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Nov 29, 2023
The premise alone is questionable to say the least. A psychopathic teenager locks up 30 teenagers who used to be his friends in a school because he's curious about how they will react when they are under pressure: whether they'll be able to keep their humanity and test the human nature. And... he only has a fucking gun that he has never used to threaten them and make them do whatever he wants. Well, out of 30 people, no one is capable of doing absolutely anything when half the time he doesn't even have the gun on his hands, other times he gives weapons to
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them to hurt each other, other times he has both hands occupied having 10 guys stronger than him behind, and on top of that with his back turned to them. And it's not like the perpetrator kept them all confined in a room and they couldn't communicate with each other; he lets them roam the school freely and, instead of coming up with plans to get rid of the killer or escape, they talk about silly stuff.
Also, it is not that they are simply kidnapped, but that they are literally forced to undergo experiments that slowly kill them. But hey, let's not try to attack him when his back is turned and his hands are occupied, lest he shoots someone with a gun that he has never used in his fucking life and we all avoid dying in a horrible way. By the way, no one fucking thinks of using ropes to escape through the stairs or windows, using corpses or tables to protect themselves from the sulfuric acid traps, burning things on the roof to attract the attention of people from the outside, attacking the perpetrator while he sleeps or is distracted, using objects to protect themselves, etc. Look, I get teenagers, especially under pressure, may not always take the best decisions, but these idiots somehow manage to ALWAYS take shitty decisions despite having plenty of time to reflect on most of them, even if some of them are stated to be calm, collected, and smart. It's infiurating.
The characters, leaving aside how utterly stupid they are, are not that bad for this kind of story, but as often happens, many of them are very much left aside, without development or agency in the plot, and some other just die before getting a chance of being interesting; furthermore, many of them make sudden changes that make no sense and make truly incomprehensible decisions even when there is nothing to motivate them, just for the sake of entertainment/advancing the plot. The perpetrator, even if the plot makes him look like someone very intelligent and unstoppable when the reality is that he simply manages to do what he wants because all the kidnapped people are idiots, at least has an interesting philosophy, which is ultimately ruined by the apparition of a certain character who feels shoehorned into the story, in a series of turns of events that are each more ridiculous.
It's especially dumb when a certain character does the same the perpetrator of the incident did and threatens the survivors with a gun so they help them finding a certain individual who killed a person dear to them, and then the rest decides somewhat they've gone crazy, they don't want to help them, and they oppose them far more than they did with the psycho who kidnapped them all, despite what they're doing being absolutely right. This is also the point when the manga becomes just pretentious, overexplaining its messages for like 15 chapters with little to no subtlety despite them being extremely obvious, contradicting at times, and not particularly thought-provoking, since these lessons are basically common sense that any average teenager would be able to deduce. It's good it's not just mindlessly killing, but seriously, this manga strives so hard in order to avoid that, it end ups falling in the exact opposite issue.
It is an entertaining read, but the quality of the writing is low, it has zero subtlety in dealing with its themes, characters that are mostly forgettable, inconsistent, or both, ridiculous plot twists, and egregious logical errors.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Nov 7, 2022
I didn't like how most of the twists were presented. It's great when you are given a perspective, and then you see another perspective which gives the situation another meaning. However, the earlier chapters in this manga straight-up lie to the reader. Both main characters do and say things that are completely opposite to what we are shown in the latter chapters, when the truth is discovered.
For instance, it's nice if you show a panel of blood splatter, then you show a character's face getting dirty with blood, and then you show them crying. What you CAN'T do is showing how a character kills
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someone, straight-up admits they killed them, and then you show the same scene but said character never does any of this. It feels really cheap and non-sensical, it kind of reminded me of the game "Heavy Rain". One may argue "that's because that's what that character told the police, not the actual events", but in a mystery story this kind of story-telling feels just cheap. The same goes for the "dead narrator" device used to tell the actual events of what happened; it may mislead readers, and instead of naturally unraveling an interesting mystery, it feels like the manga doesn't know how to do it and chooses the easy path, which is straight-up telling the readers the truth in a pretty random, simple way. I guess that's in part because of how short the manga is.
It does a good job depicting how miserable the lives of the main characters are, and how their lives were ruined by awful people who didn't give a crap about any of them, although I think it's over-the-top, a little too cartoonish. The manga tried too hard to be edgy and depressing, and in the end it came off as a little unrealistic. For instance, the story revolves around a character who lost their mother when they were a child, who's extremely poor, who has a disabled father, whose uncle abuses them, who gets bullied in school, who doesn't really have friends besides the MC, who hits on a guy who's like the worst person ever... And the list goes on and on, but I don't want to spoil anything. The situation is just so over the top and unsubtle it feels like the manga is telling us the readers: "feel sad, dude, you need to feel sad".
The resolution of the mystery was lacking, as it left plot holes everywhere. The ending itself (or epilogue) was sad, but the lead-up to it felt really forced; I get the author wanted such an ending in order to convey what she intended, but providing what happens right before, such a turn of events makes little sense. That speaks volumes about the third volume (no pun intended), which is the worst of the three and you can tell it was rushed; it needed to wrap up too much stuff in just a few chapters, which is why the last 1/3 of the story feels so rushed, full of plot holes, plot contrivances, and forced developments. It would have benefitted from having 1 or 2 more volumes.
The characters are pretty plain and sometimes even straight-up stupid: there are times when you just want to punch them in the face so they use their brains a little. The MC is supposed to be really smart, but once you realize what her plan was all along, you realize it was really stupid, how much she relied on luck and how some of her actions just don't make sense. The main and secondary villain are particularly bad, they are just so cartoonishly evil you can't take them seriously, and one of them, despite being characterized as a cold and calculating psycho, seems to become braindead during the last 1/3 so the manga can reach the ending it wants to provide. By the way, every men (except for one) in this story is a complete, irremediably evil asshole: they're painted in an appaling light, which adds to the cartoonish elements that hurt it.
Even so, the manga has its strenghts; particularly the awesome art, the suspense and intrigue, the atmosphere, the tone, and the message it tries to convey. The writing could have been way better.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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