SHIBOYUGI: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table

Episode 8

Within minutes of beginning this new Candle Woods storyline, I could tell that SHIBOYUGI was back on track after the mild but noticeable stumble to the finish line we got with the Golden Bath games last week. We're jumping back to a much earlier game, here, which is a move I think works wonders, both for the show's atmosphere and for the kinds of character beats we seem set to focus on for this particular outing. We've heard the name of the Candle Woods games before. They are supposed to have been particularly terrible.

“Terrible” in the “shocking and dehumanizing suffering” way, thankfully, and not in terms of SHIBOYUGI's quality as entertainment. Or, rather…well, we all know how complicated the layers of self-reference and social satire are, by this point. This is terrible entertainment on a moral level, of course, at least within the universe of the show. This is a game that doesn't just encourage players to kill each other, either; while the girls dressed in silly Playboy Bunny outfits merely have to survive for a set amount of time to earn their freedom, the so-called “Stumps” must rack up a kill count of Rabbits to walk away with their own lives intact. It's positively cruel, a far more insidious setup than the future Golden Bath games will be.

Yet, as the viewers who get the privilege of being protected by the plausible deniability of the fourth wall, it sure does work out well for us. The stylish and fairy-tail-tinged setting and rules of the Candle Woods game is just so aesthetically perfect, so far as I'm concerned, and we've already got a great villainess lined up for Ryoko to outmaneuver. Every pregnant pause and lingering wide-shot is brimming with tension, which makes this one of those relatively “uneventful” episodes of SHIBOYUGI that still flies by in what feels like moments.

Consider, too, the wonders that a dash of dramatic irony will do to spice up the proceedings. Yuki, for instance, has two blue eyes as of this ninth game, which we know is bound to change by the time she casts her ballots in the Scrap Building. Her legendary mentor is here, too, and while I don't think we've yet learned what exactly caused Yuki to take up the quest for 99 wins from this undeniably badass woman, it's pretty clear that something is going to go down in the Candle Woods to incite Yuki's transformation from apprentice to master.

The way that mentorship seems to be an intrinsic facet of this death game culture is fascinating, especially when you factor in this Moegi gal who seems to be the Candle Wood's primary antagonist. While Yuki has received a wealth of seemingly warm and positive guidance from her elder death-game mistress, the main thing Moegi seems to have gleaned from her teacher is a penchant for abject cruelty and violence. Mishiro may have been broken in her own pathetically beautiful way, but she was more of a Mythic Bitch than a Maiden of Bathory, if you follow my meaning. Granted, Moegi's cold and calculating approach to putting down any girl who isn't strong enough to spill a little bit of cotton herself is appropriate, given the profession. It doesn't make it any less disturbing to see her casually gut-shoot a supposed team-member so she can instruct all the other Stumps on the fine art of bloodshed, though.

I think the shot of Moegi biting into her arm until stuffing spills from her teeth is one of my favorite shots that SHIBOYUGI has crafted thus far. It's a perfect encapsulation of everything this show is doing so well. At the end of the day, every work of fiction can be boiled down to a kind of dollhouse filled with all of the toys needed to tell the story at hand. The tragedy of SHIBOYUGI comes from the girls knowing full well that they are little more than dolls to be played with until they are too worn out and must be tossed aside. Yet how wrong it must be, how utterly uncanny to see all of that stuffing spill out of yourself when you can feel the warmth of the blood in your veins.

SHIBOYUGI: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.