As the Gods Will: The Second Series

redmind Sep 16, 2017

8

Follow up to Kamisama no Iutoori (As the Gods Will) following the students that missed the appearence of the Durama doll in class rooms all over Japan. We follow Yasuto Akahashi who skipped that fateful day of school. Given a second chance to participate in the games, he agrees in order to see his friend Senichi Aoyama who's competing in the first series of games. The second series gives us more life and death games, where high schoolers have to fight for their right to continue to the next round. The manga contains a number of topics such as friendship, love and self-sacrifice, but also deals with the loneliness and finding a place where you belong. It's easy to get swept up in the overal story and cheer on for the main characters as they struggle to live through so many death and pain. The characters are relatable and even though the manga introduces a lot of them throughout the story, most give you a feeling of being more than just cannon fodder. You learn their pasts, their hopes and dreams. I would recommend this manga to everyone that likes absurd high stake games, survival and the occasional over-the-top bromance 

NormalHumanBeing May 28, 2023

7

This story follows the first part, but this time with different characters. First of all, this was quite disappointing, because I had slowly grown fond of the characters of the first part and especially wanted to know what would happen to them. By the way, you can read the second part on its own, but I would highly recommend reading the first part first. Story: The characters have to face one death game after another. The author has implemented this very creatively and ingeniously. However, there are also games that are sometimes less successful, either because they are a bit bizarre or because the author has not fully exhausted their possibilities. Fortunately, I liked one of the last games particularly well (The penultimate, with the grimaces :D), which then left a good aftertaste for the story as a whole. Art: Initially, the drawing style is not particularly outstanding, but definitely not bad either. However, it improves over the course of the story more and more, at the end you really can not complain. Characters: Due to the nature of this manga die from time to time characters and there are always new ones, but with many you have neither time to really love them, nor really mourn them. With the important characters it is noticeable that the author has used the same role distribution as in the first part (The typical MC, the obsessive maniac, the waifu, ...), so that the characters first only seem like knock-offs. With time, however, they get more peculiarities. In the end, I still didn't like the MC as much as the one from the first part, but I could grow fond of the second maniac.It must be said, however, that this story is not particularly profound. The characters act and feel more in typical shounen manner, and therefore seem rather weird and emotionally superficial - if you consider the damn terrible situation in which they are stuck! The girls in this story also tend to be strange - many typical waifus, characterized mainly by their affection for some guy. All in all, this manga has been fun. You definitely couldn't tell what would happen next and who would survive the next chapter. And as someone who enjoys death game stories anyway, this one was truly no mistake. My new favorite story, however, this is not.