#This review is a FULL SPOILERS review. So right away I'll just say that I would not recommend this series in any scenario other than if you want to watch something really, really, really bad. Like astoundingly and pathetically bad.#
INTERNET ADDICTION.
IT IS A PLAGUE AMONG THE MODERN WORLD.
IS THE SOLUTION BETTER PARENTING OR SHIPPING YOUR CHILDREN OFF TO A FACILITY WHERE THEY'LL GET THEIR SHIT KICKED IN EVERY DAY, EVERY NIGHT, AS THE INSTRUCTORS PARTAKE IN SEXUAL DEVIANCY AND DRUG TRAFFICKING BEHIND THE SCENES???
SO WHAT IF YOUR CHILD DIES AT ONE OF THESE FACILITIES? THEY WERE ADDICTED TO THE WORST DRUG OF ALL. THE INTERNET.
DON'T WORRY, THE SCHOOL IS USED TO THIS KIND OF THING AND CAN GET RID OF YOUR CHILD'S CORPSE FOR YOU IF NEEDED. YOU WON'T EVEN NEED TO HAVE TO ARRANGE A BURIAL BECAUSE YOUR UNRULY TEENAGER WHO PLAYED TOO MUCH STARCRAFT OR COUNTERSTRIKE WILL BE DISSOLVED IN A TUB OF HYDROFLUORIC ACID. AND AT NO ADDITIONAL COST TO YOU, THE PARENT.
WHAT A BARGAIN! YOU'D BE A FOOL TO NOT SEND YOUR CHILD TO OUR INTERNET ADDICTION REHABILITATION FACILITY!
~~...The more I think about it, maybe the right solution is just better parenting.~~
#Introduction#
Evil or Live is a mistake brought to us by the studio Haoliners Animation League. I don't know who at their studio looked at this and decided it deserved to be animated, but they probably should be let go. Nonetheless, there's now no undoing their grievous mistake. Now and forever, Evil or Live has been added to the continuing sorrowful joke that is the horror genre.
Whereas I could probably argue that there is value to its fellow Fall 2017 brethren Ousama Game, there is no redeeming qualities or value to Evil or Live. It is hands down probably one of the most pathetic pieces of shit I have ever watched.
It was almost so bad that it's worth watching just to behold the masterful writing. Like I cannot even wrap my head around it. It's not even like it's entertaining in a bad way it's just... it's just so fucking terrible that I had to see how it could possibly get worse. There are SOME funny bad moments, but I'd probably say the majority of the show is insufferably awful and misery inducing.
Which I guess you could argue was what they were going for. Since the entire show is teenagers getting their faces bashed in after getting launched into a fucking prison environment for using the computer.
...And might I add, the fact that apparently INTERNET ADDICTION is a real thing and there are real life facilities for it, almost makes this series even more laughable. Was the point of the series to actually inform people about internet addiction? Was the point of the series to be about these facilities that were fucked up and corrupt? Or was the point about the story of this instructor and his relationship to his dominatrix or this power conflict between this purple hair guy and his fucking drug smuggling brother???
It's... it's just so fucking bad. I watched the first couple of episodes and just stopped for months. I thought it couldn't possibly get any worse and that it was just gonna be a show about buff muscular instructors making teenagers want to kill themselves or just outright beating them to death themselves.
I mean if it was just stopped at that, it'd still be pretty fucking terrible but then there's all the other shit. As a matter of fact for this one, I don't think this is gonna be a very organized review. I have a lot of ground to cover.
#Hibiki, the fucking Worst Protagonist#
This fucking guy. I don't even have a list for absolute worst or most unlikable protagonists but if I DID, HIBIKI WOULD ABSOLUTELY BE IN THE TOP TEN. Like it's not just the fact that the shit writing present through the entire series doesn't know when he should be pathetic or the evil COOL guy but he's just...
He's just unlikable no matter what personality he's rolling with. When he's just like the new guy who's getting his shit kicked in or getting misled, he's laughable. When he's supposed to have snapped or hit his low point to force him to take action, he's completely fucking pathetic and irritating.
