Manga Review: Doubt

Title: Doubt
Author: Tonogai Yoshiki
Release: Monthly
Status: Complete
Genre: Mystery, Horror, Psychological
Art: A
Originality: A
Story: D
Characters: C
Humor: C
Action: B

Impression: What do you get when you cross the Saw franchise and some paper and ink? Saw, the manga! That’s the easiest way you can describe this and I’m sticking to that. There are a number of slight differences though: 1)The victims are stuck in the same building that the schemer is and they have to figure out who it is 2)There aren’t really any of the cool murder devices like in the movies. 3)The schemer is NOT an old man in a wheelchair talking through a creepy puppet. I had high hopes for this series when I accidentally read who the mastermind was on TvTropes but when I actually got around to reading this I found that the plot falls flat on the premise. The mystery aspect of the series was poorly handled and depended on everything going right and all the victims being complete idiots. If anyone had bothered to think things through or done one thing different then no one would have died. In fact, the one person you’d expect to actually do something right stupidly ends up HELPING the mastermind’s plan succeed! The scope that the series covered was quite underwhelming given the elements that were there by the end and I would rather read more about the mastermind than the so called “mystery” that the manga provided. Seriously, the true identity of the mastermind alone was at least ten times more interesting than the actual plot and I would have enjoyed a series from their point of view.