Deadman Wonderland is a Japanese manga series written by Jinsei Kataoka and illustrated by Kazuma Kondou, who also wrote and illustrated the Eureka Seven manga, and published in Shōnen Ace since 2008.
This anime series, based on a series of manga books, centers on Ganta, who is the sole survivor when the rest of his class is murdered. Framed for and falsely convicted of the massacre, Ganta is sent to a privately owned prison, the titular Deadman Wonderland, with an unusual take on incarceration -- doubling as an amusement park by having the inmates perform dangerous games in exchange for privileges in order to provide entertainment for the masses. Every inmate Ganta encounters at the facility has an individual goal -- usually survival. Ganta is not only trying to survive but also prove his innocence.
PILOT
This shit is brutal and tragic as fuck, consider yourself warned
in classic anime fashion, this show is clearly a way to attack the prison system using the mask of high fantasy. during a normal boring day at his high school, a strange man covered in blood and crimson armor floats through his classroom windows. Grinning madly, the Red Man massacres Ganta's entire class but instead of killing him, embeds a red crystal shard in Ganta's chest. it happens real fast, but leaves Ganta in a mass grave of his dead students in a fittingly horrifying way to kick of this nasty ass series. there is plenty of mysteries setup in this first episode, and i love the outwardly kid friendly giant amusement park SQUID GAME prison. I'm looking forward too exploring it more and more as this series goes on, and cringing at the thought of just how nasty things are going to get.
I have a hunch our boys new blood-jitsu powers are going to come in handy...
EPISODE 2
Last episode left me wanting to see more of the prisons carnival games, and this episodes delivers. kinda....
this episode is more so about introducing the rules of the prison, and how its internal politics work. we get the obvious prison brute bad boy, the friendly inmate who dumps exposition of how shit works around here, and the shady backroom dealings that got Ganta here and are still working to manipulate him from inside the prison. The prison continues to be an awesome as fuck setting, and we continue to get some nasty ass gore. the fact that these episodes are 25 minutes each means things feel a little rushed, but i actually enjoy the faster pacing quite a lot.
its easily digestible fun as fuck horror content, and what's not to love about that?
9/10
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