I only read a few chapters online hoping it would change, show a hint of light at the end of the tunnel, but no, and it left me physically sick. Disgusted by the world created, where nobody is at least a decent human being, full of rape and violence and cruelty. It’s set in a school, so they are all classmates, and they are all present, unlike many stories where there’s a main couple and all the others are there only to fill the background. Yet, with so many characters, there isn’t one decent.
The plot that you read everywhere is “ruled by a cruel and arbitrary ranking system, the school is a pool of jealousy, envy and lust. Azusa was the king for a long time but one day he falls to the very bottom”.
This is nothing like Battle Royale though. This is a class where every year (or every so often, it’s not really clear when things will change) they see an empty cardbox on the teacher’s desk at it is announced that they must start looking for the cards. What they can find will be their role in the class until the game will start again.
There’s a king and a queen, the highest ranks. Then there are those that suck up to the leaders, until at the very bottom there is “the target”, the one that will be constantly targeted.
It starts with Azusa being the king and acting like a bully. When the game starts again he thought he could use Karino’s ‘crush’ on him to get him to find the king card for him, but Karino actually gets the king card for himself and hands the target card to Azusa, the only card left since he didn’t even try to search, he only wanted the king card and nothing else and was convinced he could use the other guy to obtain it.
From this moment, those that had been bullied before become the bullies and Karino starts raping Azusa at any chance he gets. It’s not a case of ‘intimate’ or ‘unhealthy’ relationships, it’s a matter of rape treated as if it was just sex, as if it could be explained.
Azusa’s character gets a little bit of background, to explain why he is who he is, because his mother (the only decent character I saw, but not a very ‘important’ one) is a poor woman, a prostitute who always told him that there are those at the top of society and those at the bottom and she hopes that he might finish school and find a way not to be at the bottom like her. She raised him alone and loves him, trying her best to survive in this f... up world.
Azusa always felt that he can be what he wants, that he can be on top, should be actually. Throughout those pages I read he was the only one who didn’t change who he was in the first page, it only changed what he could do and what was done to him, but not his attitude or who he was.
Still, the story starts with him being a bully, enjoying using others and punching the low-levels. So, he will be the victim throughout the story, but he started as a bully.
One guy, the quiet one, seems to be a good guy for like a few seconds, even handing a better card to ex-target-Atsumu (I think that’s his name) and keeping a lower one for himself. They start a relationship and it seems like they’re both good, but then only weak-Atsumu keeps mostly on the ‘good’ side. The quiet guy becomes a shit himself when he helps Karino in his sadistic plan to have Atsumu rape Azusa - both the victim are forced in this, Atsumu doesn’t want to. Actually Atsumu is the only character that shows (other than a soul) how ‘society’s system’ unfortunately works. He kept being scared even after getting the Jack card, then started voicing his thoughts to protect his quiet guy, then started to feel that the Jack’s power wasn’t enough when the queen took away his guy for a while and he started thinking that he needed to be king and almost killed-hurt the queen if his guy hadn’t stopped him. He realises then that he almost became a monster and wants it to stop. He’s also the only one who ‘rebeled’ when he tried to talk to a teacher to stop Karino from keeping raping Azusa, and in retaliation Karino did what he did with the quiet guy’s help, making Atsumu’s wish to never make a friend again so to not put them in danger.
The toughest part though is that it’s not clear why this system exist. The teachers seem to not care at all, basically it’s the student themselves who carry on with this. The king tells his classmates to rape Azusa (to make him decide to accept to be raped by only him and not by everyone) and they run after him, just like that. Why do they do it? Nobody is forcing them. They enjoy the little power they have, it seems, because it’s always the student themselves who get upset if the target or a low-level seems to keep his head high or something, the adults seem to be absent almost completely. No adult seems to give a shit about this whole thing. One way or the other. If the students wanted it to stop, they wouldn’t even have to do much. They could respect the ‘system’, which means the king and queen come first, and then the others, and if there’s a surprise-interrogation let’s throw the target to the teacher... there would be no need for violence at all, that’s just them wanting it. The kids. They enjoy the system, revel in it, use it to express all their inner darkness.
It is also sad that Karino is rich, like the son of a rich man or a politician, I think it was, which also makes me think, what if he couldn’t find a high-level card? He does, but would they have accepted it if he hadn’t? Could this son of an important family ever be the target?
Actually, do families know about the ‘system’?
Let’s not even waste words on the hypothesis that Karino might really be into Azusa and doing this to protect him or shit like that, because I hate all that. If he wanted to protect him the first step would be NOT to rape him every single day, NOT humiliate him, NOT torture him like that. Pretty simple.
I understand that it may be compared to real society, and there might be long discussions about this, and blah blah blah, still that would be true even if there was less violence.
I don’t know if it has been finished by the author or if it’s still going on; if it’s finished and someone has read how it goes, I’d like to know if there is a light at the end of the tunnel or not (and how long is this tunnel...). I can’t bear it any longer, things only get worse page by page, the rapes are frequent and violent and I’m sick, emotionally and physically, I can’t stand this.
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