King's Game The Animation

Episode 12

Like the theme song goes: "This is the end, this is the end." For a series that revels in hilariously shallow attempts at suspense, probably the biggest mystery was which version of King's Game would show up for this finale. Would it be the amazing self-immolating dumpster or the depressively dragged-out LiveJournal rant? Thankfully, this finale is mostly the former, though the added burden of closure proves to be too much for this show's storied stupidity.

This resolution begins with easily the most outrageous order yet. The kids are supposed to cut off parts of their body and build a ‘human doll’ out of them. On the surface, it's just more senseless grimdark edginess, but the actual mechanics become purely nonsensical when you consider them for more than a few seconds. This seems to have the same effect on the characters in the show as well. Previously meek little Ryou has a breakdown that leads him to dismember himself so he can prove that he's ‘strong’, while Riona goes the opposite direction into outright refusal. I honestly enjoy Riona's characterization throughout this show, the way she's perpetually 100% done with how stupid this has all gotten; it effectively mirrors what the audience must be feeling by this point. In general, the whole thing comes across like the characters are losing their minds less because of exposure to all this death and darkness, and more because of how ridiculous the situation has become.

But of course Riona's protests fall on deaf ears, and Ryou jumps right to lopping his own leg off to prove that he's a big strong man. The failure of the series' execution is exemplary in this scene. Everything from the cinematography to the voice acting results in a scene equal parts baffling and hilarious. For our stomach's sake at this point, maybe that's for the best.

Only when Nobuaki awakens to this scene does he finally question why the King would give an order like this, which seems like a point that should have been brought up earlier. Questioning what the King has to gain from these specific tasks seems salient, and the fact that Natsuko doesn't care could create an interesting contrast. But it's less interesting that they're only bringing this up now, and then they completely abandon the question once they dredge up the Game's infamous virus origins. They explain this to us for a third time and it still doesn't make any sense, actually raising further questions now that the question has been raised about the King's motives. This absurdity makes it unclear if there even is a King actually sending orders or if it's just a procedurally-generated facet of the hypnotic hypervirus. Nobuaki and Riona seem to think it's interesting at least, enough to start discussing it with the maniacal Natsuko after she just chainsawed two of their friends to death in front of them. But that ends up moot after they finally unscramble the jumble of cell phone messages and reveal the true solution to the King's Game: they must kill themselves!

That's right, the last big twist this triumph of storytelling has in store for us is that the King's Game virus will continue to spread unless all participants kill themselves, otherwise humanity itself will eventually be destroyed! It's almost as if the show realized it had desensitized us to obscene violence and was desperately trying to up its stakes for the finale at the eleventh hour. Ignoring the severe logical fallacies in this so-called ultimate solution, can these kids really kill themselves to save humanity?

Natsuko obviously isn't willing, and her subsequent rant actually comes the closest this series has been to compelling. I almost even liked her “someone has to be the bad guy” rationalization, and it even gets punctuated with an absurdly dramatic chainsaw slash from Riona. Everything after this point is a ridiculous daisy chain of the trio almost dying to end up killing each other anyway, complete with near-perfect comic timing as Natsuko cuts Nobuaki down just as Riona's confessing her love to him, followed by Natsuko revealing that she did it because she loves Nobuaki too! Enough girls have fallen for Nobuaki over the course of this thing that it practically qualifies as a harem fantasy for its namesake author.

So then we get to see Nobuaki go to Heaven to be reunited with all his dead friends! Maybe Teruaki can give him another haircut in the great beyond. Heck, even Natsuko is there, apparently sorry about the whole chainsaw-murder thing. What's bizarre about this sequence is that it's presented as some sort of happy-end resolution, completely glossing over the point that they all died pointless deaths. The King's Game was trying to kill them, and they put so much effort into surviving only to fail over and over again, and now the narrative is now celebrating that failure? What's the takeaway here? I know the flashback storyline didn't work because we already knew everyone died at the end, but now that the surprise is apparently that everyone dies again, there's even less sense of closure. It ends up feeling just as pointless as Riona finally kills herself to end the King's Game as the decoded message advised.

After all this, at the very end after the credits, King's Game's attempts at horror actually pull through, and it finally manages to be truly terrifying! In its last frame, in the same manner as the deadly messages sent to a new group of unsuspecting students, the series torments us with the scariest words to grace our screen:

To Be Continued...

Rating: D

King's Game The Animation is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.