Prison Lab

I was thoroughly disappointed after reading this. But even long before I finished it— say 20 chapters in— I knew I wasn’t going to like it.

For starters, the premise seemed promising. A boy gets to keep his bully captive and do whatever he wants with them without any repercussions? Sweet. I love horror, thriller, and anything absurdly psychological so I was looking forward to reading a story about revenge!

But when I saw that his captive was a girl, I was like, hmm, already bordering on the edge of my personal comfort level but I’ll take it. Then, as expected, he proceeded to pretty much torture her for days on end. I didn’t mind the torturing so much as I did what happened afterward.

Spoilers below. Please skip to the boldened text at the very bottom for a TL;DR non-spoiler review.

Then the backstory comes and pretty much ruins everything. We discover that she and the main character were friends at one point. But she distanced herself from him because she became traumatized after being r-worded (unbeknownst to our main character). Understandable.

Soon after that she began to harass and bully him… Why? Because she wanted him to get stronger and stop being so weak. Presumably because he reminded her of her past self? Even in typing this, I can’t make sense of it at all.

The decisions that the author made for his characters motives lack sense, and for me, this was noticeable even in the early chapters. The characters don’t make rational choices at all. I understand the teenage characters lacking rationality but the adult characters making rash decisions felt very odd.

To bring it back to the main character and his bully, their conflict could have been easily resolved (and even preventable) had they communicated beforehand. But for the sake of the existence of the story, this obviously doesn’t happen until almost the end of the manga.

To make matters worse, the two of them have/had crushes on each other, even during the course of this torturous “game.”

And to make matters even worse, her assault was planned so that she would bully the main character as a result. This is a crazy turn of events in the worst way possible. Maybe it’s just me but r@pe as a plot point isn’t something I can get behind. (And she isn’t the only character this happens to!)

And if you think it couldn’t get any worse, it can. Because at the end of the story, after brutally torturing her for almost two weeks straight, and even being convinced that he has killed her, he continues his regular life. But they meet again a few months later, and she still crushes on him… And the feeling is mutual.

I understand that the relationship is meant to be toxic but it comes off as more repulsive and off-putting than anything else.

I would have dropped this if it weren’t for the fact that I hate leaving manga unfinished. Also I wanted to write this review out of spite.

Non-spoiler review:

The prison game itself was definitely not used to its full advantage. It had so much potential but the author was more focused on the main character torturing a girl than actually creating a realistic story.