Tomodachi Game Episode 6 Discussion

RinTheWanderer said:


His assumption that debt reduction spaces exist is because the game would be boring to the spectators otherwise. This assumption holds just as much weight before or after you see debt spaces and the optimal way of ending the game on 1 turn avoids all spaces and guarantees debt reduction.

I'm not making any assumptions. A person agreeing to play tomodachi game without prior knowledge with the goal of reducing debt is an idiot. There is no way around this. You'd have to be incredibly incredibly stupid to apply to the game to reduce debt unless you know how the game works (like being a previous player). That's the flaw of the story. By even agreeing to play the game in the first place, they have all proven they are irrational and dumb. The author just needs you to look the other way and accept that the characters magically assume they will be safe playing the game and that the game is fair and that if they win, the administrators will stick to their word and reduce the debt.

If the logical and smart tenji was the one that applied to the game, it's unthinkiable that it would be to reduce debt and without prior knowledge, because he isn't that stupid. He would be better served blackmailing Shibe's dad or something.

As to your last point, even if there isn't a way to use debt to your advantage in a future game, Yuuichi can't know that. If he correctly deduces that the traitor has prior knowledge of the tomodachi game, he can't predict the traitors actions, because he doesn't know how the future games will look.

For instance in kaiji very first game, you can use debt to your advantage. It's not even something that hasn't been done before in the genre. It doesn't matter if the actual game does it or not, because Yuuichi hasn't seen the rest of the game and the traitor may have.

The logic in this series is closer to misdirection than deduction. There's a lot of things the author needs you to not pay attention to or question in order for the story to proceed.

RinTheWanderer said:
"Dude, once again, they didn't accepted to play that risky game because they're dumb. You are making the dumbest assumption possible. Everyone there have their own motive to accept, and it's not "because i want to help my friend in debt"."

That is my point. You'd have to be dumb to do it just for helping a friend in debt. Since tenji isn't dumb, theres no reason he would agree to play the game, if he didn't have an ulterior motive (which he did).

"he may suppose but he could not be sure, even if Tenji is the traitor"

Again, that's the point. If there is a real possibility that the traitor played the game already, then there is a real possibility that their actions won't subscribe to any logic Yuuichi could come up with, because they have additional information that Yuuichi can't come up with (notable how the game works). Whoever the applicant is had to know about the tomodachi game in the first place and you can't know the limits of their knowledge about it. When you combine that with suspecting tenji and tenji uncharacteristically agreeing to play in the first place, it's not a huge leap to think tenji likely has knowledge of the game that the others don't.

"Cmon it's fictional, if you get tazed and kidnapped so professionally and were put in an unknown isolated and advanced facility, what can you really do? Fight for the cause? Barehanded?"

Leave obviously. Why would you stick around some psychos that professionally tazed and kidnapped you and run some weird gameshow. You'd be scared for you life. Trusting the people to do what they said is ridiculous.

" It's not a gambling story for ppl to have some kind of starting capitals." Yeah but the characters don't know that. They have no idea what is in store for them or what kind of games come up. They don't know if it's the same for every tomodachi game, they don't know how many other groups are doing it, they don't know who is running it or what their motives are, and they don't know if the game is actually fair or not.

"For the idea of blackmailing Shibe's dad... Bro idk how you came up with that srsly, from what we've seen in Tenji's POV and monologue, was there anything related to Shibe's pop?"

It's just one less risky way to get out of debt. Tenji has experience using spying equipment, knows Shibe's family is rich, and theres rumors around his dad being shady. It wouldn't be terribly hard for him to use that stuff to get blackmail on Shibe's dad and use that to get out of debt. It would be MUCH safer than letting a secret society kidnap you and force you to play games whose rules you don't know ahead of time. You could end up in a game that all but guarantees tenji loses. He has no reason to think otherwise, unless he's played the game already.

