Darwin's Game

Darwin’s Game is one of those manga that involves people suddenly being given supernatural powers and then forced to duke it out. Darwin’s Game is a mysterious smartphone app that gives its users a supernatural ability known as a Sigil. They then fight each other for points that can be exchanged for cash and prizes. Battles can be initiated through simply running into another D-Game player and triggering a battle through the app, but there are also major events where players are mass teleported to a location and then given some sort of objective. The game is not purely a death game as it ispossible to lose without dying. However, the game does involve fighting with supernatural powers so deaths are pretty common. The protagonist, Kaname, has a Sigil that gives him the ability to summon anything that he’s familiar with. That may not seem all that impressive considering that others Sigil wielders have powers like controlling water or teleportation. However, Kaname is adepts at tactics and mind games which allows him to use his Sigil very effectively. As a result, he ends up somewhat overpowered, but almost entirely through skill rather than through pure power, which makes his fights really interesting and satisfying. He also has a good character arc in the first third or so of the manga, though he doesn’t seem to grow much after that. Still, at that point he is a likable character with a good amount of depth, so he’s a pretty solid protagonist throughout the manga. The clan that Kaname establishes, Sunset Ravens, makes up the majority of the supporting cast. They have a pretty good variety of powers and work well together so that keeps the larger scale conflicts interesting. None of them are fleshed out all that well or have much character development. However, they have a good group dynamic, so holistically they’re still interesting as characters. There’s also a romance between Kaname and a girl in the clan that isn’t all that deep or anything, but is still pretty cute and satisfying to watch progress. In terms of antagonists, the manga strikes a good balance between ones that are cartoonish villains that are just awful people, and more complex characters with complicated circumstances behind their actions. The plot overall flows well. The focus is initially is on Kaname fighting in single matches, but quickly shifts to larger scale events and battles. These were well designed and had a good number of twists and turns. Something I think the mangaka is really good at is knowing when to call it quits. A lot of arcs felt like they ended abruptly, but most of the time this was quite welcome because the arcs were dragging on and getting kind of dull. Thus, the pacing is generally pretty good. As is the case with most all death game manga, the plot jumps the shark and becomes incredibly grand scale eventually, at which point the plot becomes somewhat convoluted and somewhat hard to follow. Still, it’s easy to understand the broad strokes even if the finer details are perplexing, so the plot is still exciting and the manga overall is smooth to read. The ending unfortunately is really rushed and drops most all of the minor plot threads and glosses through key aspects of the major plot threads. It is believed that this is because the mangaka was having health problems, which is certainly understandable. Furthermore, while the execution of the ending is certainly heavily flawed, the ending itself is great. Thus, while certainly not perfect I was pretty satisfied with it. The mangaka’s is a great artist in terms of style and quality. The character designs are only decent, but the art uses them very effectively. Unfortunately, the artist’s health seems to have had an impact on the art as well. It peaks at around 2/3 into the manga. After that the quality goes up and down, and though there is certainly still some great art, overall the quality is noticeably lower. The fan translation for most of the manga is pretty good, though the translation of the last couple volumes has major issues. tl;dr: A battle manga with a great protagonist and great pacing, though a pretty rough final stretch.