LOL OMG ROFLMFAO I'M A TEENAGER, BULLYING IS SO FUN HAHA wait is that a detonator--
Kyoushitsu Jibaku Club is a death game manga by Aoisei (story) and Anajiro (art).
~~LAST MINUTE EDIT: Except it's not really a death game as technically there's no actual game being played here, but honestly, it shares so many familiar trademarks of those series I'm personally gonna keep considering this as a death game manga.~~
The english translation of the title is something like Suicide Bombing Club. Upon stumbling upon this series in the wild and seeing that cover and title... I knew this was going to be something. I knew it was going to be a doozy of a death game.
"Suicide Boming Club? Are you serious?"
Unfortunately, I was disappointed. Don't get me wrong. It is in fact a death game about suicide bombs and yes it is indeed quite awful as I expected. But... when I first saw the volume cover and the translated title, a completely different series materialized within my head. A manga about a club of highschoolers tinkering around and building explosive devices… and then putting their creations to the test the only way they could.
By blowing up their classmates.
But instead, it’s of course just your typical death game affair but centered around suicide bombing. Rather than a phone app or a spooky ghost, it’s mostly just a girl who has a suicide bomb that’s gonna fucking blow all the characters to hell if they step out of line or don’t follow her orders.
It almost feels like I’m just dismissing this as just another typical bad death game, but I want to stress to you, that it isn’t. As a matter of fact, I feel genuine hatred toward this one. Because while an annoying amount of death games seem to be centered around high schoolers in a classroom, this one’s key topic is bullying.
I’ve seen the bullying thing done a lot in various horror series. And it’s usually always done as edgy and over the top as possible… but I don’t think any of those series made me angrier with that shit than this one did. I’m just going to go ahead and say right now that beyond this point, I’m going to spoil the plot of the manga. I would very much not recommend reading this series at all if you’re looking for an entertaining death game and I mean that in both a good and bad sense. If you're a masochist, though? Then yeah, recommended. Five star experience.
So okay, with that out of the way, the overall moral of this story that this manga tells is…
The way to defeat bullies is to suicide bomb them. Because at the end of the manga, all the bullies of the world are like “oh shit, we better not bully this nerd or they might fucking kamikaze our ass.”
Trying to like… morally rationalize something in a death game is a fucking foolish idea in the first place, I don’t deny that. I mean this fucking series is about suicide bombs for christ sake. But still, I could not manage to turn off my brain before trying to process how goddamned awful of a message that is to send.
The only way to stop bullying? Kill the bullies until they are afraid! Kid who was nice to me? Better not come to school tomorrow, because I’m bringing C-4.
But to be somewhat fair, in this death game’s universe, bullies are way way more evolved than any bullies I ever knew when I was in school.
“God DAMN IT. This girl hasn’t killed herself yet! We have to step up our game! Let’s go slit her dog's throat, and leave it on her doorstep!!!”
I mean when your bullies are this ramped up, I can’t even take it seriously. I’m not denying that bullying can’t get pretty bad, but jesus christ. Going to murder a girl’s dog and leaving its corpse at her door specifically to try and drive her to suicide is… if that isn’t considered comically extreme, then nothing is. But alas, I guess that just goes to show I do in fact still possess a little bit of hope for the human race if I actually go “well, but are there really bullies out there that are THAT bad?”
Like we’re not talking about putting tacks in her shoes, carving obscenities onto her school desk, we are talking about slitting her dog's throat.
I can’t honestly think of something someone could do that would drive me to such actions, and this is just teenagers essentially going “let’s bully this girl cause why not.”
Ugh… anyways...
This manga then proceeds to show that it’s on nobody’s side as the bullied girl who’s holding the class hostage has multiple students throughout the series strip. ~~The purpose of doing so is because the death game needed nudity.~~ The first time was she was making a couple tell the others secrets about each other to presumably destroy their relationship. ~~And to include nudity in the manga.~~ Eventually most of the class have stripped ~~because including nudity is very important.~~ See, this is very important for the bullied girl to actually succeed in feeling that she's taken revenge and...
...
I fucking hate death games. Because of course that isn't even as bad as it gets. After one of them tries to cut her, she then just floats out the offer of "if you have sex with the most popular girl and successfully ejaculate, I'll just let you leave" and of course one of the bullies immediately takes her up on the offer and immediately starts raping the popular girl.............................
...
...Anyways, at the end of this living nightmare, the post-credits stinger is like there was a fucking organization behind it all, giving bullying victims suicide bombs, and they’re marveling about how they’ve actually put an end to bullying and they’re fucking annoyed about it because now they can’t have high school students suicide bomb classrooms anymore. But then like the leader of the organization tells them to calm down because humanity is so fucking awful that the bullies will eventually start bullying anyways DESPITE all of the suicide bombings.
...It’s just hate. All the way down, it’s just hate. All I have for this death game is hate. I hate its take on bullying. I hate how horribly typical of just another death game it proved to be. I think like in the early chapters suicide bomb girl even had like a website or phone app where the students vote who they think deserves to be suicide bombed the most and of course, they only use it a SINGLE time.
I hate how they felt the need to bring up
Spoiler, click to view
the 9/11 attacks so flippantly at the very end of the manga that I had to read back and make sure that they did in fact bring it up and I wasn’t experiencing a fever dream.
I've opted not to include the whole thing for... obvious reasons, but it's straight up a panel of the Twin Towers and a close up of Osama Bin Laden's face. And then she just immediately goes back into talking about the bullying of this series and the transition is about as seamless as a dropkick to the face.
But most of all, I hate that I can’t even say that it's the worst death game I’ve read. ~~That being said, the only parts of value are the gore and/or explosions.~~ Though believe me, I have a special place in my heart for it for sure. Kyoshitsu Jibaku Club is a 5 out of 100.
