Review:
As much as I like the concept of this show, there is one glaring issue that we keep coming back to. It isn’t that there are too many characters to really care about any of them or that their interactions are decidedly stupid. Anyone who watches a lot of horror will note these things but move on and just enjoy the show regardless. No, this show suffers from having started out wanting to tell us the story of Nobuaki, sole survivor of the previous King’s Game getting plunged into another one at his new school, but then apparently the show decided the previous game was more interesting and has spent longer in the past (where we already know who lives and dies) than in the present.
At episode 5, I know more names and personalities from the first class Nobuaki was in but I can’t get attached to anyone in these flash backs. Everyone but Nobuaki dies. We already know this. So I don’t feel worried for him either. And episode 5 shows nothing from the present. Every single moment is dealing with the former game.
While some of this teaches us how the game works, really, they could do the same thing to the current class (who I guess are still standing around in a field staring at each other while three of them take a train to a village given that’s where we left them one night in to the game before we ditched the present for the past). All and all, if the past is that fascinating and the present that boring that you aren’t even going to show it, why set the story up like this? By the time we flick back to the current class I won’t remember a single person from it or care about what happens to them.
By the way, I kind of think it sucks that the King is allowed to give ambiguous instructions and then punish a failure to follow. I don’t actually know how the game works yet, but there should be a rule that forces the King to clearly explain the expectation before he’s allowed to dismember people for failure to follow. So, if you are just in this to watch two casts of characters get terrorized and then killed, you will be thrilled. If you are wanting a decent story, this one hasn’t quite got there.
Thanks for reading.
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Thanks,
Karandi James.
When I watched this episode on friday I already thought: haha, I know what Karandi is going to write for this episode 😂 And I could not agree more. I really was looking forward to finding out more about the game and them finding out secrets in the village they were travelling to. But no, we had to spent the entire episode in the past. They should have made up their minds and started the series with the old game and not even bother introducing the current characters. It’a almost as if the writers know that the vast in the present time sucks, and the older characters are much more interesting. Oh well…I will still stick with it though…for some reason I still enjoy it enough 😀
I have to agree. It is terrible from any objective view point and yet I’m still kind of having fun even while I’m criticising it. Still, they really should have just shown us the old game.