Dorei-ku: Boku to 23-nin no Dorei

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Art: not the most gorgeous illustrations I've seen, but really well matched to the dark themes involved in the story. 0 unnecessary ecchi despite the cover. Really helped set the atmosphere in my opinion. Very well matched to the story which is why I rated it 9/10; those who are looking to read a manga purely for the gorgeous illustrations however should look elsewhere.

Character: It actually did a pretty decent job of developing all the characters. The characters were pretty cookie-cutter but what can you expect with over 20 recurring characters that each had unique identities and stories? My ... main gripe is that the main characters lacked in-depth development but it didn't detract from the story.

Story: Oh boy. Started out super interesting. Started out innocent enough and progressively got darker and darker and was paced very well in my opinion. But... Ending was so bad that it deserves a negative score, thus bringing down the average of the beginning and the end to 1. Yea, the ending was a plot twist but...wow...what a lame plot twist. Ghosts. The story was resolved by ghosts. Just...what? A story with lots of potential was brought to utter ruination by the ridiculous ending. I was willing to put up with the ridiculous premise of the enslaving mechanism because of how compelling the beginning and middle of the plot was, but the ending...imagine you are making the most mind blowingly enjoyable love with the love of your life who is willingly indulging in your wildest fantasies and loving it. You start out with the most tender, tantalizing foreplay, move on to the most passionate main course, and then, about 70% of the way through, a religious fundamentalist group barges in and castrates both of you without anesthesia. That's what this ending was. I really cannot understand why the author just threw in a ghost and ended the story when there were a million ways to end it off nicely but I can only review what I'm given.

Overall: Very much a story driven manga. The characters and the art are accessories to the story and they do an excellent job of being accessories. Problem is the story was just utter garbage. It had great potential but it was ruined by one of the worst endings I've ever seen.

TLDR here: A plot-driven, ecchi, trash manga with an initially fun premise in a battle of wits to make other people their slaves with a special mouthguard called an SCM that falls deeper into the trenches at the end.

Grievances: (Some Spoilers)
Characters: The manga had two "main leads" Eika and Yuuta at the beginning of the story, but kind of fall off by the end. 23 characters are introduced in this battle of wits some more off handedly than others. The author seemed to have had a good time creating a range of different characters. The cast of characters the audience ... is not provided much insight into a majority of them or mentioned offhandedly in a few panels. There was not enough time to care what was happening to the characters. Character relationships made no sense, they really only acknowledged each other that often until they have a part to play in the story or give a tiny bit of context.
 
Story: Maybe the manga got axed or something with how short it ended up being. The initial idea of manga is very gimmicky but could have been at least a decent read. It got darker as it went along which is also fine. The quality takes a nose-dive 2/3rd into the story around volume 6. The ending was much to be desired with the two initial characters we are introduced to having little impact at the last showdown. As another reviewer noted the last tactic was that a ghost helped win the ending...

What I personally hated the most: Mostly nitpicking.
There's a limit to how story-driven something can be.... The logic of the characters and/or character motivation gets really blurry at the end. There is a character called Julia (unknown age probably an adult? At the very least 17.) who has a somewhat ambiguous relationship with a literal child. It is unclear at the end if she just discovered she loved being a slave to him, seen as a mother figure or a something a bit more dubious. It is never clarified truly why she feels the way she does either. Nothing directly explicit was shown, but if that makes you uncomfortable then this definitely is not the manga for you.

The epilogue was seriously unsatisfying, it didn't give much closure other than they were all free. There's one character's ending in particular that doesn't make sense. The host (who is Julia's ex-boyfriend) ends up with the girl who forced him to be her slave/boyfriend. It is not explained or alluded to that he made up with the girl. Julia and the host do not acknowledge each other properly like you would think they would given her circumstance in the ending.