"-For some of your thoughts, assumptions or ideas, like slandering, read the rules again, you need to specifically slander someone to trigger the survey. You even have to prove the lies yourself and in some case it's hard to, the survey is once again the decisive factor. That's why Tenji kissed Yuuichi just to go along the 3rd game with him." That's why my example said "I think" and not just 1+1 = 3 but if thats your hang up just write 100 slanders about yourself, that you can easily disprove.

"storytelling type gives audience enough rooms and hints for being able to think themselves" It doesn't though because the series so far does have asspulls and faulty or incomplete logic. That's why I'm frustrated. I'm not just annoyed for the sake of it, I was thinking while watching the game and coming up with strategies but the real strategy is impossible to predict because it is wrong and incomplete (like not showing how he manipulated the turn order to have someone end in the last spot when people move unpredictably between 1 and 5 spaces per turn).

"storytelling type gives audience enough rooms and hints for being able to think themselves" Which he could have done turn one with his own strategy slightly modified. You say he interrogated Tenji but what did he actually learn about tenji's motives aside from not being money which already wasn't likely to begin with?".

And once again as myself and others have pointed out, there is no guarantee there was exactly 1 traitor. There could have been 2 or even 0.The host of the games could have made up there being an applicant.

RinTheWanderer said:
These responses are getting more and more scattered and tough to keep track of since new supporting arguments keep arriving. There's a few issues and one I forgot to point out last time. The debt is not 20 million dollars. it's 20 million yen. That's like 160k dollars.

Your responses to some things are strange. All of my points are talking about what Yuuichi should be thinking, based on the information he has. For instance, if tenji is the traitor, theres no way his motivation is money. From Yuuichi's perspective, Tenji would be smart enough to get out of the debt without needing to risk the tomodachi game. If Tenji is really a scumbag enough to drag his friends to this game and foist his debt onto them, then theres no reason he wouldn't instead make the better play to blackmail Shibe's dad. The sheer fact that Tenji agreed to play the game should both gaurantee that he is a traitor and that his goal is not money. Yuuichi should be all but certain of that from the very first episode.

Additionally you keep talking about not being able to leave so maybe you forgot but in the first episode, the tomodachi game people say they can just leave. They don't have to play the game, they can go home, and the application money is forfeit but thats it. IF, and the IF is important here, IF your goal was to reduce debt or save your friends from debt, you wouldn't play this game unless you were incredibly stupid and brave. So like, maybe Shibe would play but thats it. You put any rational human in the same situation, no matter how naive or stupid they are, and they will wake up in that location terrified and think only leaving safely.

The zero traitor option (it's not my theory, obviously I watched the show and know Tenji is the traitor) should have been something Yuuichi considered. Yuuichi just accepts that someone did actually apply to the tomodachi game from their group and that one of them is in debt. He doesn't have the information necessary to prove that when the game starts. Now, obviously people did turn on each other, but that doesn't mean they went into the game willingly, it could just be someone afraid of debt or someone with a grudge that sees this game as an opportune time. The semantics of traitor might be causing a misunderstanding between us, but I'm using it to mean people who willingly brought the other players to the game in the first place.

Let me clarify my issues because I've been debating with more than one person and it's gotten a bit muddied.

1. The start of the game is unreasonable, the author asks us, the viewers to just accept a poor setup. We need to just accept that humans would ever willingly play this game, that they would trust the game hosts to keep their word and make the games fair and not hurt them. We also need to accept that the characters just don't have a sense of danger in the start. No fear, no logic, just go with it. Usually I would be fine with this, but the characters actions in the beginning are interwoven into how they continue with the games. It won't just let us throw out this piece of the puzzle.

2. Yuuichi's plan in 2nd game does not correctly rule out Shibe. It's entirely reasonable that a traitor may agree to the bonus. As we saw, agreeing to it gave a lot of credibility. Acting devastated by a secret they revealed makes it look like you really expected nothing to come up, meaning it looks like you must not have applied to the game. I will go more into this later.