There is actually an episode in this series where Hibiki's class has a fight off with one of the girl classes, and it's only Hibiki who can actually manage to stand up against the girl class. How does he best the strongest girl???
Certainly the most enjoyable parts of this series is when Hibiki gets physically assaulted or called trash.
He immediately grabs one of her breasts to send her into a rage so she would use up all of his stamina and he could beat her. And then when one of the other guy classes come to challenge Hibiki's class right after?
Hibiki: "Yo, this motherfucker who has all this fighting experience? It's unfair to make me fight him. Let's have a STAND OFF INSTEAD."
And then they just see who can stand longer for like three hours straight. No, really. This is actually what happens. This is actually a real thing that happens in this real series.
What was the ultimate purpose of it since it resulted in a goddamned draw? Well, Hibiki, being the genius he is, knew that the other guy would be pissed and come to try and force physical violence upon him. He sends his lackey off to bring him two buckets of water which he uses to cleverly disable the already exhausted thug, and then proceeds to send him to the fucking hospital by assaulting him but only when he literally is unable to fight back.
...It's fine, you CAN do a character like this. He's weak, he doesn't have the brawn so he has to rely on trickery and fighting like a scumbag, but... this is probably one of the most pathetic attempts to do "that" character I've ever seen. There are clear moments in the show where the show itself is trying to present him as this cool character but it's just...it's just fucking pathetic. ~~Before I end this review, I'm gonna count how many times I end up using the word "pathetic" in total.~~
The show keeps forcing Hibiki and Shiori (the main female character) to interact with each other and like eventually Shiori not only calls him worthless but outright tells him to never come near her ever again and just one or two episodes after this, bam, they're in the same room again. Every single scene with them together was like nails on a fucking chalkboard.
Hibiki started off as a worthless pathetic whiny sack of shit. Then he hit a low point and started roaming around the school beating up others with a jacket full of bricks, but the show then decided that low point wasn't low enough so it smacked him back down to his pathetic state. But then, THEN, when he has to be in solitary confinement for two weeks, that's when he emerges and is the COOLEST MOTHERFUCKER WHO EVER LIVED.
Punching and kicking other guy's genitals, fighting against girls, and sending people who can't even fight back to the hospital. Literally beating himself up when he's cornered and then dousing himself in FUCKING KETCHUP to frame the other students... Hibiki's the coolest protagonist I've ever see--
#PROJECTILE VOMITS#
#The Female Characters#
Oh jesus christ. There are four female characters that matter. Five if you count cell phone girl who gets disposed of or let out near the end of the series...? It was honestly kind of unclear and she doesn't matter so who cares. The ones that DO matter though are the trio girl students and the headmistress of the school.
The head mistress is... deeply intertwined with the deepest character of this show, so let's save her until we get there. So really let's just talk about the trio. ~~Or rather, just Shiori because the other two are basically joke characters.~~
You have Shiori who is the girl that Hibiki knew from before they were sent to this hellhole. Shiori has an intense disgust for males due to the fact that oh just her uncle sexually abusing her and trying to blackmail her into being fine with it with the knowledge that he'll stop paying for her brother's hospital bills. Shiori is basically the punching bag of this series...?
The series itself forces her and Hibiki to interact repeatedly, Hibiki outright causes her to endure having the rest of her class slap her one after the other, and the series ends with Shiori having been savagely beaten by the goon character (AND POSSIBLY WORSE BUT THANK CHRIST IT'S ONLY IMPLIED). And Hibiki's final interaction with her that the show presents to us is Hibiki mocking and laughing at her. Sure he's pretending to do so and does ultimately help her escape but... ugh.
The series just outright ends with her in the hospital. We do not get to see her actually finally make it to her brother. Hell, maybe her brother is just fucking dead. Why would her uncle continue to pay his hospital bills after sending Shiori to the internet addiction school INDEFINITELY.
...Shiori's in the hospital fucked up, her brother's probably dead, but no we gotta see HIBIKI REUNITE WITH THE PURPLE HAIR GUY. BEST FRIENDS FOREVE--
#PROJECTILE VOMITS#
___#Shin, the... Disappointment?#
God damn this motherfucker was almost just about as worthless as Hibiki. If you're gonna make a show about like internet addiction and these messed up facilities for it, why do you have to tack on this fucking halfhearted idiotic plot about...
