The “death game” sub-genre sees ordinary people fight for survival through murderous games, puzzles, and exercises. These heightened stories have become so popular because of their tendency to turn torture and suffering into a twisted form of entertainment — a concept that feels increasingly authentic with each passing year. There are dozens of anime that fit the murderous death game mold between Deadman Wonderland, Danganronpa, and Gantz. However, there are also a handful of series that specifically follow Takashi Miike’s As the Gods Will and Hwang Dong-hyuk’s Squid Game’s example, where childish recreational games and activities become the competitive tools of these characters’ destruction. Kaiji, Liar Game, Death Parade, Alice in Borderland, and Btooom! all follow this model to some extent. As the Gods Will predates Squid Game by six years, but there’s fascinating crossover between these two death game stories. As the Gods Will is the more absurd and horrifying of these two narratives, only for it to be the title that’s flown under the radar for too long.
Both Squid Game and As the Gods Will are wild survival stories that feature children’s games as vicious death traps, right down to the first trial in both stories being horrific takes on “Red Light, Green Light.” Despite these heavy initial similarities, As the Gods Will forges its own path and builds its identity through some crucial differences. Squid Game, for instance, is set in the real world, with players who volunteer, in a commentary on the debt crisis and society’s inequality regarding how far people will go to become financially solvent. Alternatively, As The Gods Will involves forced high school students who are ultimately the pawns of Gods in a more heightened fantasy world, which seems to be a commentary on religion’s increasingly trendy and hollow nature. In this case, Gods and religious symbols, literally use humanity as their subjugated chess pieces to prove a point about power and human will. The fact that these test subjects want to rise up and kill the Gods at the end also reflects a greater frustration over “the system” and an ability to rise against it, whereas this freedom is absent in Squid Game.
Squid Game also creates a world that’s both bigger and smaller – it devotes time to VIP customers who are specifically putting bets on the game, as well as provides flashback backstories for its players, all of which a two-hour movie doesn’t necessarily have the luxury to explore. As the Gods Will is rich in world-building and teases a broad, fantastical universe that would surely reach even greater heights in a sequel. Cutting this story short instead turns every brief glimpse of As the Gods Will’s “outside world” into a tantalizing tease that doesn’t just allow the audience’s minds to run wild, but actively encourages it.
As the Gods Will’s opening scene is sublime moviemaking and there’s a strong case to be made that it’s actually one of the strongest openings to any of Miike’s films. This introduction hurls the audience into this chaotic, bizarre universe when all of a sudden high school students start exploding into blood marbles. The participants are as confused and overwhelmed as the audience, while Miike attacks both with this visceral assault on the senses. It’s such an effective way to kick off a death game movie that conveys an intense feeling of being trapped without any prologue. It’s closer to Cube or the original Saw where the audience just gets dropped in these traps and must parse out the details and plot.
As the Gods Will’s first ten minutes would be an Academy Award-quality short film if it were released on its own rather than just the prologue to this institutionalized mayhem. This introduction immediately sets the movie’s tone and simultaneously throws the viewer off-kilter. Miike doesn’t just eviscerate his cast, but he cycles through a myriad of creative ways in which these victims explode into marbles–whether they leak out of their eyes or cascade out of other orifices. It establishes that anything is possible in this universe and that the bodies are most certainly going to hit the floor.
As the Gods Will brilliantly teases the audience in regard to who will be the film’s leading protagonist, only to gloriously explode that paradigm in a bloody mess of marbles that teaches viewers to question every stereotype that they think they can rely on to gain some kind of advantage over the movie. Miike’s film spouts a lot of snappy generalisms on a life that’s ruled by games and entertainment. At one point in As the Gods Will, the movie’s renegade wild card, Takeru Amaya (Ryunosuke Kamiki), proclaims, “In the new world, power will be everything,” This isn’t a philosophy that’s shared by Shun Takahata (Sota Fukushi) or Ichika Akimoto (Hirona Yamazaki). However, it’s significant that this story features a bully who actually relishes this disorder and how it can help him rise above his station in life. He’s a loose cannon who works in opposition to the heroes and becomes an additional worry beyond the movie’s grander godly threats.
