Liar Game (2007)

Is it innocent to lie?

Do not know how to describe this. The story is interesting, the games are awesome, but there is something weird in Nao’s character that I cannot deal with.

STORY – the premises are amazing, a situation where people are forced (by an unknown organization) to play a dangerous game. The game is all about money (each player starts, normally with 100 million yens) and the possibilities of doing everything (except physical violence) to win the most. If you win, someone will loose and have to pay the penalty (usually, the entrance fee). If you win but do not want to continue, you have to pay half of the earnings. The debt will always be collected by “any means necessary”.
So, we have Kanzaki Nao, an honest college student, not very smart and missing some social skills and Akiyama Shinichi, a genius ex-convict that, for a strange reason, continues helping Nao.
ACTING – I do not find so interesting the aspects of anime, with exaggerated behaviour and laughs, etc. And the main characters are very well played, Nao, Fukunaga and especially Shinichi. The rest are also good.
MUSIC – did not find any music to keep and play, but the music is very well combined with the plot!
REWATCH – I will, certainly, watch some of the games again. Some games are awesome, some are spoiled by the flower power movement of Nao’s brain…

OVERALL – I really like this, especially the games and Shinichi acting and geniality. Sometimes I find it very hard to put up with Nao, particularly in 2 things: first, why the shining hero always comes to save her and second, how come that she gets smarter through the end?!?!
If you like riddles, games, etc please watch this!
And please, do not watch the Korean version. If you want to do that, please start with that first. I did the opposite and my brain cells committed seppuku!!! Nothing, nothing in the K version is better that this, and I usually love k dramas.
I give overall 8.5 because i think Nao is not a coherent character and she drives the story...

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Ceritanya menarik

ini ceritanya menarik karna ada unsur psikologi dan trik ² memecahkan masalah.. tapi sangat do sayangkan akting pemainnya yg tidak natural dan terkesan berlebihan..

serta pengulangan cerita yg membuat malas dan membosankan. bahkan jika semua hal bertele-tele di setiap episode di hapus , serial ini cukup untuk jd sebuah film yg epik dan menyegarkan.

sayang sekali begitu banyak pengulangan cerita dan acting pemain yg lebay yg menggangu jalan ceritanya. bahkan episode satu sampai sepuluh terangkum jadi satu di episode 11 saja 🤣 benar-benar membuang waktu dan di episode 11 part 1-3 saya hanya banyak skip adegan² yg hampir setiap episode di tampilkan.

saya mau beri nilai lebih kecil dari 1 tidak bisa.

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Soo, clearly from my scores, you can tell I did not like this show lol.

Story:
I decided to watch this after watching season 1 of The Genius. I read in the comments that it was based on this drama, or something along those lines, so figured I'd enjoy the drama as well. I think the story is definitely the greatest aspect. It's interesting and right up my alley; it's a shame that the other elements of the drama prevented me from enjoying it.

Cast:
I don't know if this is the case with all Japanese dramas, but I found the acting weird. Like, I couldn't tell if the point was humour or not, which made it awkward to watch. I didn't know whether to laugh or feel the intensity of the scene. Basically, too awkward for me. The only character I kind of liked was Akiyama (I mean tbf, he was cool), but just not enough to keep watching this show.

Music:
I don't remember any particular tracks.

Overall:
It was just too awkward for to me continue. In all honesty, I hear that once they start playing the games, it's a lot more interesting, so I do feel compelled to continue it. However, not anytime soon, so it shall remain on my 'Dropped' list :(

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Liar Game is a relatively short drama with effectively 11 Episodes à 35 minutes runtime. It basically amounts to 5-6 episodes of regular korean drama lengths. This means, that your time investment in this show isn't as high as for most other dramas. Taking that aspect into consideration, Liar Game is a successful show in giving you the enjoyment for your invested time.
The story is innovative, but lackluster. It has nice mysteries but definitely isn't groundbreaking in this aspect. For all ya'll folks who watch anime, you know what I mean. There are titles such as Akagi or Kaiji and they clearly surpass this type of story depth. Now that we've talked about the story strengths and weaknesses, let's focus on the main and best point about Liar Game: the acting. Especially Akiyama (Shouta Matsuda) and Fukunaga (Kousuke Suzuki) come to mind as being greatly presented. Hasegawa is another strong point in the story aswell as being well presented by the actor Kinya Kitaoji. On the other hand, there is one big weak point in this and sadly it's the main actress of Erika Toda representing Nao Kanzaki. Her character, which can easily be put in the jar "useless as it is", mainly meets one purpose: Representing the "dumb" and inexperienced viewer in this story so the writers can easily combine these two parties and give the viewer an "identification person" in this story. As many other shows do this, this doesn't seem that stupid at first, yet Erika Toda acts this so poorly and the writers especially lack using the key point of identification, which this character brings. All this leads to it being very frustrating to watch this drama all through out and even if the viewer doesn't understand every single aspect of the mysteries and puzzles presented, he/she can be sure that Akiyama will come to rescue to save the day and that Kanzaki will never once solve anything by herself. Except one example in the revival round, where she finds a way to make everyone happy, Kanzaki clearly lacks intelligence and empathy for her situation she is in.

Therefore, if characters are really important in a show for your own enjoyment, i suggest NOT watching this drama. If you can easily oversee stupidity and naiveness over and over again without any learning done by the main character aswell as her poor actress representing her, then go ahead and enjoy the about 6 hours of 7,5/10 story.

More in-depth review: https://youtu.be/foNCXs6o2x0

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