DEAD TUBE

DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

• 

  Lasagna

  100/100
  A unique story with sexual, violent and mind-blowing psychological content. Highly recommended thriller (MATURE 18+)!!!

  Intro: Dead Tube is one of those anime/manga where you can look at the title, and figure out the theme; however this manga is extremely well crafted, very unique, and is a psychological thriller that will leave you wanting more with each passing page.

  Note: The Manga has 10 chapters so far with about 40 or so pages per chapter. I believe the manga is in it's "Second arc" currently . Also note this manga is "Rated Mature" as it has nudity, gore, and sexual /mature language.

  Chapter 0: The manga starts off with chapter 0 giving us an explanation about what "Dead Tube," is, while also giving us a little glimpse of what's to come in the manga; Although we are given this glimpse of the future, the Mangaka does an excellent job of taking the manga above and beyond that little spec of an idea, by "blowing our minds" with extreme psychological intensity with each new step in this "Game."

  Chapter 1: The chapter starts off asking a question to us readers. This question is "What is the best type of movie?" after giving the choices it leaves us with "It's all staged" implying staged movies are bad. With this, we can see that we are looking at live action videos for this
  "dead tube" and not "staged material."
  We then meet our main character, Tomohiro Machiya, who is a Camera Man for the film club at school. He is the typical glasses wearing Otaku who is bullied and has low self esteem. However, one day he gets called to meet with Mai Mashiro, who is the top beauty of the school, and the captain of the swim team, where this meeting changes his life forever.

  The first chapter starts off slow, making us think that everything is okay, but bit by bit, we start to see the twisted nature of "this game" and the twisted nature of it's participants.

  Mashiro asks Machiya to film her for 2 days without looking away, or stopping the filming process, no matter what. It begins with him following her to school, and even into the bathroom and shower. He doesn't stop recording, not even for a second. The next day Mashiro and her bf go on a date and Machiya follows them along the entire time, including into the warehouse where they are going to have sex. This really leaves you questioning your original thoughts and wondering what exactly is going on in this manga. Is she going to submit a video documentary on her life to Dead Tube? Even though deadtube wasn't mentioned yet besides in Chapter 0. It makes you think Mashiro is just teasing Machiya, like you see in some typical manga/anime where this dominant hot girl tries to tease the weak boy; however it ends up taking a mind blowing turn when Mashiro starts beating the shit out of her bf and kills him in front of Machiya. It really gives you a WTF just happened moment, where you have to turn back the page to tart over. Machiyanot only didn't stop recording, but he even got hard from it. His "reward" was a kiss from Mashiro.

  Male Main Character: After this incidentMachiya was very scared, and didn't want to participate anymore, with Mashiro telling him he's already part of the game and that it's too late to drop out. As the Manga moves on, Machiya becomes less and less scared, and accepts his role more and more. He starts "changing," and I really like how his character is developing. Overall Machiya's role is an interesting one. I notice two different themes when it comes to a weak main character. One has a weak main character that gains powers and becomes strong, or even over powered, and the other is just a support character who might get stronger as the series goes on, but not really strong. I find Machiya is the latter. As "The Camera Man" he is just supporting Mashiro's rampaging, by capturing it "most beautifully" He is definitely a great main character, because he sticks with his passion.

  Female Main Character: Mai Mashiro is a very mysterious, yet interesting person. She makes you really like her, but at the same time makes you scared of her. She is affectionate, smart, but very cunning. She knows what she is doing, and she is "playing the game" well. It's hard to know what her goals/true intentions are, or what she wants from Machiya. Shetells him she loves him, and tells people they are lovers, but it's hard to tell if she is just using him or not. She offered him sex and told him he could take her virginity, but who knows if that is a ploy or not.

