King’s Game: Begin Again and Chaos review  

New fall anime King’s Game revolves around Nobuaki Kanazawa, a new student at a high school and students are trying to get to know him but he’s extremely standoffish. Suddenly, every student gets a text message from ‘King’ saying they must follow the order issued out or else there will be consequences.

He urges everyone to take it seriously; but they think it’s a prank he sent out to other students because this never happened before he got there. But Nobuaki has a secret of his own, he’s played this deadly game before.

Episode 1 starts off with blood and gore as we see a young girl with her limbs falling off as Nobuaki tries to save her from drowning. And by the end of the episode, we learn that King’s Game is serious business when a few students are found hanging dead in their rooms and another student who didn’t follow the order sent for him bleeds to death from holes that appear on his body.

Students are swayed to believe Nobuaki as they witness this tragedy happens before their eyes. but they also still believe he might have something to do with this.

Episode 2 serves as part flashback episode where Nobuaki talks about the first time he ever played the game and no one took it seriously until a student was found dead in his room. Later, another student dies who doesn’t follow his orders. However, something else interesting happens that hooked me in.

Natsuko Honda is a fellow student at Nobuaki’s new school and she seems slightly aggressive, but doesn’t cross the line until she is approached to fulfill the order sent to her. The other student involved attempts to follow the order against her will and suddenly, her eyes change and she grows intensely aggressive.

Natsuko combats and then this new persona spills over into the rest of the episode, suggesting that she may be a lot more than she appears. This moment reminds me of one of my favorite anime characters, Yuno Gasai of Future Diary and I’m secretly hoping she’ll be like a yandere character type.

[irp]

This anime is kind of generic at first glance since it borrows elements from several other horror manga and anime of its genre. But honestly if you can watch My Hero Academia and Black Clover (or any of the dozens of other shows that are nearly identical), and can enjoy them for their similarities and differences then you’ll have no issue with King’s Game. If nothing else, stick around to see what Natsuko has to do with all of this.

King’s Game episodes are released Saturdays on Crunchyroll and Chapters 1 – 30 of King’s Game Origin manga are available on the Crunchyroll manga app. — By Pierre Brown

Rating: 7 out of 10

Photo Credit: Funimation