It’s been a long time since I’ve watched any live-action; I think the last one I saw was the hokey yet fun Hana Yori Dango. This time around, I was looking for something leaning more towards suspense, so I marathoned Liar Game (based on the manga of the same name). The story centers around Kanzaki Nao, a super-honest girl who gets caught up in a series of increasingly risky deception games run by a mysterious organization. In order to survive in the Liar Game, she enlists the help of a genius ex-con man, Shinichi Akiyama.
The show is filled with elaborate schemes centering around game theory, so anyone who enjoyed Death Note or the exam arc of Hunter X Hunter will probably get a kick out of this series. The Survivor-style mind games made for plenty of tense drama and shifting alliances between the various players, who are all heavily saddled with debt and desperate to win. Naturally, the plot twists are incredible yet highly improbable, especially towards the end when the masterminds begin pulling some crazy comebacks out of left field. Most of these later twists depended heavily on constant double-crossing, which became a bit stale after awhile.
Personally, I felt the manga version captures the sense of paranoia and sinister vibes better than the live action version, which sports extremely campy overacting and exceedingly garish stage sets. At times the color overload ruined the atmosphere, making everything feel like a cheesy game show compared to the Death Note anime, which skillfully uses a dark color scheme to maximum effect. Still, I found the series to be enjoyable overall, and would definitely recommend it to fans of the genre.
Ender’s Score: 4/5 Paranoid Slugs
3 Comments
The third round was somewhat disappointing because Yokoya never really seemed like a real threat. I agree that the set (and Fukunaga’s wardrobe) were terribly distracting.
Yup, I found the third round to be inferior as well, since most of the action seemed to rely on random surprises and rule-bending rather than logic and careful planning. Fukunaga’s haircut and clothes were soooo fugly…his manga counterpart wasn’t nearly as repulsive.
I watched up to episode 3 and got bored of this