Im not new to the death game genre. Im not exactly an expert persay but Ive enjoyed a fair number of works ex: Mirai Nikki Danganronpa etc.. Generally my opinion of death game media is that there needs to be a certain disconnect from why youre reading/watching the media and why the author wrote it. More often than not the gorefilled societyquestioning nature of this genre means that it attracts a fair number of fetishists who use the unlimited potential of isolation and human fear to go absolutely nuts about how they sexualize teenage girls. Just kidding Or maybe Im not. Im sure theres plenty of people who read death game series knowing full well that some of the scenes are going to be borderline H Im looking at you Super Danganronpa 2. Personally I accept that my interest in the exploration of human psychology is often going to be put aside because of the authors need for graphic fetishized body horror. Jinrou Game contains plenty of sexualized gore. Surprisingly none of it makes up the storythe artist interlaces the pages with various artworks that almost resemble pinups. A character with a wolf coming out of their chest. Two girls backtoback with flowers growing from all over their bodies. Its an interesting touch because whenever I see it Im reminded of why Ive always treated this genre like a trashy bit of fun. Its hard to take something seriously when you know the morally ambigious nature of the work provides an outlet for sexual frustration. Its not something I necessarily blame but it is something I hold against the genre as lacking taste. Thats where Jinrou Game comes into play. First it delivers a female protagonist one that is immediately interesting and hard to take your eyes off. The other is a genuine look into the psychosis behind an isolated death game with only the players to fend for themselves. For the life of me I cannot recall a single moment of trashy fanservice in this manga. The story was engrossing from starttofinish providing new twists and turns at every opportunity. I was surprised more often than not at the choices made. The gore is fittingly horrific though the artist seems to have a slight problem with drawing blood. The plot ends with a twist that brilliantly sets up the sequel which I also finished all in one night. The strengths of this manga include the tone and characterization. Death game media with teenage characters often have a hard time selling brutalityeven in a setting where desperation can drive someone to terrible lengths authors often struggle with writing characters both as teenagers and as brutal psychopaths. It requires an enormous suspension of disbelief to accept that a regular high schooler would bludgeon someone to death without a mental break that changes their moral boundaries. This manga does a good job of making the readers feel bad for the characters while also simultaneously feeling deep down that some of them are guilty and deserve to die. A lot of the characters do horrible horrible thingsand while I felt in my gut that it was wrong of them to die over something like shoplifting especially I could feel myself subconsciously agreeing with the decision made by the main cast. One neat aspect of Jinrou Game is that the executions that take place in the death game must be done by the participants themselves. This is unique from every other death game media that I have encountered and was one of the most exciting things about the story. Remember when I was discussing my problems with teenagers in death game media? Well Jinrou Game takes that irritation I had and introduces a desperation that benefits the narrative greatly. It is impossible to understand how powerless the participants of a death game are until they are forced to spill blood with their own hands. In other death game media the execution of the loser is out of the participants handsthe regulators of the death game orchestrate eyecatching deaths intended to be flashy but nothing much more. Handing over the responsibility of execution to the participants is brilliantsolving the problem of unbelievable bloodlust from teenagers and introducing a new psychological horror. The level of brutality is now up to the cast most of whom are firsttime killers. Not all of them will directly take someones life but all of them will have blood on their hands. They selected the person they wanted to die. Now they have to bear the responsibility of taking that life. It turns out teenagers are clumsy murderers. Sometimes a firsttime killer accidentally kills two people when they meant to kill one That might have been a spoiler but oh well. By positioning the cast as rightfully inexperienced and correctly maintaining both a good amount of both passive victims and opportunistic manipulators the story succeeds at the highschoolersinadeathgamescenario. Theres a learning curvethe characters lose all pretense of going back to their normal lives after a while and you start to see sides to people who were once good that you would have never seen from them otherwise. After a while the reactions to deaths turn from why does someone have to die to thank god it wasnt me. The handson approach really makes a difference. Every choice is so calculated. There are some plot elements that are fairly obvious if youve enjoyed other death game media but theres enough that you dont know about the cast that there is a plausible fear hanging over the narrative. It helps that it becomes increasingly obvious that our protagonist isnt a great human being. The learning curve applies to her as wellat one point she didnt want anyone to die. She just wanted to go back home and return to a normal life. And then after a certain point she starts to think: someone must die and I have to make sure its not me. That change in perspective alone is what makes Jinrou Game worth an evening of ones time.