Author’s Note: This review contains spoilers for previous volumes of Tohyo Game.
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Only a few students remain in the twisted voting game, and the game’s votekeeper continues to successfully manipulate the classmates into reducing their own numbers. Shuusuke decides he would give his life to save Wakaba, but…
© G.O., CHIHIRO, Tatsuhiko/SQUARE ENIX
I’ve been waiting desperately for the conclusion to Tohyo Game for actual months. I’m an impatient person, and the cliffhanger at the end of Volume Two was almost too much for my heart to bear.
Anyone else who was anxiously waiting to find out why Shuusuke was the votekeeper of the previous game will find at least some level of satisfaction as detectives investigating the deaths at the school learn more about what’s going on — and what’s been going on — in the opening pages of the manga. After the Volume 2 cliffhanger, I almost flipped a table when the tension was resolved so easily, but that opened the door for the rest of the story.
There are a few issues I have with the final volume, and naturally the biggest issue is one I can’t mention in the body of the review due to pretty major spoilers.
I can, however, mention that one thing that slightly disappointed me about Volume 3 is the number of plot “twists” that feel contrived, which for me mainly occur at the start of the volume. It’s not who dies or how that’s troublesome, but rather the circumstances around the game itself that feel rather off, even as the game progresses to a twisted conclusion.
One thing I found interesting was that when I received this copy for review, it came shrink-wrapped. Neither of the previous copies had been, so I was surprised. I decided to follow up on this and checked my local Barnes & Noble — and I discovered that Volume 2 also comes in plastic wrap, while the first volume does not.
It was surprising for a number of reasons. The volumes all come with a content warning, and Volume 1 left a far more shocking impression of scenes of gore than the other two, so I wasn’t sure at first why the first volume didn’t come shrink-wrapped.
And then when I read Volume 3, I realized what made the first volume distinct: a lack of explicit sexual content.
While I’m probably not the best judge of what’s appropriate and what’s not, given my tastes in various things, it’s always seemed strange to me that violence is somehow considered more inappropriate than horrific acts of violence. The Tohyo Game series is fraught with violence, some of it truly horrifying — from train accidents to active murder — but the sex is what I’m supposed to protect my children from?
That was definitely something that affected my reading of the manga, and I was slightly annoyed about it as I read, though this is in no way the fault of the mangaka.
Despite my annoyances and misgivings, the third volume of Tohyo Game brings the series to a respectable conclusion in the veink of King’s Game: Origin. It’s an excellently twisty read for fans of death match anime and manga that leaves readers with an absolute chill.
Story: 3 out of 5 stars
Art: 4 out of 5 stars
Overall: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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Read our reviews of Volume 1 and Volume 2 now.
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