Kamisama no Iutoori

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A Survival Game with a Twist, or maybe a Half Twist

Right off the bat let's note that this is Part 1 of a Two Part (so far) manga series with the same name, except part two is called Part 2. Pretty simple.

If you enjoyed Kaiji, Squid Game, Battle Royale, Alice in Borderlands, or any other Survival Game, and thought to yourself "I wish they spent less time on the plot and characters, and just spent more time on the games, maybe add in some supernatural elements" then you are absolutely going to love this manga. Otherwise, you will be like most people and probably ... enjoy it well enough, while being more than a little bit confused at times. This is Kamisama no Iutoori or As the Gods Will (Part 1).

To be honest, this manga is a test to see if you will enjoy Part 2, which is much longer, and has exactly the same plot and characters as part 1. This manga will not take long to read, so if anything about Survival Game, psychological horror, and supernatural elements appeal to you then you should give this a read and see if you like it. I can at least promise you that Part 2 improves in every possible way from the 1st one, although maybe not by much. It corrects a lot of the mediocre aspects of this manga, so if you enjoy it you absolutely MUST go on to the 2nd Part.

Otherwise I could go on, but this manga is so short you should just read it instead of reading a long review. I will however do a more in depth review of Part 2!

A new contender on my strange list of “What am I even reading?”.

Short manga, death games, gore, batshit insane characters. An author that tortures audience expectations to the point of insensitivity. You get what you ask for, but I just can't get along with the ways it's laid out. Specially since the beginning, we know everything can instantly die at the turn of a page, or right on the next panel. So, it should be a fun, “turn off your brain” sequence of gory events that tickle that monkey bone.

A ball with a face lands on a classroom, and starts killing people in the ... name of a mysterious game. No rules, you gotta figure out how to survive in the very first pages. It's unrelenting, no breaks, no breathing room, nothing. Right from that get go, it feels like an ADHD written story. It tries to get your attention by introducing this new, brutal aspect that gets discarded soon after. It keeps your attention long enough as to tell another, alien invasion story, and we go back and forth really fast to the gore. Maybe this is the kind of juvenile story that loads of people put themselves into, and try to think “¿Would I survive?”. That's where the novelty wears off. Only insane people survive, or the main character, whose insanity is slowly put in the spotlight to analyze, but without meaning.

It feels like a meaningless story, at least as of now. This is the only thing I'll mention about the ending, in that, there's not an ending. The narrative ends in a climax after one of the most important death games finishes. It leaves the audience in a cliffhanger that doesn't really interest me to follow for more. Some allusions are given to the real “something” behind it all, but it's so empty that there's nothing to look forward to.

We don't care for the characters, since the author never gives us time to love anybody. The main character is just this vaguely insane guy, doing mildly intelligent observations to allow his survival without much else. I don't think we're supposed to relate, but we don't care either. Survival isn't something that matters that much when that's all there's to it. Maybe I should've expected that from the premise, and it was entertaining, but not much more than junk food.

I don't think this is a great manga, and the art goes hit or miss. However, I wasn't bored, so I'll give it points for succeeding in the ADHD fueled, and sometimes comedic, gory aesthetic that doesn't exaggerate with its characters. It's not edgy, which is welcomed.

5.5/10. Tolerable, but it doesn't bring anything to the death game table. Mindless entertainment.

If you’ve read literally any other work of the death game genre, Kamisama no Iutoori will offer no extra benefit to you.

The story is very, very basic. Very little is actually explained about what is going on, so it seems that the main attraction really is just “people dying stupidly”. Said people being generic mob, with very shallow personalities – and that includes the protagonists too. I was given absolutely zero reason as to why should I care about any of them. There is at least some attempt to differentiate between characters by varying character designs, but that too falls flat as most of them ... are as randomly introduced as they are killed off soon after.

The death games themselves are boring, and beyond the concept of turning children’s games into death games unimaginative. And it gets worse with time, last volume being the most boring of them all. There just isn’t anything to catch your interest unless this is first or among the first more explicit manga you’ve read. And it’s not like the art of that is any great. As is the story, the drawings are also subpar, with maybe one or two pages being alright.

There is also a sort of subplot with moe manga and annoying otaku character and it is the stupidest shit ever that only adds to the story not making much sense together.

Maybe all of this is explained in the sequel, but this part lowered my interest in reading the continuation for it quite lot, so I’m judging it as it stands alone, and it’s standing alone is terrible.