King's Game

Alt title: Ousama Game

TV (12 eps)
2017
Fall 2017
2.649 out of 5 from 5,472 votes
Rank #17,398
King's Game

Kanazawa Nobuaki has transferred to a high school far from where he used to live. Due to an incident at his old school, Nobuaki is afraid of getting close to his new classmates and keeps himself at a distance, but he starts opening up because of a sports day inter-class relay. Then, a single text message from someone calling themselves the "King" is sent to everyone in class. Nobuaki’s classmates think it's a simple prank, and don't take it seriously but Nobuaki knows that a death game is about to begin, and struggles to oppose it...

Source: Crunchyroll

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Reviews

Rascal
1

*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.

tollie01
2

First some items I need to adress. I'm Dutch to expect some spelling errors, if they are to annoying just message me and I'll fix it. My opinion may vary from others and this is fine. People are different so there is a good chance that I will not like what you love. Deal with it. I'm not telling you that you should hate it too, I'm telling you why I didn't like it. I'll try to keep swearing to a minimum but fail utterly on occasion. In general it is the more the anime pisses me off the more I swear so watch out for the low scored ones. Art: Art is fine, it does what it needs to do and that is to show a visual story. It is not too bad but not great either. No real complaints except for the odd additions of censure where a black blob is blocking the view. Sound: No real complaints actually, it's pretty ok. Voice actors are good and I don't remember any music either. This is how I generally prefer my anime. Characters: The main character is Nobuaki. He is a former survivor of the game and this time he wants to save as many classmates as possible. Natsuko is the popular girl in class who manages to bring Nobuaki out of his shell. Story. After transferring to a new class, Nobuaki, wants nothing more than to be left alone. Then, just as he starts to open up to his classmates, the king's game starts again. Everyone in class gets a message on their phone, giving them an order. Those who fail to complete the order within 24 hours will be punished. As Nobuaki scrambles to save his classmates the death toll starts to climb slowly but surely. Things look hopeless but with every death a clue appears that may prove a way out. Rant. This anime was bad. Extremely bad. The animation was pretty decent actually but the story and characters were so bad that watching it became a real chore. There are anime that are so bad that they become fun but this one isn't one of those. It is very hard to get into an anime and feel for the characters when there is so much stupidity on your screen. I must admit that the gore factor is decent with some over the top death scenes but even that was lost when they started to censure some things. As mentioned the characters were bad. Basically nobody stayed true to character and kept doing things contradicting what we knew of them. The story isn't helped by the fact that they try to cram 2 games in this anime. There is the current one and a number of episodes are dedicated to the game that Nobuaki survived. It adds a bucket load of characters, most of whom die in seconds, and shows the complete lack of character concistency in Nobuaki. Some things could have been easily fixed by simply switching things around a bit. In both games a female character is ordered to sleep with one of the other students. The first time it is introduced is in the second episode when Natsuko is ordered to have sex with someone and she refuses. Nobuaki steps in and offers his help by forcing her to comply (our hero). Natsuki, understandibly, freaks out and gets pissed. Next thing we know she flips her inner bitch switch and goes completely phycho. She all but starts to rape the poor guy she is supposed to fuck and Nobuaki also flips a switch and turns into a complete pussy. He goes from forcing her to trying to stop her and I'm left wondering why as it is a 180° turn from just a few seconds ago. In the next episode we learn that this happened before. His best friend got trapped with an order to have sex within a very short timeframe and Nobuaki responds by punching him out and then forcing his girlfriend to rape his unconscious friend. If you want the drama with this subject then the way to go is to switch it around. First show what he did in the past and show how he struggled with it. Then have the Natsuko situation and have him realise that what he is doing is all kinds of fucked up. This way would have slightly redeemed the character of Nobuaki instead of completely destroying it like now happened. Natsuko flips the phycho switch way to soon. She flips in the second episode and goes full phycho in such a way that other phychpath will run away in terror when she approaches. The thing is that it takes away all the suspence and makes you wonder why the other students still believe her at times. Where are all the adults? Their class is one of 32 students and in the second day of the game 10 students die. Where are their parents? Where are the teachers? Where is the police? You won't find any in this anime. You want to fix it somewhat? Have the king order them to leave home and stay away from the police....there. Fixed your anime some more. This is bad, very bad. If you want anime with gore then go watch Future Diary or Another.

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