Kamisama no Iutoori 2
As the Gods Will: The Second Series

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One of the most satisfying survival game manga I’ve ever read.

As an avid fan of survival manga, I believe Kamisama no Iutoori stretches the potential of a survival game. The plot is predictable with level by level progression, but the character growth shows the true value of being constantly forced through life-death situations. Instead of being attached to the distant ultimate ending, you become close to the characters, get invested in their lives, and watch them get slaughtered. The character-focused story takes the importance away from the fallacy that the games themselves need to be interesting. Overwhelmingly complex rules and convoluted strategy are boring. I ... read survival manga to suffer, triumph, and love as though I'm a character in the story.

Friends die. Enemies die. Your beloved dies. Play stupid game after stupid game. A miscalculation, mistake, defeat means another friend dies. There’s no time to mourn. You’re welcome to breathe that sigh of relief when you survive, but it’s not over yet. It’s never over. When you find yourself out of friends, you have to open your heart again. Feel free to trust strangers because they will become your dear friends until death do you part.

There's no true divine protection that you can rely on. Strong or weak; lovable or detestable; beef or chicken. Ultimately death is unavoidable. You can’t always hope for a savior to gallop in at the last second. Eventually all you can do is wish for a beautiful death - too bad that may be asking for too much. Some are fortunate enough to shine like a star before being extinguished. Others are unceremoniously swept away like trash. But supposedly it's better to lived and lost than never to have lived at all.

Survival is an actual achievement. When you meet other survivors, you can understand what they went through. Players are forced to continue to play game after game while carrying the hopes and dreams of their fallen. In order to survive, you betray who you thought you were, fight against every human instinct, and grow closer to the true you. The journey to victory and godhood is paved with the sacrifice of those who believe in you the most.

Kamisama no Iutoori does a great job at avoiding the annoying compromises that other survival manga make to the idea of survival. Perhaps you can call me a sadist. I love watching well-written characters die. Unlike in other survival manga where writers become too attached to their favorite characters or fear backlash for killing off someone popular, there is no true mercy. Not everyone gets a hero's drawn out blaze of glory. There simply isn't enough time for that. Sometimes, a beloved character's death is a just few panels, just a momentary realization that they died. But it makes you appreciate them for how much they changed and far they came. Remembering the lives of characters who have died is what makes survival stories fun.

And let's just say I had a lot of fun. Enjoy the games :)

Kamisama no Iutoori Ni is a sequel that lacks the thrill of survival of its prequel, and the reason for that is because it turned into a more Shounen battle manga.

Focusing on those students that skipped school while the games were occurring, the story begins at the same time as the previous one. It has its highs and lows, but the games here are not that interesting, there is no sense of worry or fear of what's going to happen, as most of it plays out just as you'd expect or it's just unpredictable for the sake of it, with no real purpose. The story ... went a bit nuts with the whole Tomfoolery and Cops/ Robbers arc, but the final arc is definitely the high point, having what was missing for the most part in the early arcs, the thrill.

The art is just amazing and a great leap in terms of skills compared to the prequel, the last 50 or so chapters are really eye candy.

The characters are a hit or miss for the most part, the main character Akashi is just not as interesting as Shun, but the chemistry he has with the rest of the cast is something worth appreciating. My main complaint is that the characters from the prequel, are just forgotten... excluding Shun and Amaya and maybe Akimoto, the rest don't really do anything, maybe it's because the number of characters introduced where huge, but they were wasted, and that's a shame.

Overall the series is a fun read, but i did miss for the most part the serious tone of its prequel.

Alright, first up I'm not the person to normally write reviews, but seeing the reviews for this title I thought a few people might want to read a review from a different standpoint. In my opinion this manga is mediocre at best and awful at worst, let's get into why that is.

1. Characters: As most of you should know, characters are normally not the strong point of survival games, therefore I will not waste too much time here. The protagonist a very basic shounen protagonist, nothing too special and kind of boring. Some side characters are written decently, but nobody stands out a really well ... developed character. What really annoyes me though are the female characters. Most of them start out alright, but after eventually falling for the protagonist they feel bland and their character gets reduced to “in love with main character“. It feels very cheap and honestly is kind of insulting, I can't remember the last time I've read worse female characters.

2. The story: Very basic story, some plotpoints get dropped or feel rushed at times, but not much worse than other storys from this genre, nothing dpecial but alright.

3. The art: Basically the same as the story, the art is pretty average and nothing too amazing but definetly not the weak part of this manga.

4. The games: Alright, let's get to this mangas biggest weakness compared to others of the genre, it's games. Sadly, most of the games were very bland and boring, with the ecxeption of exactly two games. Especially the two longest games felt very, very bad to read through. Imagine a game taking up close to if not more than three volumes, draging on and on, and after it is finished and done and we know who survives after all of it a supernatural being comes down and just sorts out the contestants even more in about a chapter. It really feels like the author didn't want to deal with too many characters and just sorted through them after the main game was done to have it easier in the next game. And this actually happens twice. It doesn't really help the suspense if you know that a being more powerful than god could just come up to the winners of a game, say lol no and pick the main characters. But that is just lazy writting. It also feels like a lot of the time the author just set up a game that he thought was cool but had no idea where to go with it. And that often shows.
TL;DR: Most games are boring or too long and the payoff is done badly.

Overall I had fun reading this manga, but mostly in a so bad it's good way. If you can enjoy stuff in this vein I would recommend it, other than that I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.