3. Yuuichi's plan in the 2nd game does not correctly rule out or even consider the possibility of 2 traitors working together. Their motives likely aren't money if theres two of them.

Those are my issues. If 2 and 3 didn't exist as issues, then issue 1 wouldn't really be a problem, but 2 and 3 both tie back into 1.

So lets go back to 2. The idea that Shibe could have been the traitor and not gotten discovered by Yuuichi's plan. The traitor for sure knows more about the game than anyone else because they had to know something about it in order to apply. Maybe they heard from someone else that played, maybe they played themselves, maybe they know someone running the game, who knows. What we do know, is that it's very possible that the traitor knows more about the game than Yuuichi. This means they might know more about what kinds of secrets will be revealed. Perhaps they know that they would never spoil who applied with a bonus round or perhaps they know that the goal of the game is to be entertaining to the spectators and that the spectators would be more entertained if the traitor was not revealed. Yuuichi even makes an assumption and tells the group that the game is likely to be fair, because it would be boring to the spectators if it was unwinnable. Using that same logic, it's at least unlikely that the traitor would be revealed even if they decided to play the bonus game. This means Shibe should not have been cleared just for that.

Now lets move to issue 3, the dual traitor possibility. It's not safe to trust anyone just based off the first game, even if someone looked like they were getting screwed over. Taking losses early into the game in order to feed the rest a false narrative is a reasonable play traitors might do, the same way an undercover cop might do something bad in order to gain trust. The same holds true in game 2. Even though Shiho was out front in first, remember what we actually learn about the game. The bad tiles are concentrated early into the game. Therefore moving through them as fast as possible, with as many 5s as possible, and then slowing down in the 2nd half, is actually the way to clear the most debt. Even better if you have a second traitor get caught lying on purpose and jump right in front of you, also skipping many of the bad tiles in the first half of the game.

By being out front at first, it makes you the least threatening, so it's actually fairly likely that if no one is specifically targeting you (like Tenji targeted Shiho in the actual game), that being out front first could be a good thing, and you'd actually be pretty likely to end up having others catch back up. Remember, Yuuichi even proposed to have everyone else catch up to the lead player.

The fact that Yuuichi has the nametag is a bit scary, but not something you can't risk. It doesn't really matter if he has the nametag if he doesn't find out you were the traitor.

Given that Yuuichi doesn't know how future rounds work, he also can't rely on increasing debt to deter a traitor. It's possible that later rounds allow you a bonus for having more debt or a way to pin all of your debt on someone else. Whether that actually is the case or not doesn't matter, because Yuuichi can't know whether or not it is.

Basically, the motivation for doing all the things you said a traitor wouldn't do, would be to gain the trust of the other players and thats reason enough to take even large risks.

My bonus 4th issue isn't really an issue, but just kind of an annoyance. Yuuichi did not learn how lies are handled before making his final move. He did and got lucky that it worked how he hoped it would. It's possible that turn would have still progressed even after he revealed his lie and Shiho also would have lost with him. He also just didn't abuse lying movement enough. Being able to jump in front of the lead player is OP and breaks the game.

TheMangaManiac said:
I wonder what people who screamed about how "predictable" this show is have to say after today's episode. Oh, right... nothing.
Because admitting that you're wrong takes balls x) just like with reveal that Tenji doesn't love Shiho.

RinTheWanderer said:
We are getting closer to an understanding. I again reiterate that I wouldn't have as big of a problem with the poor premise if it was isolated. The fact that we need to try and figure out the characters motivations all tie back into accepting to play the game in the first place. The premise is not isolated from the rest of the story so it bugs me greatly.

--

Your assessment of the Shibe traitor theory is basically that Shibe is too dumb, but that's not a reasonable assessment to make. Yuuichi's prior understanding of his friends wouldn't allow for any of them to betray the others so clearly Yuuichi's profiling of his friends is wrong for at least the traitor. It's perfectly reasonable to think that Shibe might not have ever been a dumb loudmouth with bad acting and had instead just put on that face publicly and with his friends.