It’s easy to reduce As the Gods Will down to its radical games, much like with Squid Game, but it’s not without good reason. Five death games make up the movie’s major obstacles, which evolve from “Red Light, Green Light” with a Daruma doll, Belling the Cat, the blind-folded guessing game Kagome Kagome, Shirokuma, which is a truth-telling exercise with a giant polar bear, which all finally culminates in a high-stakes hybrid of kick the can and hide and go seek. Each of these juvenile exercises feature heightened CG supernatural dictators, diverse settings and costumes, and unique human challenges that boil down to intelligence, fitness, imagination, and luck.
Squid Game might put the greatest emphasis on luck when it comes to these four extremes, but As the Gods Will definitely prioritizes imagination. Most games include a clever twist wherein the participants find a way to outsmart the sadistic rulekeepers–albeit without technically cheating–and survive. Many of these games are so improperly balanced that they basically require the player to rise above the prescribed rules in order to crack the secret behind each of these exercises. All of these games are juvenile activities to have fun and kill boredom, but those who survive and understand go on to grasp the real values behind these seemingly-simplistic exercises. In doing so, these high school students already become gods through their ability to transcend convention and subvert reality to suit their narratives. Godhood is already realized, so to speak, before any of these participants are crowned the winner.
As the Gods Will is more interested in its gonzo bloody spectacles than the deeper substance beneath them. That being said, there’s still a deep, contemplative theme in this movie about the dangers of boredom, complacency, and being spoiled through the need for constant adventures and excitement. It reinforces the importance of being happy and grateful with a humble existence, even if that’s just a teenager’s monotonous routine. It’s a very regimented message that discourages rebellion and individuality in many respects. This is ultimately at odds with the movie’s final message, which does suggest that the disenfranchised should overthrow the system.
This speaks towards a more complex agenda that rewards normalcy and the ability to be grateful without having much, since this is still a level of freedom that’s an impossible luxury for others. As the Gods Will argues that if one is forced into a life-or-death survival game then it’s best to rage against the machine and turn against the moderators and administrators rather than the players. There’s community to be found in shared trauma and the fact that misery loves company. A sense of camaraderie and teamwork is much more prominent in As the Gods Will than it is in Squid Game, despite how the former revolves around a bunch of selfish teenagers.
As the Gods Will also pushes the premise that God is actually consumerism and the public’s addiction to this bloodshed that’s skewed into game show-esque entertainment. There’s no competition without an audience or someone who consumes these boredom-reducing spectacles. As the Gods Will doesn’t go as far with this theme as Squid Game, largely due to how the former only provides the briefest snapshots of life outside the “death game murder cube.” It’s still fascinating that both of these death game stories flirt with this premise in some capacity. This is the biggest ideal that young-adult death game cinema later embraces, such as the social hierarchy and one-percenter privilege that’s baked into movies like The Hunger Games, Escape Room, or even Hostel. Financial freedom and entitlement are the deciding factors behind the players and the gamekeepers. As the Gods Will instead reinforces a world that’s even more unstable and unpredictable where a cocky teenage deity has the potential to rewrite existence.
As the Gods Will is haunted by a lack of closure since Miike’s movie only adapts half of Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Akeji Fujimura’s source material manga. The cliffhanger conclusion is certainly felt and makes the movie come across as incomplete, despite everything that it accomplishes. It’s easy to picture As the Gods Will going through the young-adult franchise mold as a contemporary to The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, or Divergent. Miike is no stranger to sequels and would have been up to the opportunity, but the film amounts to an odder punk rock relic that rages against the machine, riles up the audience for rebellion, and then cuts to black. It’s frustrating, but also an ending that feels distinctly Miike. It’s akin to the note that Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel goes out on, which has left fans clamoring for a sequel for close to five years.
As the Gods Will is Takashi Miike at the top of his game with a darkly satirical horror-action story that’s wildly ahead of its time. The movie is more relevant than ever a decade after its release due to the sub-genre’s intense proliferation in a short amount of time. Surreal survival death game stories are now mainstream and the genre has reached such a fever pitch that there are literal game shows that are based on these sick social experiments. They’re an inch away from becoming reality. It’s exciting that As the Gods Will and Squid Game can resonate with audiences in such diverse, yet complementary ways. Anyone who’s hungry for more death game mayhem after Squid Game owes it to themselves to roll the dice with As the Gods Will.
The post Death Games: How Takashi Miike’s “As the Gods Will’ Was “Squid Game” Before “Squid Game” appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.