You would expect this manga to be all about backstabbing, distrust, and a whole lot of confusion. But essentially what Doubt boils down to is hardly more than a manga version of the Saw movies –– especially, the first one. You remember Saw, right? That movie where people get kidnapped and tortured? Well, there’s no torture or traps here, but the similarities between the two are uncanny.
The manga starts off normally enough, when a group of strangers meet up in one location. They are all playing the game “Rabbit Doubt,” and the only way the can identify each other is by the rabbit keychain on their cellphones. But things quickly turn for the worse when they go for some karaoke and the main character, Yuu Aikawa, gets attacked in the bathroom.
The players wake up in a strange room, and try to figure out a way to escape. They find a dead body in the room next door and have no idea why they are here… I could go on and on about how similar this manga is to Saw. There is even someone surveillancing them the whole time. If you love the Saw movies, then you’re going to love Doubt. If Saw was not your type of movie, you won’t find much appeal here.
There is a brief love story towards the end, and personally I found learning about the characters’ pasts to be one of the more interesting aspects of the manga. Doubt, like its namesake, will keep you doubting and guessing from the beginning through the end. Many times when I was positive who the wolf was, I started “doubting” myself just a few chapters later.
The dialogue was okay: I found it a bit cheesy at times, even for a horror manga. The characters seemed to scream and shout a lot; luckily, because it’s a manga, we don’t have to hear them.
The one main peeve I had with the manga is that even though the plot was unique and different from all other anime or manga out there (that’s what got me interested in this manga in the first place), what started out as a cool psychological horror story slowly slipped into anime clichéness. You know…you have the handicapped loli, the smart guy with the glasses, the tough, cool guy… If the characterization had been just a little bit better, I think I would’ve enjoyed this manga more.
Still, the dramatic scenes gave me an enjoyable sense of tension. I loved the creepy atmosphere, as well as trying to solve the mystery of the barcodes.
It is doubtful that horror fans will pass up on reading Doubt, but I doubt they will give accolades to its doubtfully logical ending.
