Firstly, there's the characters and their relationships. "Pushed to the edge of morality, in a life or death situation, what sorts of people are these characters revealed to be? What kind of dynamics arise between the characters?" That's actually my favorite element of death games, and it's something that the first Jinrou Game seriously lacked. Even in Beast Side, I felt like that was an issue: why don't these characters talk to each other? I wanted to know more about the side characters, and when we did learn about them, it felt as though it were more through clumsy exposition than anything else. I didn't feel that as much this time — we learn a lot about a number of characters. The writer still isn't interested in addressing the whole cast, but the characters whose relationships are fleshed out are really interesting!
Well... except, now that I'm writing that, I'm not sure it's true. Yes, the relationships that exist are interesting — but are they *fleshed out*? I'm fine not always really knowing how one character feels about another — especially when it comes to relationships outside of POV characters, it shows that the POV character isn't omniscient and can be taken by surprise as well. But after being taken by surprise, there's a couple twists with characters and the way they acted that left me feeling dissatisfied, like there wasn't any justification to the twist. Maybe if I read through it all again I'll find hidden clues, but ideally when a twist occurs you want it to feel like, "ohhh... so *that's* what that was, that changes everything," but you want it to make sense. With some of the reveals from characters, it just felt like... huh? Really? That's it?
Secondly, there's the logic and intellectual work. "Pushed to the edge of their wits, in a life or death situation, what kinds of tricks and maneuvers can these characters figure out to keep themselves alive?" Liar Game is a great example of this (up until the last game, which flops IMO). Jinrou Game is consistently... okay at this, and I'd say this addition to the series is mostly no different. The previous game has a character who's constantly on her toes thinking about the next move to make, which I really appreciated. This protagonist is a little more offbeat in her thought process, but maybe that's fitting for the 'Crazy Fox.' At any rate, her schemes not being picture-perfect make her a little more human. However, I don't think that holds for the other characters. And while it's normally alright for the side cast to be less smart than the protagonist, they make a couple unbelievably stupid decisions that felt tough to believe and took me personally out of it. The ending especially was really frustrating. I don't think it's out of character for the writer to put together an ending like that, it seems thematically in line with the ending of Beast Side, but I think there were so many different choices to make and the one picked was the worst one.
I'll also throw in that the game itself is... pretty barebones. Werewolf is a good pick for a death game in part because of its simplicity, but because it's simple you have to be able to come up with ideas that the reader wouldn't and develop multiple strategies. None of the new additions to the story change it in any substantial, material way — not even the 'Crazy Fox' role that the story is named after. I wonder if, after two whole manga themed around Werewolf, the writer was starting to exhaust their ideas...?
I think there's stuff to like here — the character designs are pretty good, for instance, probably the best in the series so far (I don't plan on reading Lost Eden). Plus, the writers made the choice this time around for all of the deaths to be carried out by hand, which I think really exacerbates the dread and despair in the environment. Frankly, if you're just in it to look at some dead bodies, this is really good for that as well!
But ultimately, I can't recommend this with my full chest. If you're a death game aficionado, go for it, but this isn't something I'd recommend to someone who's only seen Squid Game.