Like purple hair guy willingly entered this school to... get revenge on his brother who had his mother killed for some reason??? And Shin's brother was using this internet addiction school to... smuggle drugs for some reason??? And Shin's entire purpose in this series is he's gonna get this school shut down by having all the fucked up shit and the drug smuggling exposed to the public???
This plot felt so fucking tacked on and half heartedly done it kills me. He literally disappears almost entirely for the last couple of episodes until he sets part of the school on fire... and like the OP of the show shows him and Hibiki fist bumping like they're BEST FUCKING FRIENDS.
But the entire series is Shin shitting on Hibiki and manipulating him and trying to force him to be his dog, trying to force him into sleeping with Shiori as well as taking naked pictures... and then when Hibiki refuses he just fucking immediately turns on him and Hibiki apparently after that wants revenge on Shin and that fucking goes nowhere. It literally goes nowhere because Hibiki apparently decides to run through flames so he can be with his friend Shin in his moment of triumph! Oh yeah by the way woah Shin was sick and/or dying the ENTIRE FUCKING SHOW what a surprise even though we're repeatedly shown him coughing.
Shin: "Fuck off if you're not going to be my dog and take naked pictures of the girl you like."
Hibiki: "I'm going to get revenge on you, YOU ABSOLUTE PIECE OF SHIT."
THEY'RE SUCH GOOD FRIENDS.
...How can anyone describe this series as anything but miserable? So like what Hibiki and Shin just stood on the roof as the school burned down? I mean at least end the show with them fucking doing the fist bump in the OP if you're gonna insist on the fact that they're friends even though Hibiki clearly wanted reve--
#PROJECTILE VOMITS#
#The Head Instructor#
Well definitely, the hardest I laughed out of the entire series was when we were shown the Head Instructor's deeply tragic past before he joined the school's teaching staff. That's where the writing transcended bad and became godlike.
He's an ex-cop who betrayed his partner by cowardly allowing him to get shot to death in the middle of a narcotics bust while he was hiding away in a hole, then following his partner's death, he decides to try and meet up with his partner's family. His partner's wife is hospitalized and hates the Head Instructor for being the only person to survive. So he moves on to his partner's son, who now spends all his time in an internet parlor. The son blows up on him and calls his cop father a waste and failure of a father and then immediately dies from INTERNET OVERDOSE and the Head Instructor witnesses it.
Everybody else in the building is too focused in their own INTERNET ACTIVITIES to even call for an ambulance. The INTERNET has claimed yet another life this day. On a downward emotional spiral, the Head Instructor quits being a cop and goes to find his dead partner's lost daughter, only to find that she is acting as a DOMINATRIX, and he barges in on a session between her and her overweight partner.
She too calls her cop father a FAILURE and then proceeds to throw her overweight husband's heart medicine out of the room as he begins to have a heart attack due to the Head Instructor barging in. The Head Instructor fumbles and tries to get the heart medicine to him, but it is too late. He breaks down after witnessing yet another death, and begs the dominatrix daughter to punish him, and then the daughter proceeds to mention that the only thing the overweight man who just died who turned out to be married to her left her is the property of a failing schoo--
Why. Why is this in the show. We didn't need to see or know how the school got founded. We did not need to see this pathetic guy and his dominatrix's backstory to... we didn't need this. And it just comes out of fucking nowhere and it ends like it's just yet "another thing" that happened.
What the FUCK was the POIN--
#PROJECTILE VOMITS#
#The School/Facility#
Yeah. Yeah let's talk about this now.
This school, this facility... it may as well as just be a fucking prison/military camp. But yet it is continually called a school. The students only ever do military training. I feel like a number of this series' problems would almost immediately disappear if you just did away with the internet addiction stuff and just outright called it and treated it as a prison rather than a school.
~~Or rather an academy, I guess. It's basically a fucking prison.~~
Very early on, the show basically presents the instructors as super harsh and super controlling. And true, many teenagers had their faces needlessly bashed and smashed in. Like sure go ahead, I give you permission to smash my son's face against like a concrete wall as long as you promise that when he comes home he won't overuse the internet.
