Real Account

The outcome of a manga can almost be more important than the journey - but in this case, I couldn't even muster through the journey. Everything began quite clever - but ultimately turned into ridiculous plot twists, unanswered questions, and so much fan service that I had to double-check that this manga wasn't labeled "ecchi" (and frankly - I really should be sending an e-mail to "MangaPanda" and "MyAnimeList" to add "ecchi" as a genre). In fact, I'm surprised it's labeled "shounen" instead of "seinin" for this same reason.

For this manga, I've noticed that people who only read the first few chapters give good reviews - while most people who read farther, give bad ones. That is because this manga begins pretty decently, but quickly disappoints in ways I didn't even think it could.

If you want me to elaborate (spoiler-free) - see below.

Art - 8

The art style isn't bad. It's not super-realistic, but it's also not super-cartoony. The artist knows what they're doing, and the art style used for the manga seems fairly mainstream and likeable. Good artist.

Story - 5
Enjoyment - 3
Characters - 3
(all explained below)

I would've given the story a lower score - but I'm trying to keep in mind that the series did BEGIN very clever. Many people being dragged into a dangerous game of life or death because of a social media app - it sounds cliche, but the writer managed to pull it off and make it fairly interesting and entertaining. The sections of the game were very well-written and strategic. It seemed genius, like the game was nothing but a battle of wits and the author was not afraid to do what he had to do to make it work. There may have been moments where the author showed a pessimistic view of human morality almost to the point of a lack of realism, but looking past that factor, the games themselves were decently thought up. Could this manga have taken a place in my top-5 favorites? Perhaps not - but nonetheless it was clever, entertaining, and interesting.

However - it does not take long for the reader to get the sense that the author doesn't seem to care anymore. Characters - MAIN characters - seem to randomly disappear without another mention of their existence, and the whole tone of the manga changes. This also is very abrupt, so you'll know it's happening when you get there. To me, it felt as though the author was getting bored of writing the same characters over and over again, and so he made up an excuse to get them out of the picture and somehow replace them. It was to the point where I'm going through the pages waiting with baited breath for some characters to reappear (because of an unresolved cliffhanger) - and even after 30 chapters (each chapter is about 40 - 60 pages long, mind you), I'm still wondering if the author entirely forgot about them.

On top of that major flaw (which in itself was almost enough to make me stop caring about the story), things go from being based on intelligence, to seemingly being based on a lot of action - and as I mentioned above, the amount of fanservice shoots through the roof. In the beginning there may have been some things here and there that were a bit suggestive or inappropriate, but it was not too much more than the amount shown in other shounen manga. However, eventually it seems like they try to find more and more excuses to insert suggestive (and more than suggestive - outright visible) scenes with girls' bodies - and not even for good reasons. I recently read a scene where two female characters "had to" get naked, in order to carry out a plan, however that plan is actually physically impossible in reality - but the author makes it work anyway, and all just as an excuse to add naked girls. Recently it has felt common-place to see girls in skimpy bikini's, underwear, or just flat-out naked (and it seems they can only keep the 'shounen' tag because the important areas are simply not colored in, which makes it a bit less detailed.)

While once or twice might be forgivable, it feels constant now - and that isn't what I came for. That was about the point that I dropped the manga, because it went from a "psychological/shounen" to an "action/ecchi/seinin" (with characters that are randomly gone and plot-twists that are ridiculous and make me care even less about the characters) - which I did not sign up for.

Overall - I'm giving it a 30/100 (or 3/10).

It could've been lower had it not been for the beginning chapters which were fairly well-written. In the beginning it was very intelligent, and there was one twist in particular that I found extremely clever and interesting - but it doesn't matter, because after a while, the manga practically acts like the beginning never happened.

This manga heavily disappointed me. But if you like action and ecchi - this might be your manga once you get past the part where the author drops characters out of existence and changes the tone of the story.