stop. analyse that text through the lens of its author's intentions and original historical context. okay now take the author out back and kill them dead and analyse that text as though it were published by your mutual yesterday and is in direct conversation with the contemporary discourse that's most relevant to your life. okay now pick your favorite angle of interpretation and come up with the strongest possible argument against it. now imagine that the text is your best friend and that it means you well and that you naturally give it every benefit of the doubt because you're on its side and you want the best for it. now imagine that the text wants you dead and it'll eat you if you don't eat it first. now pretend that you found this text locked away in a cave with no evidence of when or where it came from and you have to divine its meaning solely through its internal coherence and nothing else. okay now address the elephant in the room aspect of the text you've been ignoring because you find it boring or confusing or uncomfortable and become the number one expert on it. now spend forty minutes assigning all the characters dnd classes with at least three sentences of reasoning each. okay now do the cha cha slide.
Shiboyugi things I think were explained better in the novel than the anime
Ghost House
- Yuki has a rule that if she needs to kill a player to get past a trap its the player thats closest to her. Thats why Kinko was chosen.
- the makers of the game only expected 3 people to live at the end because newbies have a lower survival rate, this is also why Yuki doesn't look for any alternate route (no idea why there is smoke/fire seems to be something added to the anime to give a sense of urgency? But it was much more calculated in the novels)
Scrap Building
- Chie died because she was useless. Mishiro explains this one as she hears her dying: everyone else had taken turns being the front of the group and Yuki had gone back for Mishiro and Kotoha whereas Chie did nothing.
- the game was designed to easy enough to push one player as the front/leader because of the voting trap at the end. The only ones who realized this were Yuki and Kotoha
-Mishiro did initially contemplate voting for Yuki or Kotoha but ended up voting according to the rules in the end
- Mishiro's arm wasn't able to be reattached after the game because it was eaten, she ended up with a prosthetic* so she could continue playing specifically so she could face Yuki again.
Golden Bath
- Yuki woke up last as a penalty for accidently swallowing the transmitter given by Kinko's father. The game runners removed it but it wasn't something they would just overlook.
- Riko had both her arms and legs replaced with prosthetics, paid for by Mishiro, because they were eaten by a similar beast as the one that took Mishiro's arm.
- This is also why Mishiro took her in as an apprentice** and they were close enough to have met outside the game several times.
- there were a handful of players left behind after the game ended. One of them survived a month eating weeds but eventually died of starvation. Others died fighting over the exit, and a third hit her head looking for keys.
Additional explanation: there were two sets of keys for the shoe lockers, silver and gold. The anime actually heavily edited this storyline. The keys were needed to open the shoe lockers to get shoes to cross the floor since it was electrocuted, Riko had two sets for her arms and legs and these were the ones the players were fighting over.
- Yuki led five people on a suicide run to the entryway, all of which were taken out by Mishiro's group.
* Prosthetics and body modification are super common among veteran players in the novels. However theres a limit since anything that could be considered a weapon is against the rules. Thus many players have iron prosthetics/mods
** mentor/apprentice relationships are also brought up a lot. Finding a mentor is the only way to learn more/study for the games since they cant be talked about due to the underground nature.
its long so ill put this part here since i think a lot of people will eb confused about Hakushi (what an ass job they did with that)
"Hakushi had undergone a body modification procedure not officially sanctioned by the game organizers. Compared to the Preservation Treatment and the psycho killer, who had embedded armor inside her head, what Hakushi was capable of was out of this world. It was physically impossible for a human body to stand without muscles or bones. Her revival could only be explained by some mechanism that transcended the laws of physics-perhaps it was even a form of sorcery."
the anime actually added more to the storyline than the novels but its mostly still accurate, although they did an ass job at that last episode wtf
-okay so the first thing i want to point out is the shift in Yuki's mental state is shown through her living habits: to put it lightly she chooses to live in a very messy, moldy apartment. At the end of the game she cleans up a little but yeah its mentioned she doesn't bathe regularly and pretty much exclusively wears tracksuits.
this isn't actually important just wanted to point it out since the overall feel you get through the novels is that Yuki is very apathetic about living.
-also this quote about the costume "Since Yuki couldn't see her whole body, she escaped with minimal damage to her sanity, but she knew the surveillance cameras hidden somewhere in the room were recording a horrifying sight Was that truly okay? Did the terrifying nature of the game make that okay?"
onto the game itself:
-Moegi generally has a bad reaction to the sleeping drugs and always wakes up lethargic/with a headache. Given that we know Yuki wakes up last it seems the drugs are prone some heavy side effects.
-the game explainer is both accurate and not: to put simply the explainers will ramble on, talk in circles, provoke the players, make provocative statements etc, Most of the players ignore it and filter out only the important information.
