*spoiler free review*
Cringe like your life depends on it
A few years ago a man had a thought: "I want to make a brilliant horror story, that will actually make you care about the characters and set up a great atmosphere that will truly scare the viewer and cause them to reflect on the world on a deep level. One with relatable characters that just seem so real, you could meet them in real life; then crush them spiritually and physically within the narrative to really make the viewer feel on a deep level the horror of the story, and a concept that seems feesable enough to terrify you at your very foundations."
That man tragically died late last night after researching bitcoin for so long he suffered from dehydration. God rest his soul.
Anyways a different dude did several boatloads of crack and then wrote Ousama Game and we have to fuckin deal with it.
The premise: A kid got into this death party once by mistake orchestrated by a mysteriously missing mofo called "the king" where you get text messages that say shit like "remove someone's balls and replace your eyes with them" and if you don't do it the king does something worse to you with his mind. Kid named Nobuaki ended up being the only one that survived, so he changed schools and then THAT school's students got into the swing of things with this game. That's the premise.
The story is shit. I've seen plenty of shit stories too, like REALLY shitty ones, but watching this story unfold might actually kill your brain cells. (Please note, Ousama Game is not a recreational drug and is illegal in all states.) That isn't to say the concept doesn't seem alright at first, but as the story *mythicalturkey vomits as he says this* unfolds it only gets stupider until it falls to seemingly unreachable levels.
As an anime horror story typically has, there's a school. Yes, the school has no authority figures for if something tragic happens, it only has about 24 fuckwit kids running about waiting to die and pretending they're not just simulations of real children being studied in a lab by severely out of touch robotics engineers - they're that unrealistic - so you know how this goes down. Kid is scared, kid is sad, person dies, deathbed monlogue. It goes on like that until the underlying mystery rears its deformed head and you get to the real juicy meat of the story- the "mYsTeRy." Let me just say if you don't look it up beforehand, you're going to feel like an idiot for not bailing when you had the chance. The payoff is that bad.
In between the overarching mystery are the most retarded deaths you've ever seen. Some people will randomly explode into blood which seems a bit harsh for someone that fell out a window 3 feet onto cement, someones head twists off like a helicoptor blade, ect. That of course comes as a result of not obeying the tweets the king sends you, which are even worse. Most of them are "have sex" because the king is just THAt type of guy. Either have sex or grope someone, or you die. I could go more in depth on how horrible and offensive the "games" are that the king orders, but I'm not going to for the sake of my mental health.
As I stated before, the characters aren't realistic. I've seen kebabs with more character and realistic qualities, and about half the impalement. MC barely does anything useful besides cry and look stupid, all the other people are useless as shit, and the Antagonist is one of the most unlikable tater tots i've ever had the displeasure of having on my kebab. Forget development, forget progression. These characters have none, and as per horror story bull, they also seem to have cattails for brains.
*head starts spinning*
Ousama Game also seems to know how bad its characters are because it seems to get most of them out of my face the second I become displeased with them, although not before running them through a blender slowly while looking me in the eyes and making obscene gestures at me.
Unfortunately no character knows how bad they are. Everyone seems to trust Nobuaki and Natsuko for some reason, even though one is clearly incompetent and a total wuss and the other acts like the only human contact they've ever had was being raised by a family of murderous clowns.
Doesn't help that they try and present them in situations that are supposed to be hard to solve, like, should we all glue our asses together like the message says or let someone die. I already don't care, King's Game, there's no way you can impress me with this scenario- but they always manage to do just that. Never thought they would come up with a resolution so incredibly stupid.
Plotholes. There are so many. Every episode has like five of them just waiting to be dug into.
And it doesn't even matter in the end because the show thinks it's so edgy, it tries to cut you on these themes of sexual abuse and domestic abuse even though the thing even presents them them in such a tasteless way it's hard to even sit through. I don't like the word cringe, but it aptly describes this.
The animation is very low quality. I could see myself enjoying it if I saw things at a lower framerate so that I couldn't catch all the mistakes, I guess, but that's about it. The sound design is meh, but over how bad this anime is I couldn't pay attention to it. The atmosphere of it is terrible. The characters are so hilariously bad it would never be believable anyways no matter how much they tried to set the tone. I was never scared at this horror experience, just grossed out by the choices they made in writing.
Overall ousama game is a terrible experience for anyone wanting to get into anime, anyone who likes good things or enjoying TV programs, or anyone with an IQ of any number that wants to keep it above zero.
Although I do reccomend eating an entire jar of last decade's mayonaisse. It goes down a lot easier.
Least favorite anime ever as of writing this review.