Spoiler Free
Following suit with the Yandere binge I pulled out a story I read a couple of years ago and re-started it. Now imagine it is 2016, I just got a new job, was working nights and the world wasn’t on fire, yet. I was spending my breaks reading an ecchi, horror story about a nerd that found himself in a strange position. Add a lot of violence, unneeded sex scenes, and a heroine that’s sole power is being crazy and boom, you have the 6.94 MAL scored Deadtube.
Penned by Yamaguchi, Mikoto and illustrated by Kitakawa, Touta. Deadtube follows film student and cameraman extraordinaire Machiya, Tomohiro as he is approached by swim star and implied hotty of the school, Mashiro, Mai. Now Mai has an odd request of Machiya, film her for three days straight, every moment, every second, no matter what.
Agreeing to her terms what follows is a strange, but oddly cute set of events. Rather it is swim practice, a strip to school or even her using the bathroom Machiya films it, all the way up to the final day when he is tasked with filming Mai’s date. Being an overly horny manga it gets sexually almost right away, climax as Mai starts to bludgeoned her date, brutally murdering him on camera.
This is the stage set for Deadtube as a whole. Becoming Mai’s full-time cameraman (really without a choice) Machiya delves into his own perverse nature as seeing Mai kill people is such a stunning affair it becomes the only thing that can excite him.
My personal thoughts of Deadtube are well, confusing. To be honest, when I read this series a couple of years back I was riding the same high I did this time around. It is ecchi gore trash, but page after page I was hooked to the story unfolding in front of me, all the way up to the point it became a comedy.
Deadtube suffers from what many of these niches do. Let’s double down on the gore, the violence, and the rape, all the way to a point where none of it makes any sense anymore. Mai plays by the same rules as Gasai Yuno does from Mirai Nikki. It is never implied at any point in Deadtube that superpowers of any kind exist, however, things that aren’t humanly possible are pulled off many times by the high ranking Deadtube actors.
However, like when Yuki praises Yuno she can do inhuman things, her power literally just being crazy. Much the same goes with Mai, time and time again she seems to be out for the count, especially when she is alone however as soon as Machiya pulls up the camera something snaps turning her into an OP character, though unlike Yuno, they don’t really make fun of it in Deadtube like they do in Mirai Nikki.
One thing Deadtube does well enough in my opinion is it has an interesting way of taking a look at Internet culture if it means to or not. The whole point of Deadtube is to farm likes for money, and with the system of rewards and punishments (if you don’t win you have to pay the price of whatever occurred in the video of the winner) it makes sense that people would eventually turn desperate, doing violent things to get as many views as possible and protect their own interest. The real world does play by the same rules though not to the extent. I have ranted about social media before and my thoughts on it are not favorable but the damage it does, the people it creates, the worse it brings out.
But none the less Deadtube even with that charming undertone fails to hit its mark. What started off as an interesting story with a solid world built around it quickly fell into a mess of a plot that was stacked so high with corpses nothing made sense anymore. Even the main goal in the earlier chapters gets all skewed later on, as it falls into doing the same story arc just with different characters.
At this point, I am unsure if I will keep tabs on this as more chapters roll out in the coming months. Even though I really liked seeing Mai and Machiya build their relationship at this point (chapter 51) that has even taken a back seat as she is getting little page time at all. It does read as if the author had fifty ideas in their head and just said fuck it, they are giving me an X amount of volumes, lets see what we can steam out.
If I had to put a number on it, maybe a 4/10, 5 for the earlier chapters but the story falls flat quick. Though if you are in the market for overly gore-filled chaos of a mess then it might be up your ally, if not, it might be best just to stay away.
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