But 90% of the time the instructors are almost nowhere to be seen as the various classes of students essentially go at war with each other. Hibiki is just running around at night smacking people with a jacket full of bricks at one point. Like all of the parents in this series are the fucking worst. Because an instructor or someone at one point just outright says something along the lines of:
"yeah sure students have died before, who CARES"
...And from the moment that line was spoken, I immediately just could not stop thinking about that gigantic plothole. Like the instructors say that the parents don't give two shits about what the instructors do to get the students to be rehabilitated from their internet using ways but...
I feel like if the students die, that's not gonna... be the case. I mean were they just gonna tell them that their child disappeared or ran away? Uh yeah, we kind of just lost them, sorry. I guess you're never gonna see them again ~~BECAUSE WE DISSOLVED THEIR CORPSE IN A TUB OF ACID.~~
And like there is that moment very close to the end that the outside public actually are informed of the school and all the shit that's happening there and it feels like the big "YEAH THESE FUCKED UP PLACES ARE REAL AND THEY'RE BAD AND THIS SERIES IS ABOUT THEM" but after everything else that has happened it's just laughable and pathetic.
Like no fucking school or even a military school I'd bet would have a full on solitary confinement priso--
#PROJECTILE VOMITS#
#Conclusion#
Oh god. I'm about to black out. I need to drink some water, I am SITTING in an ocean of vomit.
What else even is there to fucking say about this series? I guess I didn't mention how it so strongly felt like the end was rushed? There was a bunch of stuff they showed like flashes of or didn't even include at all. Like when the students that escaped were shown on the outside in a hospital, I was just like...
"Oh... I guess they escaped through the sewer system they talked about...? Weird they... didn't show any of that. Thought escaping would have been a bigger deal but whatever..."
Then there was also all the stuff that we didn't get satisfactory closure on.
- Shiori's brother. ~~Beyond the possible implication that he's just straight up fucking dead, I guess.~~
- Hibiki's desire to get revenge on Shin.
- The relationship between Hibiki and Shiori was fucking stupid, pointless, and not thought out well at all. Shiori probably appreciated Hibiki laughing at her sitting in a prison cell after possibly having been beaten and/or raped...? What even fucking happened there? I would pay money for someone to satisfactorily explain what happened between the scene where she's talking to Jun and her ending up in the prison cell and it NOT including possible rape by Jun's boyfriend/Shin's brother's goon. To fucking cry and reach out for Hibiki OF ALL PEOPLE, something fucking horrible must have happened to her. ~~But the more I think about it, I think the implication actually must be that her brother is just fucking dead.~~ Either way, just... how absolutely and completely shitty. Shiori actually is the literal punching bag of this entire series.
- Even though he apparently mattered, Shin's brother never appeared a single time outside of flashbacks, but we're supposed to care about Shin getting revenge on him...?
- Don't get to see the school actually get shut the fuck down.
- Did Hibiki and Shin really just stay on the goddamned roof as the school burned down? Why would you end the series with them there, that's so fucking stupid.
- What was with the fucking drug smuggling stuff, why would they ever also use this school to smuggle drugs in??? Shin's brother is an absolute idiot, apparently. Like no, this corrupt internet rehabilitation school is definitely the perfect way to smuggle drugs somehow…?
It is just so fucking poorly thought out, terribly written, awful, miserable, pathetic, stupid, abhorrent. It should not exist in this world and yet it does and now we all have to deal with this fact (and I have to deal with the fact that I willingly ingested it) and...
I would have genuine problems trying to name a worse series. There's ones that have been more disappointing, ones that have made me angrier, but this one was just... something to behold. And unfortunately, it's another piece of trash that has been attached to the horror genre, on top of EVERYTHING ELSE.
I give it a glorious 1 out of a 100. Don't watch this unless you're purposely looking for something to injure yourself mentally. There are actually hundreds and hundreds of other shows out there. The only reason anyone should ever actually considering watching this show for is masochi—
PROJECTILE VOMITS