-Moegi's training lesson was also changed slightly. But it gets the point across without having to explain Kyara right away.
What actually happens is that she shoots a girl at random without killing her then tells the others to kill her. When nobody moves she selects one at random and tells her to go first, when she protests Moegi shoots her as well then goes to another girl, giving her three seconds to stab one of them twice. This goes on with Moegi pointing the gun at each girl and giving them 3 seconds to stab one of the others. She shoots a third when they're reluctant to stab the second girl after the first dies. This is presumably similar to the way she was taught.
Moegi also views this as having killed the girls herself, she idolizes Kyara because she sees her as a strong person: someone who doesn't hesitate and doesn't care about appearances. The purpose here is to highlight difference between players: Moegi and Kyara being players who see the games as grounds for killing vs Hakushi and Yuki who see the games as grounds for survival. Its fairly unclear in the novels if Kyara has any particular reason for choosing Moegi, she kinda just let her live on a whim and Moegi starts following her around. Kyara does like being idolized by cute girls though.
-all of the stumps are middle-school aged.
-the games reuse the same weapons but alter their appearance, which is how Yuki is able to know how many shots each one has (Sumiyaka mentions it to her.)
-it only takes about 6 hours after the stumps are released for things to take a turn. During this time Moegi has not killed a single bunny.
-the bunnies tickling the captured stump were all newbie players left behind or 'protected' which is why Sumiyaka was asking about the 'caramel-colored hair girl', there was no reason for her to have disappeared or gone out since Hakushi's strategy was for them to stay behind.
Basically this is is how Yuki realizes Kyara was pretending to be a newbie player to avoid going out. The strategy works becuase of how many bunnies there are.
Moegi and Kyara's relationship was so heavily mischaracterized i think, for start its not in the novel if they lived together or not, the anime added in that entire sequence, with Moegi killing her parents and all.
Moegi is able to put together that it was Kyara bc of how the girl was left sliced open but also because of how tall she was. But this quote probably says more about their relationship than what the anime depicted "Killing is the same as drinking seawater to her! Once she starts, she can't stop! The teams don't matter anymore! At this rate no one will be left alive!"
Like basically Moegi idolizes her but Kyara has no idea that she's playing in this game and Moegi even mentions that even she isn't safe from her since once Kyara starts killing she doesn't stop. She wouldn't even leave bunnies for Moegi to kill if she managed to survive the game.
direct quote: "Even Moegi wasn't safe as Kyara's protege. She knew far to well how unpredictable her mentor could be. It was more than possible Moegi would be killed after Kyara got swept up in things."
Kyara only realizes Moegi was playing and is also now dead once Yuki mentions it, while Kyara is talking about she killed every player in the games she's been in before minus her second game where she let Moegi live
-Kyara's killing spree was triggered becasue she didn't like the bunny outfit and wanted the stump outfit the conversation is more like (summarized not quoted directly)
Yuki: why did you kill everyone? For prize money? To be a hero?
Kyara: No i just wanted the clothes but the previous owner put up a fight. It was hard killing her without damaging her to keep them in pristine condition. I got fed up
Yuki: ???
Kyara: Thats all
Yuki: I don't understand
Kyara: Oh
And then they start fighting.
-Yuki is able to survive the initial attack becuase Kyara throws a smoke bomb, blinding the bunnies, and becuase she remembers the location of the exit. She listens to the screams of the dying bunnies until they are opposite the exit and then makes a run for it. I don't understand why this was taken out since it shows 1. how terrifying the games actually are and 2. how resourceful Yuki is. Though ig i can understand not wanting to record screaming again? Idk it was fine for the first episode but not the pivotal episode?
The fight scenes were also just…
Moegi's fight was shortened a bit?
again a lot of listening to the surroundings to guage the distance to the other person/ where they are
the bunny ear headband thing did happen but Meogi walks in knowing its a decoy
lots more running and chasing each other but the ending remains the same with Yuki using the smoke bomb and gun to kill her
Moegi does cry and Yuki describes their final battle as her face having an expression of exasperation and that Moegi wanted to accomplish something which was she continued playing
this is what gets into Yuki's head since earlier Hakushi had mentioned finding a reason to keep playing to make her stronger
The Fight withe Kyara
god okay
to start Hakushi is more cut up, her face isn't even recognizeable she was disfigured and mutilated on every inch of her body
-interestingly its here as Yuki describes her insides being outside that maybe she's still breathing.
this is also where Yuki asks Kyara if it was her and the two do strikle up a converstation where Kyara mentions its her 10th game which is what leads to the why did you kill everyone convo.
like idk i want to type out out the whole fight scene bc its soso different especially Kyara describes why she kills and how she hates that everyone looks down on her for being a killer
While Yuki does say that Kyara's armor goes against the rules, it technically doesn't? This actually goes into body mods and prosthetics as well. The players need to be mostly human to play from what i gather, so no turning themselves into cyborgs. Kyara also only has armor on her vital points and questions why Yuki wouldn't mod herself to gain an edge in the games.
