The Spring 2021 Manga Guide

Your Turn to Die

What's It About? 

Sara Chidouin has been getting harassed by a mysterious stalker lately, so her concerned friend Joe Tazuna decides to walk her home. But once they arrive, the two of are attacked by someone and black out. When they come to, they find that they've been restrained to some tables in a strange room...

Your Turn to Die is a manga adaptation of the popular virtual novel by the same name. The manga is drawn by Tatsuya Ikegami and Yen Press released its first volume in digital and print for $6.99 and $13.99 respectively

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

If there's one thing that's most appealing about Your Turn to Die, it's that it's not just an arbitrary death game. It has arbitrary elements, of course, such as who the players are and that sort of thing, but the actual game part of the plot is more about solving puzzles than just randomly killing people off. That makes sense when you realize that this is a manga adaptation of a free-to-play video game, because games that just randomly kill off characters with no logic involved aren't necessarily fun to play.

The basic plot is very similar to any number of death game titles like Judge and its ilk. Our protagonist Sara, a high school student, is accosted and finds herself in a strange room strapped to a bed. Next to her, in another bed, is her best friend Joe, and they're told that they only have a few minutes to use the key they have to save one of them. The other person is doomed to die, squashed by the bed folding in half with, I have to assume, extreme force. The reason they know this? Because Sara can see a girl around her age through a window being killed in just that way.

This sets up the way that the story will run – Sara and Joe manage to figure out a way for both of them to survive (though I'm not quite sure how the key being candy-coated is an answer) and discover that there are others trapped in the same place with them…and that they're going to have to play a succession of games in order to survive. Presumably the idea is to leave only one person in the end, but given that everyone but a pair of sisters was able to solve the killer bed issue, that may not be the case. Or, and this feels more likely, the idea is to eventually make everyone turn on each other for the twisted delight of whatever lunatic is running the game in the first place. This makes it more imperative that both Sara and Joe somehow manage to survive, but also distinctly less likely.

It's silly and credulity straining, but most survival games are. This one puts me in mind of the visual novel The Fatal Twelve in its tone, and it certainly has a very real undercurrent of cruelty that gives it a bit of an edge. The art manages to be gross without going overboard, which is much more effective than a major gorefest, so there's some real potential here. This volume may stick to the middle of the road, but I think that could change as the story gets going, and it's worth keeping an eye on this one if you're a fan of the genre.

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Lynzee Loveridge

Rating:

Your Turn to Die follows in the long tradition of the death game subgenre. A seemingly unrelated group of strangers awaken in an unknown area, fitted with a device that will kill them if they don't cooperate, and are tasked with solving increasingly dangerous puzzles that put them at odds with one another for a chance of survival. These stories live and die (ha) in their ability to weave connecting threads between characters, come up with original death scenarios, and perhaps the hardest part: present an end game explanation to justify the game's existence in the first place.

I will always give "death game" series a chance because I love playing detective. In my experience, these stories work best as actual games; see Danganronpa for the primary example, but don't sleep on Zero Escape either if you want to add some mind-bending sci-fi into the mix. Coincidentally, Your Turn to Die originated as a free-to-play game as well and the original creator talks about its cute origin story in the back of the book. I'll say one thing, I came away from the manga wanting to play the game more than ever. We only get one real puzzle scenario in this volume but it would have been executed better in game format. It starts with a Russian Roulette game where Sara, the protagonist, gets to load the gun first. She has three live bullets and the rest are blanks. There was a logical way to place the bullets in the gun to guarantee none of her fellow victims end up getting shot, but it's explained more like an afterthought whereas in the game itself, the player would be actively engaged in solving it. Also the act of "getting items in your inventory" is less naturally presented in the manga.

The Danganronpa comparisons are hard to avoid as well, as the character design and art style are reminiscent of the games. The characters have quirky gimmicks, but the singer-songwriter with crying mascara looks like she was pulled straight out of a Danganronpa game. There's also the hilariously-named buff guy (see image to the right), another character that speaks with animal-like puns, and a very sad little sister with a sand bucket on her head. This lightens some of the overall tension and the story itself is on the lighter end of the horror and gore angle of the genre; it's not cruel for cruelty's sake and stays away from the "torture porn" angle that some of these stories indulge in. Also having a competent female protagonist is a nice change-up.

As a fan of these stories, I'd certainly read volume two, but what I'd really like is a chance to play the game. A Steam release would be really nice!