There is a famous rule of mystery writing which is "everyone should be hiding something". I can almost guarantee if Shibe continues to be relevant to the plot, it will turn out there was more to him than we currently know. That will also be true of the other characters of course as well.

Let's also look at that bonus chance from a different perspective. What could tenji have done to avoid getting caught? There's only 1 thing. He would have had to gamble on the chance bonus clearing him. That's the ONLY way he could have won. Similarly, if Shibe was the traitor, he would have HAD to take that risk or get caught, there is no other option, and therefore it is the best option and reasonable to think a traitor may go for it.

--

The two traitor theory is entirely foolproof. The results of the first 2 games can't be used by Yuuichi to deduce anything. It's entirely possible one of them intentionally started losing in order to gain trust. That's even more true if they aren't concerned about money.

The definition of a good ally? There isn't one in these games. There hasn't been anything that could possibly have cleared any of them. There's simply not enough information available. The only fool proof plan thus far would be to use lie testing to figure out who applied for the game, but that wouldn't tell you why or if they acted alone.

Let's look at the most plausible 2 traitor theory. Shibe+shiho. Shiho pretends to work with Yuuichi but tells Shibe that Yuuichi is clearing them 1 by 1. Shibe sees the bonus chance come up and volunteers for it. If shiho had been the one to officially apply (and she had control of the money last before the game), then the bonus chance would have for sure cleared Shibe.

You also talk about them not being able to act perfectly because they are highschoolers before going to explain that both girls acted perfectly to fool tenji, so which is it? Can they act or not?

I'm not even really mad at that plan Yuuichi came up with or that it had holes. It's probably better than I would have done in such a situation. I'm mad at how the show presents it, as though it is this amazing foolproof strategy and that Yuuichi must be a genius manipulator evil villain to have devised it. If they had shown Yuuichi being uncertain but figured that this was his best gamble, or if they had acted like it was impressive despite some flaws for how hastily he had to throw it together, it'd be fine. The show didn't do that though, they gave him his cringe evil face before all the characters acted like he was a monster genius. He just didn't earn that reaction. If the show is gonna act like he is incredibly cunning and devious, I expect his plan to actually be cunning and devious and not fall apart when I think about it for more than 5 minutes.

RinTheWanderer said:
We are getting closer to an understanding. I again reiterate that I wouldn't have as big of a problem with the poor premise if it was isolated. The fact that we need to try and figure out the characters motivations all tie back into accepting to play the game in the first place. The premise is not isolated from the rest of the story so it bugs me greatly.

--

Your assessment of the Shibe traitor theory is basically that Shibe is too dumb, but that's not a reasonable assessment to make. Yuuichi's prior understanding of his friends wouldn't allow for any of them to betray the others so clearly Yuuichi's profiling of his friends is wrong for at least the traitor. It's perfectly reasonable to think that Shibe might not have ever been a dumb loudmouth with bad acting and had instead just put on that face publicly and with his friends.

There is a famous rule of mystery writing which is "everyone should be hiding something". I can almost guarantee if Shibe continues to be relevant to the plot, it will turn out there was more to him than we currently know. That will also be true of the other characters of course as well.

Let's also look at that bonus chance from a different perspective. What could tenji have done to avoid getting caught? There's only 1 thing. He would have had to gamble on the chance bonus clearing him. That's the ONLY way he could have won. Similarly, if Shibe was the traitor, he would have HAD to take that risk or get caught, there is no other option, and therefore it is the best option and reasonable to think a traitor may go for it.

--

The two traitor theory is entirely foolproof. The results of the first 2 games can't be used by Yuuichi to deduce anything. It's entirely possible one of them intentionally started losing in order to gain trust. That's even more true if they aren't concerned about money.

The definition of a good ally? There isn't one in these games. There hasn't been anything that could possibly have cleared any of them. There's simply not enough information available. The only fool proof plan thus far would be to use lie testing to figure out who applied for the game, but that wouldn't tell you why or if they acted alone.