-Kyara saying Yuki is just like her makes Yuki so angry, because she's right in that Yuki finds the games comfortable and dreams of dying in them (remember at this point Yuki is still aimless) adn this is where Yuki declares she's Hakushi's protege and will inherit her will. She's so averse to being compared to Kyara that she takes a hard stance and in like a second she decides she will play for Hakushi's goal.
-Yuki kills Kyara by shooting her in the shoulder. and thigh and then in her mouth and eye and then she stabs her all over and cuts her stomach open since her chest is armored.
-the game is terminated on the third day since the organizers determined the game had reached an equilibrium
Hakushi
Mentioned before but Hakushi's body was mutilated by the end of the game so when her agent goes to pick her up she can only stand and not say much
direct quote to explain how: "Hakushi had undergone a body modification procedure not officially sanctioned by the game organizers. Compared to the Preservation Treatment and the psycho killer, who had embedded armor inside her head, what Hakushi was capable of was out of this world. It was physically impossible for a human body to stand without muscles or bones. Her revival could only be explained by some mechanism that transcended the laws of physics-perhaps it was even a form of sorcery."
this is also where Hakushi tells her agent she's retiring and passed her will onto Yuki and that she has full faith Yuki will surpass the Wall of Thirty since "curses don't work on phantoms"
Misc Things I didn't know where to put
Yuki figures out how many games she's played by counting the outfits she has, the outfits are gifted to players after completing a game successfully. She has to throw away two because of mold but this is when she starts counting.
-she also cleans her apartment and starts attending evening classes
Yuki mentions agents come in two types: those who take a laid back approach (like her own) and those who become more familiar with their charge (like Mishiro's)
Players only get assigned a dedicated agent after successfully completing two games and becoming a regular player
it is forbidden to look into anything regarding the games, however Kowloon is a name whispered among players as the founder
there is no recognition of the games inside of society, they are wholly apart of the darker/shadows of society.
it is whispered among urban expolorers is that the most dangerous thing you can find in an abandoned building is anything resembling life or white cotton, if you find this you should leave immedietly and wipe everything from memory.
I put these two together to better explain it, basically very few people know the games exist, or they're treated as an urban legend. This is in line with how almost all the players feel like they don't fit into society in some way or another.
highly recommend: making that character’s mourning WORSE!!!! make them play pretend with that corpse. make it seem like they’re moving on until they start telling the new person to start dyeing their hair the color of the person they lost and start calling them their name to make it clear that they’re hanging out with this person now to try and make them into the old one. make your grieving character put people in the same situation the person they’re mourning died in and have them hope they die to prove it was unpreventable. make your grieving character put people in the same situation the person they’re mourning died in and have them hope they live to prove that it wasn’t doomed to happened. make your grieving characters actively harm the people around them and the memory of the person they lost. I love you morally dubious grieving characters
it has got to be so surreal being an average alexandrian citizen. imagine if king arthur's court showed up in present day america. guys who still call books "tomes." they have wizards with them. the president personally escorts them around washington DC. a fleet of journalists are taking pictures of them eating a costco hotdog for the first time. someone posts a candid 30 second clip of them on tiktok trying to figure out how a vending machine works. and then within a month they've killed the president, installed a new president who looks just like the old president, distributed the cure for cancer, blown up the national oil reserves, dropped in on WWE SmackDown, and then left. guys from a continent that still uses lantern light orchestrate a near total societal restructuring without ever learning what the internet is. the first time most of them had ever been on a train was when they strapped bombs to one and exploded a military checkpoint to enter the country. and everyone's just sort of fine with it
Ever since reading my first time loop-based book as a preteen, I’ve had a Secret Time Loop Code Word. It’s been the same word all these years. I’ve never written it down anywhere or told anyone what it is, just kept it tucked away in my brain. That way, if someone I know ever confided in me that they were stuck in a time loop, I would have a way to confirm it: I would tell them the time loop code word and instruct them to find and talk to me again on the next loop. Of course, if it’s a time loop, I wouldn’t remember telling them the code word. But they’d remember it. So if someone ever came to me and said “I’m stuck in a time loop, and the time loop code word is [X],” and it was indeed the word I’ve secretly held onto for most of my life, I would know that we had had this conversation in a previous loop and that they were telling the truth.
Will this ever be useful? Almost certainly not. But hey, there’s nothing wrong with having a completely absurd contingency plan. In case of time loops.
