There's some manga where like... sure, it looks bad. Like okay yeah sure, this series probably isn't gonna be very good. But I remember for this series, I felt it down to my very bones the moment I saw the first page of this series.
~~Once again I proffer yet another Apologize to Friedrich Nietzsche in one of these reviews.~~
I didn't exactly have a full premonition of what was to come. But an ominous sense of dread took hold of me.
This manga is not a good series. This manga is not a so bad it's good series. This manga is not smut. This manga is not a funny death game series to laugh at. This manga is the crystallized form of a person's inner negativity and ugliness towards the world, technology, younger people, school, and there is absolutely no purpose behind any of it other than just for the sake of negativity.
Which perhaps on its own, I could be fine with dismissing. You wanted to do an overly negative series, you wanted to do a series that was only depressing, fine. Fine! But that's not what's happening here. After all the awfulness and just... horrible shit in this manga, on top of this stupid ass muddled death game angle, they actually tried to hastily vomit a positive spin they could attach to this and even after that...
This series genuinely makes me feel sick to my stomach.
I feel nothing but hatred for all those involved. There is absolutely no silver lining anywhere beyond the fact that after I post this review, I will never think of this series ever again throughout the rest of my life.
But for the time being, I'll fight negativity with more negativity. So if you choose to continue reading this review beyond this point, I would advise you to brace yourself in more ways than one.
There's going to be a lot of unpleasantness.
#Introduction and Death Games#
Ikenie Touhyou is a manga drawn by Edogawa Edogawa and the story is by Ryuuya Kasai. I'm unsure if the manga is actually the original, as it may very well be like Ousama Game and be a cell phone novel that for some reason was adapted into a manga. And then at some point in the manga's publication, it also received a light novel...
And I just can't help but notice that the characters on that light novel cover look infinitely preferable to the way the characters look drawn by Edogawa Edogawa. But then I immediately think of the bee mascot and everything that happens in this manga and think maybe the ugly characters fit better.
~~Also while the characters may look 200% more appealing, you would also have to read this series in novel form.~~
So, Ikenie Touhyou is a death game series. I am by no means an expert on these as including this, I've unfortunately been exposed to a grand total of two. But there's something immediate you can take away from just seeing the words "DEATH GAME."
There's going to be a game and the consequences for losing the game are going to be death, right? A bunch of death game series are unfortunately shoved into the horror genre, but Ikenie Touhyou fortunately isn't one of those. Still, just because it's not considered horror doesn't mean there's not gonna be any death, right?
I think there's maybe like two. The one above is of course completely unrelated to Sacrificial Vote. ~~If she had just remembered to look both ways before crossing the street, she would have been fine.~~ Not counting the suicides that caused both rounds of Sacrificial Vote in the first place.
No, rather than actual deaths which I would be way more worried about, the death Ikenie-kun usually deals in is "social" death. When somebody is voted for or when Ikenie just fucking feels like it, he'll reveal the voted for person's darkest secret to everybody else in the class. And... really, that's it. Something awful is revealed about you. There's no guarantee that you have to freak the fuck out about it or have a psychological breakdown, as one character eventually reveals in the latter half of the manga.
So the few amount of actual deaths feel pretty shoehorned in or just completely unnecessary. And the social deaths just make you feel disgusted. Not at the social deaths themselves, but the fact that you're actually reading this manga. Like okay sure, this student who's being Mr. Positive and trying to lead the class through Sacrificial Vote immediately gets a social death and of course it's his mother celebrating his birthday and then proceeding to insert a CENSORED into his CENSORED and it's like...
Like immediately he's gone. And that's like how 90% of the social deaths are handled. Something fucking horrible about this character is shown and then bam, immediately removed from the manga.
I mean, am I understating the horror behind the idea of something that horrible you've kept secret just suddenly being revealed online to basically everyone you know? Sure.
But couldn't the students have just been killed instead? Like. Rather than Sacrificial Vote, DEATH VOTE. You get voted for and bam, the bee becomes real and flies out of your phone and immediately pierces your brain with a giant bee stinger.
~~Ikenie-kun isn't even a fucking bee at all. That's just how he exists in my brain because of I guess just his striped shirt but I'm just gonna keep referring to him as a bee because what the hell else would I call this fucked up creature???~~
It'd still be stupid as all hell ~~and admittedly less interesting~~, but at least I wouldn't have to feel like I need to take a goddamned shower after reading it and/or I could laugh at it rather than feel seething hatred.
Anyways, that's enough about the social deaths for right now. What about the "game" aspect? Well, you would think like voting is pretty cut and dried. Except no, if it was just a ballot every single time, the manga would be pretty boring right? After all, there can't be any tension whatsoever if like the moment everybody votes the result is 100% decided.
