King’s Game The Animation (Review)
King’s Game Will Make You Glad No One Ever Texts You.
I’m a huge fan of the dark anime, The Future Diary. So, when I heard about the series King’s Game, it sounded like it would be right up my alley. The anime certainly starts off with a bang as it thrust unsuspecting teens into a deadly game of life and death with an unknown force and continues to build the stakes steadily over its short 12 episode run. However, halfway through, King’s Game starts to collapse under the weight of the dark tone it tries so hard to cultivate. What starts as a promising horror series ends up pushing things too far for its own good.
If there’s one thing that King’s Game proves it’s that schools in Japan are really messed up or at least that’s how they always seem to be portrayed in anime. This time around a class of students is forced to play a dark game where they’re sent anonymous texts with tasks to complete in 24 hours or they’ll be punished. Things start off simple enough for most students. Professing their love to their crushes, smooching, that sort of stuff. Things don’t stay cute for long though and soon the students find themselves with tasks that make them actually consider if completing them would be worse than any punishment they could ever endure.
I was hooked from the very first episode of King’s Game. The core concept is incredibly dark and director Noriyoshi Sasaki knows just how to get under the audience’s skin with the intensely graphic visuals. Luckily, Seven (the studio that animated King’s Game) is more than up to the task of bringing Sasaki’s horrifying vision to life and I have no issues with any aspect of the animation (other than some bland character designs). However, while things might seem effortless at first, the series establishes itself, it’s clear that writer Kenji Konuta isn’t cut out for the brutal premise of the anime. Instead of sticking to core themes and elements, Konuta bogs down King’s Game with leaps in logic and new elements that distract horribly from the overall story. This all stems from an attempt to explain what the King’s Game is and how it all works. Instead of simply sticking to the supernatural elements and leaving it all a mystery, the bumbling attempt to reveal secrets only manages to undermine the entire series.
King’s Game certainly deserves some props for its creativity. It manages to come up with some truly sick and grotesque situations for the students that would even make Jigsaw blush. One of the most memorable sequences is where students have to intentionally break their own fingers in a game to “win points” the student with the fewest points will suffer a terrible punishment. It’s these situations where the students are forced to struggle with not just morality but with having the fortitude to complete these tasks is where the series really shines. That’s because these moments are where the characters reveal who they are. While most of the students are appalled and horrified by the game, there are a certain few who will do whatever it takes to win, even if that means turning on their friends. As disturbing as so many of the tasks and repercussions are in King’s Game, it’s the darkness in some of these characters that prove to be the most gut-wrenching aspect of the series.
The main theme of King’s Game is very much reminiscent of the Saw franchise. It simply asks what we would be willing to do to survive. Would we embarrass ourselves? Forsake our honor? Hurt or maim ourselves? Turn on our closest friends? Kill innocent people? These are certainly heavy questions and ones that would ensure that King’s Game continues to haunt audiences long after the credits have rolled. But this is all undone as it tries to dig deeper than it needs to. By trying to be more of a psychological mystery than a series about survival, the heavy themes are shrugged off an tossed aside. The worst part is that it becomes very clear when King’s Game tries to switch things up and it’s a downward spiral from there. Sometimes the simplest stories are the most effective and King’s Game is overburdened by unnecessary aspirations.
Honestly, King’s Game is an anime I should be raving about. However, it slowly ensures that it never really gets a chance to stand out. There are anime out there with much smarter stories, much more gore, and much more interesting themes. Because of this, King’s Game stands firmly in the middle of the pack when it comes to the darker side of anime. For me, it’s one of the most disappointing series I’ve seen in a long time not because it’s awful, but because it starts with so much promise and potential and squanders it all before it even reaches the halfway point. Don’t get me wrong, it continued to give me sequences that made me gasp and cringe in the best possible ways. But King’s Game becomes a series with great moments, not a great anime overall.
