Jinrou Game (manga)

**Jinrou Game** (人狼ゲーム *Jinrō gēmu*) is the first installment in the manga series of the same name. It follows protagonist Nishina Airi through the events of the game.

## Synopsis

One night, senior high school second-year Nishina Airi is abducted. When she wakes, she is trapped in an uncanny, isolated space with other students from her high school and forced to take part in the “Werewolf Game”. Thus, a death game filled with fear and terror that would pit “Werewolves” and “Villagers” against each other, force them to murder – a game with rules so absolute, defiance is punished by gruesome death – begins

## History

#### Chapter 1 - *Absolute Rules*

While Airi is on her way home after closing up the bookstore she worked at, a car follows and stops next to her. A couple people jump out of the car, restraining and knocking Airi out to bring her to the site of the Jinrou Game.

Waking up, she finds herself in a room with X other students around her age, most of which are strangers. Everyone around her seems as confused as she is, but one of her classmates, Inose, is next to her calling out her name. After only a brief moment of confusion from the group, an announcer welcomes them to the game and explains the rules to everyone.

Two "werewolves" hide among the players, the rest of which are dubbed "villagers". If the werewolves manage to kill all the villagers, they win the game. If the werewolves are both found, however, it's the villagers' win. The werewolves will make their moves at night, and all players are required to meet back in the starting room at 20 hours each day to vote.

Whoever gains majority of the votes will be executed on the spot. The execution is left up to the players to take care of. Any failure to cooperate with the rules will result in punishment by death. A draw will result in a re-vote, and should that also result in a draw there will be no execution that day.

All participants are required to stay in their rooms between midnight and 6 AM, with the werewolves attacking between midnight and 2 AM. Looking at someone else's role card after they're distributed is strictly prohibited to protect the sanctity of the game. The winning side of the game is promised one hundred million yen.

As everyone looks for the role card under their chairs, Airi picks up hers and sees she's been appointed a villager. The announcer reveals that the game includes a "diviner", who will be able to check one person's role at night. Kawasaki Fumitaka wonders if the role is too unfair, but is quickly intercepted by Konomi Inoue who states that being the diviner would put a huge target on your back.

Inose quickly decides to refuse to play the game, standing up and loudly proclaiming her decisions to the announcers and calling them criminals. They tell her she doesn't have a choice in the matter, which she seems disgruntled by. For disobeying the rules, Inose's collar sets off and begins to tear her head from her body. Airi tries to help as Inose screams in pain before drawing her final breath, showing everyone just how serious the game really is.

#### Chapter 2 - *Prisoners*

The group is in a state of panic following the death of Inose, the louder ones of the group screaming at the top of their lungs for answers to what's going on in fear of ending up like the girl. The announcer comes back to tell them that destroying property, harming other players or actively keeping the game from moving forward are also against the rules. In addition, it is revealed that the werewolves are "experts" in the game.

Tada Tomohiro sees Airi is in despair from what just unfolded, and goes over to comfort her. He asks if she knew Inose before suggesting to everyone that they move her body, to which the others reply they don't want to touch something so disgusting. Kawasaki suggests moving the corpse to Inose's room to avoid having it rot in the voting room. Tada volunteers to move the body, and Kawasaki decides Fujiki should help him. Airi wants to help by carrying the detached head, but gets too overwhelmed and Tada steps in.

The group decides to go with them, searching for Inose's room together instead of staying put in the voting room. Since they can't look at her role card, they wonder how they're gonna find her room number. Kawasaki says they can just do a process of elimination, and suggests they all start with some brief introductions. Upon doing their introductions, they realize that they're all students from the same school, and that the boys and girls have been roomed on the first and second floor respectively. Noticing that everyone is in different rooms with one vacant room between them, they deduce that Inose was likely supposed to live in room 205.

Shimobayashi asks the werewolves to step forward so that as many people as possible could be saved, to which Inaba counters with the point that no one would give up their own life for a group of strangers that wants them dead. Unsure of what to do next, Kawasaki asks if they should all split up until the voting, to which most of them agree. Inaba suggests Tada and Fujiki go take a bath, as she saw one on the way and they're both covered in blood from carrying the body. Airi and Marie decide to join Inaba as she escorts the guys to the bath while everyone else is dismissed by Kawasaki until the voting.

Inaba suggests Airi go take a bath as well, as she got quite a bit of blood on her. While she does so, Inaba asks Marie if her and her sister are the werewolves. The latter is visibly shaken, but doesn't have time to respond before Inaba walks off, proclaiming she's a villager and that she'll definitely try to survive. Airi cries over Inose in the shower before returning to her room, where someone is waiting for her and drags her inside. Kawasaki pins her to the wall next to the door, covering her mouth.

