Ousama Game was a cell phone novel series written by Nobuaki Kanazawa. ~~Yes, he named the main protagonist after himself.~~ Since the original novels, they’ve received multiple adaptations. A live-action movie, various manga adaptations, and even an anime adaptation.

~~Imagine writing a trashy novel about highschoolers being forced to kill each other and perform various sexual shenanigans in your free time and that novel series leading to all this shit.~~

We’re here today to talk about the manga adaptation of the first Ousama Game.

~~The first to be written, not the first chronolog… oh you know what I mean.~~

But I did also review the anime a few years ago. It was not only my introduction to Ousama Game but death game series in general. While I was incredibly negative towards it, I thought I was also quite positive towards it. Apart from the handful of parts where the show was just absolutely miserable, it was also really really really funny.

And the manga adaptation of the first Ousama Game done by Hitori Renda which was partially adapted by the anime is… a goddamned riot. I could not stop laughing at this and I say that as respectfully as I possibly can.

#Also uh, obvious gore warning. But pretty much none of it is disturbing. Still, if you don't like gore... Ousama Game's not the manga for you. Since it's almost entirely characters exploding into blood. Oh, and I'm also just gonna drop a general spoiler warning but this is not the sort of manga you read for the plot.#

Now, with that out of the way... back to our regularly scheduled programming!

#Pure Comedy#

I mean, am I the bad guy here?

It’s hard to say this without sounding like I’m insulting Hitori Renda but… the art style just turns the events of the first Ousama Game into pure comedy.

When the anime staff included some of the events of this manga into the anime which the main character thinks back to while going through the events of the second Ousama Game manga, they obviously stuck with the art style of the second manga which is a lot less… over the top.

Which could be considered a positive or a negative depending on where you’re standing. After all, you could say the art of the original manga is fitting given how absolutely over the top Ousama Game is. But when something is TOO over the top…

You just can’t take it seriously. No matter how hard you try. You have characters exploding into blood, screaming and yelling at each other, and just generally saying the most outrageous shit. Between the ridiculous accusations, the absolutely godawful commands and rules set out by the Ousama, and the goddamned facial expressions that pretty much accompanied every single line of dialogue…

My brain just clicked off. And when that happened, there was no going back. "I’m just going to read the rest of this and laugh." And laugh I did, because one of the most important characters… like she had this whole tragic backstory added onto her character in the anime and in the manga she’s just a god at gaming.

A gamer god, if you will.

At that part of the manga, I just lost it. Who else better to defeat the Ousama Game than a god gamer? Can't possibly argue with that logic whatsoever. And because she's a god gamer, she's also an expert hacker.

~~It's a well known fact that if you're a video game player you also dabble in the artistry of hacking. I mean, how do you think she became so good in the first place?~~

Like her role in the Ousama Game is basically just to stir up shit, provide misdirection, and also fuck with the protagonist for absolutely no reason rather than try and cooperate with him. Which to be fair to her, the protagonist is...

...a idiot. A complete fucking idiot. In the anime I hated his guts and in the manga I still hate his guts but he’s way less insufferable and just plain hilarious. The way the anime like cuts bits of the first Ousama Game up, like I thought maybe there was more development for him but… he really does suddenly just become Mr. I HAVE TO SAVE ABSOLUTELY EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THIS CLASS and nothing is more funny in a death game than the concept of that character.

Like both “antagonists” of both Ousama Games have a big moment where like they point out his flaws and in both instances, they’re completely correct.

He’s so set on saving everyone that basically ends up saving no one. He tries so hard to just try and get the class to work together and it fails and gets thrown into his face each and every time. At one point one of the people he tries to save basically accuses him of being the Ousama himself because he was the first to buy into the line of thought that the Ousama Game actually was real and what was caused the first deaths.

And like the way he reacts, it’s like he’s stunned because he’s actually considering the possibility of her accusation being right.

How am I supposed to root for this character? He was so goddamned convinced of the Ousama Game being real that when his best friend got the order to have sex or be punished, he beat him unconscious and begged his girlfriend to rape him. ~~The best friend was very much unwilling.~~

...But no, he’s gonna give this stupid ass look the moment what essentially is a random side character questions his resolve.

"oh well no when you put it that way you might have a poin--wait no what"

...Oh yeah, there's also the portion where like the Ousama sends out a stupidly vague command which was something along the lines of "don't do anything unnecessary" which in fact was riddlespeak for "don't cry." So like any characters who cried would just immediately get punished to death and since there were characters already dying from the normal commands, the friends of those that would cry and thus die, making it this stupid chain reaction of death.

And we basically just get to watch the protagonist and his best friend just freak the fuck out every time their phones get a message. It's just another one of those things that in theory really shouldn't be funny but I was just cracking up. Because of all the commands of the various Ousama Game series, I think that has to be one of the most absolute idiotic.

Like I get that the Ousama itself is some stupid omniscient invisible force just walking around ripping characters' limbs off that fail to comply with the commands so to it, crying probably IS something unnecessary.

One of the layers of the comedy is I'm not sure if the artist is self aware. Like does he know this is funny or does he genuinely think he's working on a serious and dark horror manga? I want to think he's self aware but then I read the first chapter of his other manga ages ago and it just immediately starts with a giraffe biting the hell out of a person's head (???).

But all I could see this as was the author trying to find a way to thin the numbers of surviving characters even faster than he already was. Which... if your series is centered around characters dying... I mean I would imagine you'd want to avoid your deaths just being cheap or just happening off panel.

I mean, does it really have to be the whole class that's playing the Ousama Game? Well... actually, I guess it does have to be the whole class.

Because if it isn't, you can't include that typical death game page where it's like the whole class roster with all of the characters' faces and names that just steadily get more and more crossed off as the series proceeds...

But it doesn't matter. We all know most of the class is going to end up dying. Be lucky if even a single soul beyond the protagonist doesn't perish because the rest of them just don't matter. None of them matter.

Nothing Matters

...Kinda went off on a weird tangent there at the end, but uh... right. The conclusion. Yes.

Overall, the manga adaptation is as sufficiently as trashy as the anime adaptation, but Hitori Renda's artstyle just adds that extra oomph. The sections of the first Ousama Game in the anime in my opinion were some of the absolute worst chunks as far as the anime goes, and yet I just ate this shit up this time around. I definitely don't think it was intended for me to laughing pretty much through 80% of it, but hey, if you put your work out there, there's no controlling how people are gonna end up seeing it...

The Ousama Game manga is definitely one of the more enjoyable death game experiences I've had so I'll give it a 3 out of 10. You might be tempted to point out that this is in fact a lower score than I gave the anime, but may I remind you it was the second manga that