Let's look at the most plausible 2 traitor theory. Shibe+shiho. Shiho pretends to work with Yuuichi but tells Shibe that Yuuichi is clearing them 1 by 1. Shibe sees the bonus chance come up and volunteers for it. If shiho had been the one to officially apply (and she had control of the money last before the game), then the bonus chance would have for sure cleared Shibe.

You also talk about them not being able to act perfectly because they are highschoolers before going to explain that both girls acted perfectly to fool tenji, so which is it? Can they act or not?

I'm not even really mad at that plan Yuuichi came up with or that it had holes. It's probably better than I would have done in such a situation. I'm mad at how the show presents it, as though it is this amazing foolproof strategy and that Yuuichi must be a genius manipulator evil villain to have devised it. If they had shown Yuuichi being uncertain but figured that this was his best gamble, or if they had acted like it was impressive despite some flaws for how hastily he had to throw it together, it'd be fine. The show didn't do that though, they gave him his cringe evil face before all the characters acted like he was a monster genius. He just didn't earn that reaction. If the show is gonna act like he is incredibly cunning and devious, I expect his plan to actually be cunning and devious and not fall apart when I think about it for more than 5 minutes.

newluminous said:
I really respect you for your logical thinking and reasoning. But bruh, this of all reasons is why you spent lots of your time trying your best to find flaws in Yuuichi's strategy? It's like saying people who get A grades don't deserve to be praised by anyone. Even if Yuuichi's in the spotlight, why would you get mad? It's not like the author personally comes to your house and tells everyone Yuuichi is smarter than you so you have to defend yourself and say "Nah im not impressed. He isn't that good".

Anyway, you got it wrong. Didn't Yuuichi himself say his methods had holes? The black-haired commentator also stated that his plan was extremely risky. She was impressed by his boldness to make those moves and the fact that he could manipulate his close friends without consideration, NOT because she thought his plan was perfect. The other commentator was impressed because ... she is dumb. And don't mind his exaggerated face. It wasn't a triumphant smile but just a thing to scare his opponents. Who does he want to score brownie points with when right after that he revealed himself as a murderer? This series never calls him a genius (idk if this counts as a spoiler) because someone else will earn that title. What it truly does is constantly reminding you Yuuichi is a horrible human being, an EVIL person. You still think he's not evil enough? Fair, just keep watching.

phantomfandom said:
It's a big win, LOVE WINS! Even if I have 100 chances to predict how this episode will end I would never predict that kiss, considering that I'm also BL too. I bet even the smart ass Yuichi didn't see this coming LOL.

I need more BL twist like this in other anime, don't let Tomodachi Game be the only one in this path (sure, it's not the only one, but still very rare). I need to make it normal to have a guy kiss a guy.

RinTheWanderer said:

7. Evil. Yuuichi has not displayed ANY evil methods yet. Nothing he has done is any more evil than the average game of werewolf or among us or whatever version of that game you want to use is. The game IS manipulating people, thats expected, theres nothing wrong with doing it in this context, and they weren't used for evil purposes either. If he had gotten 2-3 nametags and then commanded them to badmouth one other player in order to force that player to lose so Yuuichi could escape debt, that would have been evil, but he didn't do anything remotely like that. Granted, we will see what he does in the future, but if it was necessary to win and his goal is good, it's pretty much impossible for him to be evil going forward.

opbt said:
Guys I don’t get it How does Tenji Even like YUICHI
Flashback to ep 3,they show him stalking Shiho Like it’s his job and daily routine it has no signs of him Liking him.There was no evidence In the last other than the moment in ep 6 where he kissed yuichi.Anyone could have kiss YUICHI with no Concrete evidence of the past of liking him.
I just can’t understand how the act of kissing YUICHI is enough to tell him it’s a lie I DONT GET IT

newluminous said:
Just because the game expects you to do something bad, doesn't mean willingly doing so is justified. Imagine a survial game where you have to kill people to be the only one alive. Ik noone dies in this game, but it also involves real people, with real debts. It's not just a game for entertainment, and it could destroy lives.

