Ever since they were invented, games have built friendships and made families stronger. In the anime industry, a few directors dared to think, "What if these games weren't fun...at all?" Thus, the death game was born. Death games are an ongoing trend in the anime industry where some overlying force pits different characters against one another for their survival and some overlying reward.
That reward is often just not getting to die. It's a dark and twisted genre that has entertained plenty of edgy teens for years. However, not every bullet hits their mark. This list will be breaking down some of the best death games in anime as well as some of the most confusing and convoluted ones.
10 Best: History Comes Alive...And Then Dies (The Fate Series)
The Fate series is one of the most exciting renditions of the death game genre. For people who hated history and literature classes, Fate makes learning fun (and horribly inaccurate), as it has mages summon famous historical and fictional figures to fight each other until there's only one left standing.
It's as if textbooks came alive with action figures, and a group of kids were allowed to debate which toy was more awesome. If anyone has ever wondered who would win in a fight between Hercules and King Arthur, Fate comes with plenty of answers.
9 Worst: Weird Future (The Future Diary)
The Future Diary focuses on a world where a god, Deus Ex Machina, decides to leave his position to one of the 13 mortals that he talks with. To thin the pickings, he makes them fight to the death, with the added benefit that each one has a diary that allows them to peek into the future in different ways.
While this is interesting in concept, the diaries themselves don't come into play as often as just stabbing and shooting people. That's not even mentioning how time travel and alternate realities come into play later on, watering down the story instead of adding compelling twists.
8 Best: Year Of The Death Game (Juuni Taisen)
Juuni Taisen brings the death game back to its principles and doesn't try to become much more convoluted after that. It has a bunch of people fight to death and, at the peak of its fantasy, gives each of them a special skill or power. Even better, "The Zodiac War" isn't just a madman's attempt at entertainment.
It's a proxy war that 12 of the most powerful organizations in the world arrange to compete for a single wish. Each person is the culmination of the resources, training, and philosophy that a culturally different upbringing has brought and is made to clash against the peak potential of other groups. With some surprisingly impressive CG animation to boot, Juuni Taisen will have a lot of people rooting for their signs.
7 Worst: Because Candy Crush Is Lame (Darwin's Game)
In Darwin's Game, Kaname is invited by a friend to join the online, mobile game, Darwin's Game. However, he's surprised to find that the game doesn't take place in his phone but on the streets of Japan where different kinds of maddened and bloodthirsty people try to kill him.While this is interesting on paper, it doesn't take long before logic and consistency of the series go out the window.
The events do take place in the real-world, but the actual citizens have varying levels of awareness that switch between helping a guy calling out for help to not knowing how an entire building got destroyed. With a shaky magic system like Sigil on top, Darwin's Game may not scratch a lot of people's horror itches.
6 Best: Life Is A Prison (Deadman Wonderland)
Deadman Wonderland doesn't try to be that mysterious with its premise. It just puts a couple of people in a ring and makes them fight. In the privatized prison complex/amusement park, Deadman Wonderland, there is a special wing where prisoners who have the mysterious ability to weaponize their own blood are made to fight one another.
This is called the Carnival Corpse, and the fights are every much as gritty and raw as a proper prison fight should be. These people are fighting for their lives, money, and early releases and have the criminal tenacity to make every encounter exciting. What will Ganta, a boy framed for a crime that he didn't commit, do when he must compete in the Carnival Corpse?
5 Worst: Gambling Problems: The Anime (Kakegurui)
To be fair, Kakegurui didn't need to be a death game anime. Given its premise, it could've just been like Yu-Gi-Oh! and just had kids play some friendly games of poker and dice with just some friendly competition. However, after some sugar, spice, and an accidental dose of edge, Kakegurui's characters decided to mutilate each other, because they thought high school wasn't bad enough.
While this does add tension to the series (albeit very exaggerated tension), the suspense becomes watered down when the main character starts winning through convoluted means and pure deus ex machina (shout out to The Future Diary).
4 Best: For Hunters Only (Hunter X Hunter)
Hunter x Hunter is already famous for its incredibly defined systems and cerebral combat. Greed Island is just the arc where the series gets really indulgent with making its combat, world building, and rewards based on a pure game. When Gon and Killua get a major clue to where Gon's dad may be, they find themselves in a video game world where only Hunters can play.
There, Hunters must explore the world, complete quests, and fight bosses in order to collect cards. However, some Hunters started getting wise to the system and started stealing and killing each other for cards. This added some suspense to an already deadly game, where characters had to both progress in the game and fight other Hunters to win.
3 Worst: Hell Is Multiplayer (Sword Art Online)
Sword Art Online really grabbed its audience's attention with the classic adage: "If you die in the game, you die in real life." While this alone could've made a pretty compelling series, the series found itself in a bit of an identity crisis as it struggled to balance its terrifying premise with an odd hodgepodge of Slice-of-Life moments.
Making people care about characters is fine, but SAO seemed more interested in fitting in fanservice moments to pad out its story and utilized generic characters that didn't really have much consequence on the story. The one character that Kirito actually saved was one of the video game characters, making one question if the audience was supposed to care about the real people in the first place.
2 Best: Clue: High School Edition (Danganronpa: The Animation)
Danganronpa has one of the most interesting death game premises around. While it does heavily encourage killing one another like a good death game should, it really spices up its narrative by having the characters try and solve the murders.
If they get it right, the murderer is executed. If they get it wrong, the murderer gets to leave, and everyone else is executed. It makes sense that this would create a cult classic game and even more so why it got made into an equally compelling anime.
1 Worst: New Student, Same Problems (King's Game: The Animation)
King's Game: The Animation is one of the most infamous entries to the death game genre to date. It's a series that really wanted to be a death game and didn't care about adding any other elements to really make the audience care about the deaths. If anything, it makes it incredibly difficult to see any of its horrifying premise as unfair.
King's Game is a mysterious event that traps random high school classes to a game of Dare or...Dare. Failing to accomplish the already convoluted missions would result in the student dying in an equally convoluted way. Nobuaki is a survivor of a past King's Game who suddenly finds his new class under the same curse. Despite his attempts to change things, his new class mates end up making the exact same mistakes. It's essentially a two-for-one deal in gore that is exactly as cheap as it sounds.