#### Chapter 3 - *Time of Verdict*

Kawasaki is seen sitting on a computer by a desk, and unknown guy lying on a bed next to him. The guy asks him about some music he’s listening to, to which Kawasaki brings up people selling and buying game accounts and running off with the money. While they’re watching a new song Kawasaki released, the guy points out all the nice comments that are rolling in. Upon seeing one negative comment calling the song trash, however, Kawasaki gets mad and tells the guy to go home.

At school the next day, he’s shown to still be angry, going as far as to lash out at someone for bumping into him. When the person grabs his collar to threaten him, he notices Kawasaki has made his own thumb bleed and lets him go. As he walks away, him and everyone and around them starts calling Kawasaki gross and disgusting, angering him further because none of them could possibly understand him. One of the people standing around watching turns out to have been Fujiki.

Kawasaki tells Airi he just wants to talk, but since she wasn't present when he got to her room he let himself in to make sure nothing had happened to her. He makes her promise not to scream before removing his hand, proclaiming he doesn't want her to scream and cause a misunderstanding. He says he wants to talk about the voting, and the two have a seat in the chairs further inside Airi's room. Kawasaki asks if she could consider voting Fujiki with him, calling his existence a threat in itself.

Airi believes killing him based purely on Kawasaki's opinion of him to be wrong, to which he defends himself saying that someone has to die and it shouldn't be himself, as he could prevent another game form happening should he survive. She ends up refusing as she doesn't know wether Fujiki or Kawasaki himself are werewolves or not. Angered, he starts shouting at her and chases her as she runs away. She runs into Tada in the kitchen, who hands her a cup of coffee. As she shares with him what had just happened, he shares with her that Machimura came to him with the same request, likely due to Kawasaki's influence. Tada states that the first step towards survival would be to create alliances, as to risk your own chances of being voted out. She calls him strong, to which he replies that he's also terrified to death.

The group converges in the voting room at 20 hours like the rules state, some of them desperately trying to proclaim their innocence right off the bat. The announcer returns, instructing everyone to point their finger at whoever they wish to vote within a ten second time limit.

#### Chapter 4 - *Execution*

As the timer goes down, Airi can't bring herself to point at anyone. Her collar begins to tighten as Tada yells at her to point at someone. Though she believes no one will die if she doesn't vote for anyone, she ends up pointing towards Machimura to make the collar stop. Machimura draws up the results of the vote on a sheet of paper, showing that Kawasaki, Fujiki and Marie tied with two votes each. Kawasaki is visibly angered by this, immediately lashing out. The announcer then tells everyone to vote once more, but to this time only vote for one of the tied players, who will not be allowed to vote.

With a new vote in ten minutes, Airi suggests they tie the vote once more so no one will need to die. Konomi interjects by saying that if they don't execute anyone, they'll have no chance at finding the werewolves. Fujiki yells at Machimura for voting him, who pins the blame on Kawasaki. Fujiki grabs Kawasaki by the collar and threatens to fight him, which he uses to his advantage by calling him out for being a dangerous person in front of everyone. He tells him to punch him so he'll die like Inose for breaking the rules, before he continues preaching about everyone targeting Fujiki in the voting.

After a five second time limit this time, most of the participants end up voting for Kawasaki. The announcer starts explaining the means of execution as he yells at them for making the wrong choice. They're given a powerful weapon underneath the speaker to carry out the execution, but only have fifteen minutes to do so. No one seems to want to go through with it, but a clearly still angry Fujiki steps up, claiming he's doing it so everyone won't be punished. Kawasaki tries to run away, but is hit with an axe to the knee by Fujiki as he reaches the now locked door. As he pleads for his life, telling everyone how useful he is and apologizing to the man in front of him, Fujiki brings the axe down through his skull.

#### Chapter 5 - *First Prey*

Airi wakes up in her room after blacking out following Kawasaki's execution. Looking out the window, she notices that it's morning and that she survived the night. Relieved, she gets out of bed and prepares herself to go meet the others. She checks her TV before leaving, noting that though it has regular channels, no one seems to be talking about the group of high schoolers currently missing.

Making her way to the dining area, Tada and Marie greet her. The latter was the one who took care of Airi from she fainted and until the werewolves were supposed to make their move. Machimura is the next to arrive, and they wonder who could've been killed at night. Tada notes that the kitchen seems to have been restocked over night, but Airi doesn't have an appetite after what has happened. Shortly after, Inaba arrives, confused why everyone is staring at her. Marie decides to go check on her sister, but runs into her on the way out the door.

Marie and Machimura stay behind as the others go check on Shimobayashi. Just as expected, he's lying dead in his bed when they arrive. His head has been crushed completely and his room is drenched in blood. Realizing that there's at least one werewolf left among the remaining seven players, Konomi theorizes that Airi might be a werewolf due to voting Shimobayashi pointing at her in the first voting. Tada is quick to defend her, saying that they're being too rash, but the others don't seem to feel the same way. Overwhelmed, Airi runs away and locks herself in her room. When she arrives, the TV seems to have switched on by itself. On the screen, the words "Report for Nishina Airi" are displayed.

