. I actually just thought of a much better way to put it. Signal 100 excels at being a death game. And it is a 1 out of 10. https://i.ur.com/3h1txvk.png