Synopsis
Until now, everything in life has come easy to second-year high school student Miharu Seno. He is considered attractive, has no difficulty achieving top marks, and—whether it be skill or luck—consistently beats his friend Kenya Fujishiro at video games. But when a creature with the appearance of a stuffed animal steals his wallet at the arcade, Miharu's good fortune takes a turn for the worse. Lured into an abandoned storage room, he is confronted by a strangely dressed man who climbs out from the other side of an electronic screen.
The flamboyant individual, calling himself "Romeo," explains that he has come from the future to partner with Miharu in the "D-Game." Also from the future, the stuffed animal Edward will be the pair's Judge. Despite being unimpressed by the vague prize at stake in the competition, Miharu hates the idea of losing by default. Thus, he declares his intention to not only play the game but also become its victor. His decision proves fortunate as the fate of losers is more severe than shame—those who are defeated are sentenced to death.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
This review does not contain spoilers. This manga caught my attention at first glance since it’s rather unusual to come across a survival / death game manga with such a bright artstyle. The bright colours, the cute judges and the visual surrealness of some of the challenges seemed to me like a Madoka Magica meets Enstars meets Kamisama no Iutoori, so I decided to give it a try. But now, after finishing it, the first word that comes across my mind when describing Worldend:debugger is disappointing. The main problem I found in this work is that the story felt very rushed, especially the ending, you spend thebigger part of the story meeting new characters and seeing Miharu and Romeo play various one-time games, but when all the characters are finally together participating in the same game, we only spend three chapters in this game and three in the resolution of the main conflict. That wouldn’t be a big problem if it was well handled and paced correctly and if at the end you felt a sense of closure, but sadly, that isn’t the case. The explanation as to why the games were organized made absolutely no sense. It was presented in such a rushed and confusing way that by the end of the story it almost felt as if they hadn’t given you an explanation at all. Also, the story never cares to give closure to any characters other than the two main protagonists.
Some of the games itselves were very poorly constructed and handled, in addition to being overall unoriginal. Moreover, I personally found the world rules to be badly explained in some instances.
Another important thing to point out is that I must advise you that if you feel uncomfortable with the use of homophobic slurs, do not read this work, as they are thrown around by the main cast multiple times every chapter.
This brings me to the characters of this story: they are bland, except for the protagonists they don’t get any character arc or closure and some of them are, in my opinion, borderline dislikeable.
That being said, I do not have any criticism concerning the art and character designs, this manga was visually beautiful and the character designs were pretty good. The artwork reminded me of Kagerou Project and of the illustrations in some Utaite’s cover MVs. I really enjoyed some aspects of the character design, like the way Shiro’s flashy appearance contrasted with his personality or Romeo’s overall aesthetic and fashion style (would have enjoyed it more if he wasn’t constantly looked down upon because of it).
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that this work is terrible and that you shouldn’t read it, it’s short and quite entertaining, so you wouldn’t lose anything by checking it out, but if someone told me to give them death game manga recommendations, I would definitely not bring up Worldend:debugger.
