The following contains spoilers for SHIBOYUGI: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table Episode 2, currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
Two weeks in, and I’m actually really enjoying Shiboyugi: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table. It’s weirdness is more than enough to keep drawing me back in. I like weird. Episode 2, “Chains Of—-” promises things are just going to get weirder as the anime progresses.
With Yuki on her quest to beat 100 death games, there’s a long way to go until she gets there. Her expertise plays a huge role in game #11, which finds her in a really annoying situation. The girls participating are already a group. They’ve got experiences of their own. With a really snooty princess as their leader, things are gonna get nasty quickly.
Rude People Shouldn’t Be Allowed in Shiboyugi, or Any Death Game
One of the things I’m finding appealing about Shiboyugi is how disorienting the animation is. Last week, I noted the pacing and how slow it feels. Watching Episode 2, which is the standard 24ish minutes, I find the slow crawl of the story to make a lot more sense. Death games often present as fast-paced, with players racing against the clock (or away from their death.) Shiboyugi takes its time, offering a more cerebral and internal approach to the death game at hand.
Awakening in a garden after having been gassed, Yuki takes a moment to gain her bearings. The ticking clock counting down the seconds in the upper left corner only serves to draw more attention to the pacing and her disorientation. As she heads into the building to find her supplies and the map for the game, Yuki realizes it’s an escape game.
Finding another player in the garden where she woke up, she settles down beside her to wait for her to wake. Once the other girls are all awake, they sit down together for introductions. The girl who woke right after Yuki seems to be the de facto leader for the other three girls. She makes this clear the moment she starts dictating the parameters of their conversation.
Introductions Shouldn’t Be One-Sided In a Death Game
This girl, who doesn’t even name herself, is already off to a bad start. She’s being deliberately evasive and cruel toward Yuki, isolating her from the established group almost immediately. Even after she tells them her name and the number of death games she’s participated in, all the leader seems to care about is her “experience.” How can she use it to benefit them?
Finally, the leader introduces herself as Mishiro, then her friends: Kotoha, Chia, and Kato. As they each go through their past experiences and expertise, with Mishiro naming herself the leader. When Yuki speaks up that out of them all, she has the most experience, Mishiro instantly shuts her down. This girl becomes a problem the moment she opens her eyes. The problem only gets worse when she learns Yuki is more experienced than her, with 10 games under her belt. They’re already off to a pretty bad start as a group.
Keeping an eye on the clock, all of this takes place in half-an-hour. The group is likely given a full 6 hours to complete the game. With snooty Mishiro in the lead, it’s doubtful they’re going to actually make it. Well, not all of them, anyway.
Shiboyugi Uses Land Mines In Its Second Episode
Image property of Studio Deen
Listening to Mishiro talk throughout Episode 2 makes me loathe her almost as much as Yuki does. She spends every second she can shooting Yuki’s ideas down, completely discrediting her. She even goes so far as calling her a liar about how much experience she has with death games. The first body they discover lets on what they should be on the lookout for: land mines. With nothing but flashlights to guide them through the dark building, it’s going to be tough discovering them.
At every turn, nothing Yuki says seems to have an impact. Isolating her at the back of the group, she’s realizing pretty quickly she’s going to be better off on her own in this game. When one of their numbers accidentally steps on a land mine, Mishiro instantly gives her up for dead. Yuki tries to intervene, pointing out that she’s not dead yet, but Mishiro challenges her yet again.
Fed up with being undermined, Yuki decides to go it on her own. Leaving us on the edge of our seat waiting for the second part of this game after Yuki parts ways with the group, I’m already eager for next Wednesday’s episode. I will watch this anime simply to see Mishiro die a horrible death. Though, like I said above, it’s more than that now. The bizarre animation style and constant reminder of the pacing with the clock on the wall has me fully roped in.
Shiboyugi Season 1, Episode 2 On a Scale of 1 to 10
Image property of Studio Deen
As I said, only two episodes in and Shiboyugi: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table has absolutely grown on me. The things I found kind of off-putting in Episode 1 actually make more sense by Episode 2, serving to establish an undeniable atmosphere. The drama ramps up quite a bit in the second episode, which suggests we’re going to see all kinds of people in these death games going forward. The fact that I am eagerly awaiting a nasty character’s hideous and brutal death is definitely mean. But then, why else do we watch these kinds of shows if not for that?
The rating rises this week by 1, earning a 7 out of 10. If it keeps going the way it is, I can definitely see the rating going even higher.
