SHIBOYUGI: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table

Episodes 1-3

While there are plenty of quality shows coming out this winter, SHIBOYUGI was one of the only premiere to truly blow me away when I covered it for the seasonal Preview Guide. I was already familiar with director Sōta Ueno's measured, cinematic style from his work on Days With My Stepsister, that series was a bit too laid-back for my tastes. The abstract flourishes afforded by SHIBOYUGI's dark and violent subject matter match Ueno's sensibilities perfectly. This is a sublime and dreamlike saunter through a blood-soaked horror show. Well, metaphorically blood-soaked, at least. The girls stuck Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table don't actually bleed when they're torn apart by death traps or stabbed in the back by fellow players' scheming. A special coagulant foam means that the only substance that spills out of these girls' broken bodies resembles the stuffing of a doll more than anything else. We have to think of the members of the audience who are placing their bets and watching from a safe distance, after all. They have delicate constitutions; no stomach for brutality.

It was this particular detail that had me one-hundred-percent sold on SHIBOYUGI as a fresh, satisfying spin on the traditional killing game setup. Yes, plenty such stories have asked the familiar question of “Isn't killing other people for the amusement of some sick game master wrong, actually?” What makes SHIBOYUGI so compelling is that it operates in a reality where those moral quandaries are a moot point. Yes, obviously, Yuki doesn't want to see any of her partners in the killing game die, and she certainly doesn't want to betray them herself. Alas, she lives in a society where surviving these games is a lucrative career indeed, and it isn't like everybody wasn't clear on the stakes when they signed up. This show isn't called Playing Cozy Party Games to Kill Some Time and Maybe Make a Few Friends, right? Whether or not Yuki literally has to participate in these games to put food on her table is also beside the point. What matters is that the world has declared such competition to be legal sport that happens to make excellent profits for all parties involved…except for the ones who are unlucky enough to bisected by giant death traps.

Throughout these first three episodes, Ueno intentionally uses the tricks of the trade to force the audience into the perspective of…well, the audience. The girls are shot from many long and mid-distance angles with intentionally minimizes or even erased features. The close-ups and other moments of intimacy that we do get heighten the drama, for sure, but the illusory atmosphere and languid pacing still keep the girls at arm's length. The violence, while brutal and extravagant, is also presented with enough “tasteful” remove that it doesn't feel jarring when Yuki and the others simply move on to the next trial. Maybe someone lops off an arm. Maybe someone has to sacrifice a leg to make it through a checkpoint. It's all fine. No blood has been spilled. These dolls can just be put back together like new.

If they make it out, that is.

Yuki is determined to make it out, of course. She has ninety-nine of these games to win. In the premiere, we see the long and dark road that she travels to clear her 28th game, while Episodes 2-3 jump back to game number ten. It's honestly a brilliant move for SHIBOYUGI to approach its story like a chronological jigsaw puzzle. While other light-novel series can feel like they're jumping around in time just to be clever, I think it is important that Yuki feels like just as much of a cipher to be decoded as the plot of the show is. In the premiere, we were forced to question how genuine Yuki was when she claimed to be rooting for everyone to survive, and that fact that we genuinely come to believe her makes it all the more shocking and tragic when she crushes Kinko's skull to ensure her victory. Back in the 10th game, Yuki is not quite as calculating and confident, but since we already know she is going to win, we can focus on how she gets across the finish-line. More importantly, we can examine how this changes her.

I've been watching SHIBOYUGI in English, for the most part, because I want to be able to focus on the visuals of the series as much as possible. It's an excellent production so far, which is a good sign, considering just how many characters we will presumably meet as the series explores more of the games Yuki gets wrapped up in on her quest to that coveted 99th victory. Suzie Yeung especially does a great job meeting the level of quality that Chiyuki Miura brings to the Japanese dub, which is critical to the show's success. Yuki is a character who has to project cold, calculating resolve that could easily read a wooden in the hands of a less capable performer, and yet her actresses also need to capture the subtle fluctuations in how she presents herself based on where we are in the timeline. Given how ruthless she performed in the premiere's game, we have to believe that the Yuki of Episode 2 and 3 is just green enough to have her experience and knowledge questioned by upstarts like Mishiro, so that we can see the real, flesh-and-blood girl that lives underneath all of that calm composure. We also have to believe the sharp, cruel, sing-song threat Yuki delivers to Mishiro at the end of Episode 3, because we can't go getting too close without a flashing of the fangs, now can we?

To spiral back to an earlier point before we close, there is one element of SHIBOYUGI's presentation that breaks through that artifice of abstract unreality, which comes in the form of the hallucinatory visions that grant us some insight into the girls' pasts. Episode 3 begins with Shirori eerily repeating the story of how she got her name, and then we fully descend into Mishiro's nightmarish past as she succumbs to her fear and isolation. At first, this was the one trick in SHIBOYUGI's oeuvre that I wasn't quite sure of. While pretty and haunting, these sequences also break the complicit relationship that we the real-world audience have with the in-universe voyeurs who are delighting in these death games. The more I watch them, though, the more I think that they actually do fit quite well within the show's framework, after all. For one, the sequences are fragmented and so tainted with subjective perceptions that they just serve to highlight how these death games are stripping the humanity from their players. If the violent deaths are the tangible spectacle we're meant to revel in, then these dreamlike jaunts into the girls' tortured mindscapes offer the psychological bloodbaths that fans of Japanese horror are so often keyed in for.

What makes it all work in the end, though, is the conceit already made plain in the title of the show. It's one thing if a worldwide apocalypse or army of psychotic robot bears forces characters into a death game against their will. We've even seen plenty of shows that use the premise as a critique of mass media and voyeuristic spectacle. What makes SHIBOYUGI's dystopia feel so horrifyingly prescient is just how banal and routine this all is for the people getting killed for the sake of good entertainment. In our reality, we have sociopathic billionaire YouTubers dreaming of making The Hunger Games into just another kooky game-show that dangles the promise of untold riches over the heads of average folks. We have a United States government run by delusional, racist idiots that want to make a ghoulish reality competition out of our immigration process, all so the “good” brown folks can really prove that they deserve a home, here. Just how far away do we think we actually are from the death games of SHIBOYUGI from becoming just another drop in the bucket of Infinite Content? These are just the indignities that we will suffer to put bread on the table.

Step right up, everyone, and behold. They're the prettiest beasts in the whole world.

Episode Rating:

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.