I also think Yuuichi is not that evil. But he's definitely not a genuinely good person. Manipulating people is bad enough, not to mention doing that to your close friends, with no hesitation. Idk about you but that's fucked up to me. One doesn't need to do bad things for his own sake to be called evil. That's "selfish". What is the definition of "evil"? morally bad, cruel, unpleasant.

The end does not justify the means. Look at Light Yagami. He wanted to create a world with no criminals. Is his goal good? Yes. Before he encountered L, did he do what he thought is necessary to achieve his goal? Yes. Is he evil? Needless to say. So yeah, it not impossible for Yuuichi to be evil if he uses more extreme methods. Hell, Yuuichi might already be evil. It was confirmed in this episode he killed people.

RinTheWanderer said:


Context matters and people misunderstand end justifying the means. It's like the trolly problem. The end of saving 5 people justifies actively killing someone else even though the action you are taking is murdering an innocent person, you are still morally good. Killing someone in a survival death game is NOT an immoral action, it is justified. You have equal right to live as they do, so you have the right to fight to survive.

If a psycho kidnaps you and your family and says you have to kill your father or else he will kill both your father and mother, does killing your father make you evil? No.

And looking at less dramatic context, people are happy to manipulate and lie to friends in games. Theres games whose entire point is to do that.

When a hero asks the villain "so the ends justify the means for you?". This is talking about this specific scenario most of the time. Ends justifying the means is how everyone lives their lives. The ends of having a full stomach justifies the means of getting food and eating it. The ends of making yourself rich does not justify the means of murdering innocent people, presumably. Although you could make an argument that you could save more people than you hurt with all the money you made so even that isn't so cut and dry.

RinTheWanderer said:
My point is him manipulating people is NOT immoral. All actions require context before judging if it is or is not immoral. Killing someone is wrong, except when it isn't. Lying is the same way. If the actions you took were the actions you thought would achieve the best outcome, including the ramifications of your actions, it's a good and moral action. No action by itself is evil. There can always be a context that could justify it.

I am hesitant to think of what he even could do in order to be a monster in this game. Given the life altering outcomes, even murder could be justified fairly easily.

And this is on the scale of fiction anyway. You have characters like lelouch sacrificing MILLIONS of innocent people to achieve his objective. Literally enslaving them and then sending them into nuclear bombs. I'm pretty positive those actions will end up being far worse than anything in this series, and yet, there is a real solid argument to be made that lelouch was a good person.

So far it really feels like Yuuichi's title of horrible person and monster is completely unearned and it just feels pathetic of the author. Perhaps we will see some actually horrible actions later on but I'm pessimistic of it.

Rhaias said:
Now I feel bad for people who dropped this show too early

kar1a said:


I just skimmed the manga

Mod Edit: Added spoiler tags; please hide plot details.

Thomas_york said:
First, it's implied that Yuuichi did the way he did because he was trying to "help" the traitor. Let me explain, the reason why Yuuichi in first place accepted to play the Tomodachi Game was because he wanted to help his friend in debt. Therefore until the first "strategy" (the one that failed) he (and everyone else) thought that the traitor's goal was to get rid of their debt. Remember what Yuuichi did? He gave them a full layout of how the second game works saying that the "second part" of the game would have more spaces that reduce their debt, and then he said that he'd want to end that game with everyone together, with no more fight. He basically gave a chance to the traitor reduce their debt IF their problem was money, he gave this chance because he truly considered everyone there his friend, even the traitor and he wanted to help this traitor. But when he noticed that the traitor's goal was actually something else but not money, Yuuichi changed his mind. The traitor (who at that moment, they thought their problem was money) refused the best strategy to reduce their debt. Yuuichi who tried to help the traitor, who he also considered a friend, changed his plans at that moment.
Do you get it now?