This whole voting app bullshit thing was supposed to be revenge for the dead teacher but oh I don't know, if you tap on my side project clicker game site a preposterous amount of times, then I'll just cast the results of the vote aside. Because fuck it.
Alternatively, you can just get stabbed and that'll get you a free pass for the round.
Oh hey, did you change to a new phone to try and escape the app? Well fuck you, you get a social death RIGHT NOW.
"oh look at the time, it's time to give out the resul--GOTCHA! EVEN THOUGH IT WAS THE MOST PREDICTABLE THING IN THE WORLD, I'M GONNA DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT THIS TIME! CAUSE FUCK IT!"
~~And also every single time the manga tries to make it seem like "OH THIS PERSON IS TOTALLY GONNA BE VOTED FOR", it's always someone else. It can't ever be surprising if you just KEEP DOING IT.~~
You know, it's funny. There's actually two different Ikenie-kun's and the one in the latter half of the manga seems to share his predecessor's cavalier attitude about shaking things up. And I mean sure there's actually a plot reason for it, but like... just starting Sacrificial Vote up again, and then immediately punishing the one person who decided to vote...
Like the whole thing is supposed to be the voting. It's the "game" aspect of this fucking death game manga, and it's just completely fucked. When you try and set shit like this up and then decide to not have stable rules, it just becomes a bunch of complete and utter nonsense.
Neo-Ikenie literally misses doing the Sacrificial Vote results one day and fucking apologizes to everyone just so he can fucking go "HA, PRANKED YA! OF COURSE I'M GONNA GIVE THE RESULTS BUT I'M GONNA DO IT TOMORROW! GOTTA DRAG THIS SHIT OUT AS LONG AS POSSIBLE YOU FUCKS."
...Why am I still fucking talking about this stuff? This is not what is important about this manga. What is important is that
#LIFE IS SHIT.#
That, is the crowning message that this series wants to get across to you. There is no fucking light at the end of the tunnel.
Every fucking single person around you in your classroom or at your job has some fucking horrible dark secret no matter how fucking large of a smile they have on their face. Like really, every single goddamned student in these classes are just having sex with teachers, driving people to suicide, they're extorting each other for sex, killing cats for fun, being defecated upon, and so forth.
And those kids and their goddamned smartphones and that fucking internet nonsense. They're recording everything with those fucking phones.
Every single detail of your private life and every single secret? It's in the data of a smartphone just waiting to be uploaded to the internet and then all your friends and family members will swoop down on that shit and throw you to the goddamned wolves.
No loyalty! No human decency! The cherry on top of the shit sundae of this manga is that once you finished reading the series to the point where it should have logically concluded, it restarts.
But not only does it restart, everything is just opposite. Rather than a teacher being driven insane and to suicide by her students, a student is driven to suicide and the teachers not only don't give a shit but they try and cover her suicide up. Like no matter how different the social deaths are and shit it's literally the exact same bullshit.
The conclusion to the first half would have been a fine conclusion to the manga as a whole. Everybody of these shitfucks that are still around gets their secrets put on the internet, and main girl forces the culprit behind Ikenie-kun to not commit suicide and instead live the rest of her life in prison.
Instead, main girl becomes a teacher and life's good and oh no there's Ikenie-kun again.
What's her solution this time as Sacrificial Vote 2.0 just completely fucking falls off the rails and like a fucking civil war between students and teachers erupts?
Main girl eventually says "okay fuck it. The only conclusion I can think of is I guess me quitting? Like the entire fucking class was in on this shit this time, so fuck it. I'M OUT."
~~Don't you get it??? She was the Sacrificial Vote all alooooooooooooooooooooong. She sacrificed her job and everything became good again yay what a satisfying ending~~
And you know what? She was right. So much so that's exactly how I'm ending this review. Fuck this shitty ass goddamned garbage series. Like I essentially said at the start of this review, if it was just the desire to draw high schoolers being horrible to each other and having sex with teachers and extorting and blackmailing each other... or just the desire to make a generally horrifically pessimistic and downer series, fine. I mean, it'd still be a terrible series, but FINE.
But you're gonna fucking try at the very last second to put a happy ending spin on this nonsense?
Fuck offfffffffffffffffffffffffff.
And the fucking post-credits stinger scene with a giant Ikenie-kun 3.0 showing up on the side of a skyscraper about to start a nationwide round of Sacrificial Vote was fucking the absolute most pathetic thing in this entire goddamned series.
Like what the fuck was that? Was there actually a third part where the entire nation takes part planned but it got axed??? Like Ikenie-kun isn't an actual deity or being. It's just a program that was created by one singular person. Then the second one was made by the second class? So who made the third one? Why did they want to take revenge on all of Japan? What???
...
...Okay no yeah fuck this, a 1 out of 100. I don't recommend it. Even for ~~fellow~~ masochists, no. Don't do this. Don't do this to yourself. It's not worth it...
