Creative Staff
Story/Art: Yoshiki Tonogai
Translation: Alexis Eckerman
What They Say
“You are not the only ones playing this game.”
Do clues discovered in a new room herald nothing more than a new despair? Soon the brutal sentencing of the third Judgment is visited upon the participants. Who here is the victim, and who the perpetrator? Until all is revealed, time is on no one’s side…
Content:(please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The second Judgement didn’t go the way Hiro had planned. Even if the reader knew it wouldn’t, Hiro and his fellow group members were convinced the Lawyer’s group were going to play ball. Nope. Backroom dealings between smaller sub-groups and a double-agent mentality, makes it impossible to tell where the chips are going to fall when the Judgement vote is cast. Thus, one of Hiro’s group falls, and now both groups have three members.
Now that both groups are the same size, they can’t over power each other in the next vote with sheer numbers alone. Now, they will have to find a way out of their prison or ramp up the conniving to see who will be next to die. Complicating everything is the emergence of a gun, found by the least stable guy in the group. He quickly points it at anyone that looks at him funny. Also, Hiro’s group finds a cell phone on the last guy that died. They decide its best to keep this secret and not let anyone in the Lawyer’s group know about the phone.
Hiro always seems to find himself in awkward positions. First he stumbles upon one of the girls chowing down on a big stash of food, while everyone else is starving. He has to decide whether to hide her secret or tell everyone what she did, which would probably be her death sentence in the next Judgement vote.
Then Hiro finds a secret door that leads to a room full of television monitors with feeds from hidden security cameras. At first, everyone believes the cameras were aimed at them, and some sick person had been watching them. However, after watching the screens for some time, they realize that the cameras are watching a different group of people wearing animal heads! That means there is a second Judgment game going on somewhere and they are just starting out.
Hiro’s group doesn’t have time to think about the other Judgment game. Their own Judgment vote is due. Even though the vote should have fell on the guy with the gun, it somehow comes up a tie between him and Hiro! That means that someone from Hiro’s own group voted for him, but who? Since it was a tie, the game master speaks through the doll in the courtroom and informs everyone that before the next Judgment vote, the two with the tie vote have to fight to the death! How is Hiro going to fight a guy brandishing a gun?!
In Summary:
Hiro seems obsessed with taking the difficult road in this game for survival. He wants everyone to survive, which puts him in positions where he can draw the ire of others; ultimately making him a target. This is all a great aspect to this series because it makes the reader ask themselves if they would do the right thing. This becomes even more of a loaded question when there is usually an easier way out with a higher survival rate.
Now that Hiro has been betrayed in this latest Judgement vote, will he continue to try and save everyone? He has been close to getting voted off the island a couple times now, so maybe he will wise up and try to take a lower profile? Nah, not this guy. I look forward to seeing how the other group of people playing a separate Judge game are going to relate to this story’s main characters.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: June 24th, 2014
MSRP: $12.99