#### Chapter 6 - *Seed of Doubt*

The TV displays a video of the bookstore Airi use to work part time at. Someone's standing facing a bookcase, and she quickly realizes the person is stealing books. As he turns around, she sees that the person is Shimobayashi, who appears to be stealing multiple copies of the same film to resell. Airi thinks back to the times she's visited the shop, which she seems to have been doing regularly ever since she was a child. She went there to buy a dictionary on her first day of senior high, which was when she was offered a part time job.

As she's blaming Shimobayashi for getting the bookstore closed down, someone knocks on the door. Tada enters, asking her if she'd cried and prying just enough to find out Shimobayashi was the person on her TV. Surprised he knew about it, she asks who was on his report.

As Tada tells Airi what he saw, we see him playing football, getting much praise from his peers and captain. The day after, he tells himself he must have overworked himself as he walks home from school. While he's walking, however, an unknown person on a motorbike accidentally rams into him and he falls over. The person drives off before checking on him, and Tada is permanently injured to the point where he can't play football anymore. This pushes him into a deep depression. He attempts to jump off the roof, but his injuries act up and stop him.

Airi wonders if he called the police, to which he says all they could find out was that the bike was stolen. Tada tells her that the person who ran him over was Konomi, which was backed up by a document saying she visited the hospital the day after, but says it could've easily been falsified to pit them all against one another. He says that if it turns out it's not fake, that he might vote for Konomi purely for revenge. Airi promises that she'll stand by him no matter what he chooses to do during the next voting. Before he has time to respond properly, someone interrupts him with a loud scream.

#### Chapter 7 - *Resentment and Hate*

As the two leave Airi's room, they notice the Inoue sisters are doing the same. Together they go looking for Inaba, who must have been the source of the scream. They find her on the second floor, screaming bloody murder at Fujiki as Machimura holds her back. She swears to kill him and goes to attack him, but accidentally hurts herself instead.

Next, we see Inaba in her underwear next to someone, Asato sleeping in a bed. She complains that he doesn't wanna practice, only "do it" and sleep. She goes to use the computer, and decides to click on the recommended video for one of their songs, noting that the chord progression is just like Asato's. When she gets to their next show, she hears the news that it's been cancelled due to him feeling ill.

A girl claiming to know the drummer pulls her to the side and tells her that he's been sabotaged with drugs. Inaba doesn't buy it at first, saying that if he wanted to withdraw he could've done it earlier. The girl tells her he's been gradually doing more hardcore drugs, as well as mixing things. Inaba scoffs, figuring that's why he hasn't been composing or playing live for a while. After the two girls part ways, Asato texts Inaba an apology and doesn't respond more after.

Inaba angrily proclaims to everyone that Fujiki was the one selling drugs to Asato and headbutts him. This makes her collar tighten for breaking the rules. It only serves as a warning, however, and she isn't killed by it. She says that Asato's record company was connected to a crime syndicate that pushed him into drug use and that Fujiki's gang were responsible for beating him up.

Tada asks if everyone else saw something on their TVs as well, considering himself, Airi and Inaba all did. They all realize that they weren't chosen at random for the game, but were deliberately picked so everyone would have a grudge against another player. Inaba still swears to vote Fujiki in next time, to which Tada tells her getting swayed by personal anger is exactly what the game makers want. Konomi quickly remarks that they seem to be quarreling a lot already.

Inaba states that she doesn't care if she dies, she just wants Fujiki dead. In response to this, Tada shares what he saw about Konomi hitting him with the motorbike. She tries to object, to which he says it'll be a lot easier if she just says she doesn't remember it. She seems to remember something, and quickly blames Tada for walking into the street too carelessly. He says that while he can't forgive her, he won't let his feelings affect how he votes. Tada requests for the person who holds a grudge towards him to step forward, to which Marie hesitantly raises her hand. She doesn't want to share what happened, though, and tells him he doesn't need to apologize when he does so.

Airi decides now would be a good time to tell everyone about Shimobayashi robbing her bookstore. Immediately upon mentioning his name, however, she realizes her mistake as everyone looks at her with suspicion.

## Votes

### First round

* Machimura > Fujiki
* Marie > Shimobayashi
* Tada > Kawasaki
* Fujiki > Marie
* Inaba > Marie
* Konomi > Kawasaki
* Kawasaki > Fujiki
* Airi > Machimura
* Shimobayashi > Airi

## Trivia

* In the picture illustrating the first voting, the survivors are sitting next to each other opposite of the werewolves.

## References

1. ↑ https://mangadex.org/title/13136/jinrou-game