I'm not new to the death game genre. I'm not exactly an expert, persay, but I've enjoyed a fair number of works (ex: Mirai Nikki, Danganronpa, etc.). Generally, my opinion of death game media is that there needs to be a certain disconnect from why you're reading/watching the media and why the author wrote it. More often than not, the gore-filled, society-questioning nature of this genre means that it attracts a fair number of fetishists who use the unlimited potential of isolation and human fear to go absolutely nuts about how they sexualize teenage girls.

Just kidding! Or maybe I'm not. I'm sure there's plenty of people who read death game series knowing full well that some of the scenes are going to be borderline H (I'm looking at you, Super Danganronpa 2). Personally, I accept that my interest in the exploration of human psychology is often going to be put aside because of the author's need for graphic fetishized body horror.

Jinrou Game contains plenty of sexualized gore. Surprisingly, none of it makes up the story—the artist interlaces the pages with various artworks that almost resemble pin-ups. A character with a wolf coming out of their chest. Two girls back-to-back with flowers growing from all over their bodies. It's an interesting touch, because whenever I see it, I'm reminded of why I've always treated this genre like a trashy bit of fun. It's hard to take something seriously when you know the morally ambigious nature of the work provides an outlet for sexual frustration. It's not something I necessarily blame, but it is something I hold against the genre as lacking taste.

That's where Jinrou Game comes into play. First, it delivers a female protagonist, one that is immediately interesting and hard to take your eyes off. The other is a genuine look into the psychosis behind an isolated death game with only the players to fend for themselves.

For the life of me, I cannot recall a single moment of trashy fanservice in this manga. The story was engrossing from start-to-finish, providing new twists and turns at every opportunity. I was surprised more often than not at the choices made. The gore is fittingly horrific, though the artist seems to have a slight problem with drawing blood. The plot ends with a twist that brilliantly sets up the sequel (which I also finished all in one night).

The strengths of this manga include the tone and characterization. Death game media with teenage characters often have a hard time selling brutality—even in a setting where desperation can drive someone to terrible lengths, authors often struggle with writing characters both as teenagers and as brutal psychopaths. It requires an enormous suspension of disbelief to accept that a regular high schooler would bludgeon someone to death without a mental break that changes their moral boundaries. This manga does a good job of making the readers feel bad for the characters while also simultaneously feeling deep down that some of them are guilty and deserve to die. A lot of the characters do horrible, horrible things—and while I felt in my gut that it was wrong of them to die (over something like shoplifting especially), I could feel myself subconsciously agreeing with the decision made by the main cast.

One neat aspect of Jinrou Game is that the executions that take place in the death game must be done by the participants themselves. This is unique from every other death game media that I have encountered, and was one of the most exciting things about the story. Remember when I was discussing my problems with teenagers in death game media? Well, Jinrou Game takes that irritation I had and introduces a desperation that benefits the narrative greatly. It is impossible to understand how powerless the participants of a death game are until they are forced to spill blood with their own hands. In other death game media, the execution of the loser is out of the participants' hands—the regulators of the death game orchestrate eye-catching deaths intended to be flashy, but nothing much more. Handing over the responsibility of execution to the participants is brilliant—solving the problem of unbelievable bloodlust from teenagers and introducing a new psychological horror. The level of brutality is now up to the cast, most of whom are first-time killers. Not all of them will directly take someone's life, but all of them will have blood on their hands. They selected the person they wanted to die. Now they have to bear the responsibility of taking that life.

It turns out, teenagers are clumsy murderers. Sometimes a first-time killer accidentally kills two people when they meant to kill one! That might have been a spoiler, but oh well. By positioning the cast as rightfully inexperienced, and correctly maintaining both a good amount of both passive victims and opportunistic manipulators, the story succeeds at the high-schoolers-in-a-death-game-scenario. There's a learning curve—the characters lose all pretense of going back to their normal lives after a while, and you start to see sides to people who were once "good" that you would have never seen from them otherwise. After a while, the reactions to deaths turn from "why does someone have to die" to "thank god it wasn't me".

The hands-on approach really makes a difference. Every choice is so calculated. There are some plot elements that are fairly obvious if you've enjoyed other death game media, but there's enough that you don't know about the cast that there is a plausible fear hanging over the narrative. It helps that it becomes increasingly obvious that our protagonist isn't a great human being. The learning curve applies to her as well—at one point, she didn't want anyone to die. She just wanted to go back home and return to a normal life. And then after a certain point, she starts to think: someone must die, and I have to make sure it's not me. That change in perspective alone is what makes Jinrou Game worth an evening of one's time.