Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table, Vol. 4

Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table Light Novel #4

by Yushi Ukai

After overcoming Cloudy Beach, Yuki learns that a different game that took place around the same time ended in catastrophe, with only a handful of survivors. While investigating alongside Keito, a player she met in a previous game, she finds out about the rise of another psychopath. Amid this dilemma and more, Yuki takes on a game in which the living and dead Halloween Night.

187 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 25, 2023

Reviews

[Cassie · Rating 2 out of 5]

So much potential, I was so excited for another candle woods, I didn’t even need to see the game, but to meet AND be in the head of someone who plays the game to excessively murder beyond what’s necessary is a great idea, especially following the whole concept of this in candle woods. However, this light novel has failed in every single volume to do characterization well. They just keep referring to shion as a homicidal maniac, and not saying why, or literally telling us anything about her at all. I think I might stop here, it’s entertaining when the death games are cool concepts (sadly Halloween night wasn’t interesting at all to me) but the characters have no depth, only the generic titles they’ve been given. They’ll narrate and say, I am this generic title, and won’t often even act like it. Shion isn’t that violent here, despite a MASS MURDER with 80 people involved and only 3 surviving. She isn’t malicious, she isn’t having fun nor seeming indifferent to violence, she’s just like every other “player” that’s in the generic field, playing because of boredom or whatever, with no real backstory or personality. Disappointed. I’ll read the next one because it’s the last one avalible right now, and see where it goes.

[Egglien]

So we can make people semi-immortal but we can't fix Yuki's eye? yea okay

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The series pivots in volume 4 from the death game focus to include the outside world as well, such as players being able to at least partially wipe their memories and be hunted down by others outside the games. We even get a protege for Yuki at the end. This is the furthest in Yuki’s arc we’ve gone with the 47th game which furthers the loss of her natural physical abilities being her greatest ongoing obstacle to 99 games. So far psychopaths haven’t stopped her as she, unlike her mentor, faces them head on.

Shion’s narratives ended up being the highlight for me as we get another window into how psychopaths function in the series with Kyara at their center as antagonistic foils to Yuki and her mentor Hakushi at the beginning. Shion’s personal story is that she killed her own parents who, by her telling, were verbally abusive at least. Shion is outed as a psychopath recreating Candle Woods in the game Garbage Prison. In retaliation, from both fear and vengeance, a team of players organized by Keito (from Scrap Building) hunt down Shion who survives miraculously after her agent suddenly gives her an opportunity to play Halloween Night so is gained agency protection. Shion reflects in the book how those like her can’t survive for long openly as society can’t function that way so the majority stamps them out even those playing the death games. The cynical take is psychopathy is unacceptable due to fear and vengeance rather than an intrinsic sense of the wrongness of it.

Another acolyte of Kyara, the killer in Candle Woods, was Moegi who was told to kill her parents by Kyara as an initiation right which she did not from abuse but from feeling emptiness. Kyara actually shared a living space with these two up to her demise by Yuki as a little society, dependent on hiding themselves from the public. This wouldn’t be considered a society by one like Aristotle but a pact among rogues essentially as it lacks a shared good, yet it could form the nucleus of one for Hobbes.

Psychopaths are often portrayed as emotionless but this doesn’t seem to be the case, especially for Shiboyugi. For one thrill seeking behavior is linked to certain neurotransmitters which produces fearlessness. Also there is intense rage, a compulsion towards violence. Kyara expressed this to Yuki by asking if she is ever kicked a chair out of frustration and if it made her feel good. Shion expressed intense rage welling inside her, compelling her to go out and kill. We haven’t gotten first person narration for Hizumi yet, she was killed off in Ghost Beach, yet from Shion she had the least control or communication ability of the bunch but was also the youngest. Shion would deliberately antagonize her to get a reaction which would result in being chased around, ended up improving her combat skills. She seems to fit more the antisocial type, which isn’t shy or introverted like in popular usage, but inability or unwillingness to follow social norms. Moegi was the least genuinely psychopathic as she retained inhibitions which produced melancholy and ultimately her demise by Yuki. Moegi’s attraction towards the games and Kyara was from emptiness, somewhat melancholic like Yuki, but with a stronger self hatred. These don’t read as emotionless.

No extra commentaries at the end this time but we got six over all which was cool.