Tomodachi game - Chapter 127.5

I really enjoyed reading this epic thriller story (and to have the luck to binge read it from start to finish in like 3 days) Never in my life I experienced so many twists and cliffhanger. This was peak entertaining.

But sadly like Death Note years before that there are some things preventing it to become a masterpiece in my eyes:

Sadly there are some plot holes (at least for me) they are all regarding to the mangaka’s artistic decision to write a very dark psychological thriller but never to go “all in” in a dark Seinen genre way. Hear me out:

So one of the core premises of the Tomodachi game is that you can win a lot of money (if you betray your friends) and when you lose you are kind of become a “dept slave” to the Tomodachi organization. Meaning: Woman are forced to prostitute and males are forced to become work slaves.

With all the twists and turns throughout the games, this threat somehow gets completely lost. The fact that the Tomodachi Organization is a evil diabolical mafia organization is pushed to the side! If this impending fate for losers would be appear as actual real, would the plot become even darker? Perhaps. But let’s face it: Where else would all the money of the Tomodachi organization come from to maintain multiple big ships and minions? But somehow I get the feeling the mangaka was hesitant to go all in (despite drawing some fanservice) That’s why, given the plot so far, I find it very unrealistic that the admins (at least Maria, who works as a regular host in the end) don’t all end up in prison. They were all part of a criminal enterprise! They set up evil sadistic games to ruin the life of desperate people by psychologically break them!

This somewhat overly obvious evasion of unpleasant (or too dark) consequences in the finale is most evident in Yutori Kokorogi’s character. She was essentially one of the antagonists in the last third of the manga. It turns out that not only has she been deceiving her friends for years about her involvement with the underworld (it’s suggested that she made money through crime: her “rich”-looking room, or at least its confirmed that she indeed prostitute herself for Shibe’s Dad), but she’s also in cahoots with the Tomogachi Mafia, the very organization that once kidnapped Shiho and severely injured her, so much so that she even had to undergo plastic surgery to repair her face. The whole thing was done to blackmail her police father, and that (along with the money) was the final spark that broke up Shiho’s parents’ marriage. Does anyone remember this entire plot point about this Shiho’s kidnapping in the past? That’s unfortunately the downside when the plot consists almost entirely of crazy twists and turns. The villian who hurt Shiho that much is btw hired later by Yutori Kokorogi.

It’s repeatedly made clear over the course of the last third that Yutori Kokorogi is a thoroughly messed-up and broken person, just like our male protagonist Yuichi. Unlike him, who experiences a kind of transformation, or at least a kind of turn for the better (he clearly chooses his friends over money in the end), Yutori’s character arc is completely gone in the wind. At the end, she’s sitting in the hospital waiting room with everyone else? Is it really realistic that everyone pretends nothing happened? Yutori Kokorogi?! All those sick faces that were terrifying, like Yuichi’s? Her terrifying ability to feign helplessness to her friends? The fact that she hired two professional assassins in the island arc? The fact that Shiho saw her torturing her drunk mother with an electro shocker? And now she’s peacefully drawing manga?

I get it that she kind of was obsessed with Yuichi (“my tormentor but also my messias” idk) and that she lured everyone of her group into the Game in the first place because she is like Shibes Dad suggested it to her and like him she is interested if they choose money over friends. And I’m not particularly mad that she has a good ending (seems like she is really part of the old friends group again).

BUT the execution is so frustrating! The ending of her character arc is totally anti-climatic and anti-cathartic. After the big interesting revelations of her complete tragic backstory its such an irony that this kind of ending let her become the flat uninteresting side character she was in the beginning of Tomodachi Games. I think this is really frustrating because it could be done better with some easy steps.

Tomodachi Game really was the friends we’ve made along the way.