  Relationship: The relationship between the two main characters is interesting, and I am excited to see more from Machiya's changes and feel that his feelings towards Mashiro will change as they get closer to each other with this "game." I really like how it it's developing, but it's sort of a common theme where the girl loves the guy, but the guy is too scared to comm

  Psychological Theme: The Psychological aspect of this manga is definitely high, with a ton of twists and turns that make you question what you just read. I really do like how it's developing.So far a common theme for both "arcs" is that you want to feel sympathy for the targets of the "Dead Tube" that are being filmed. In reality that changes when you find out the "true nature" of these participants.

  Mature Theme: The sexual/mature aspect is interesting, as it's used to tie into the craziness of "The game." Normally sex and violence are 2 things that are thrown into something to try and gain more ratings. In this case, both are used together in a lot of aspects to create the story. I just hope that the sexual nature doesn't get overplayed too much, but it might be that kind of manga. There are ways to do it well, so lets see how it goes.

  Horror Theme: As for the horror, there are some pretty crazy panels, but overall it's not that intense, and there aren't many of them... yet. I'm assuming there will be more and more craziness as the manga progresses. I also feel everything will get more intense as we progress as well.

  Setting: The setting of the manga is centered around his school life, but the fun begins after dark :).

  Pacing: The pacing of this manga is really good, and I find that we aren't really given a lot of useless detail. There might seem to be some useless panels/pages, but I find that everything plays a part into the overall story, and I find that there are little hints to the final parts of the arc in every page.

  Overall: This manga is amazing, instantly becoming one of my favorites, and I cannot find any faults with it. It's so good that I want to re-read it, having only read it yesterday. From the start to current chapter 10, the whole experience has been fantastic. From the psychological aspect,to the romance, to the sexual topping, the manga is mind blowing. I really hope it continues down this path, and hopefully my opinion doesn't change as I really like this one, but it is only the beginning, so who knows what will happen.

  Recommendation: I HIGHLY recommend this manga if you like psychological, sexual, or violent content. It's uniqueness and story so far is very amazing, and really makes you wanting more.

  Score: I really cannot find any fault with this manga at all, so for now I am giving it a perfect score. My opinion might change as more content is released, but for now it is truly a masterpiece.

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• 

  ninjamushi

  1/100
  DEAD TUBE SUCKS: The Awful Horror Manga About Insane YouTubers

  Imagine you are an aspiring filmmaker, even taking part in your high school’s film research club, when one of your fellow classmates asks you to film her swimming. She likes your footage and asks you to religiously film her for the next two days, including going to the bathroom, bathing, and sleeping. You might convince yourself, “it’s strange but harmless, right?” That is, until the second day and you are asked to follow the girl and her boyfriend, a guy who bullied you in the past. The date is fine, but you feel like you’re looking through glass. You are only a watcher. When it starts to get late, the date climaxes in a dirty, abandoned factory as the two begin to do the deed and you continue to film them. This should be strange, gross, and uncomfortable, but you can’t help but think, “this is boring.” And it’s at that moment, bloody splatters across your face. The girl has struck her boyfriend, his head now gashed wide open and you continue to film as she brutalizes him until he crawls to you, bloody and beaten to a pulp, begging for your help. And then, she kills him in front of you. She is a monster, and you can’t help but to be excited. She is a Dead Tuber and you’ve just become the director of one of the most obscenely violent pieces of internet content.

  Part I: Content Creation is Horror

  Let’s set the record straight: Dead Tube is offensively bad, like ruining your day kind of bad. Yet, it remains so viscerally uncomfortable in the way it blurs the line between fiction and reality. The story follows an arc by arc structure, with each one focusing on a different aspect of making internet videos and live streams, usually of the violent and sometimes sexual variety. The main characters are participating in making content for the website, although their willingness and motivations are somewhat questionable. As the story progresses, it becomes more obvious that to stay relevant and, more importantly, alive, these characters have to increase their shock value and keep up with the new trends across the website. Of course, in the real world, a platform like Dead Tube would not be able to take over society to any extent, and would probably never be able to leave the dark web. Government intervention would at least see to it that the platform would not become widely accessible. However, I’ve started to feel that Dead Tube might be a little closer to reality than I once gave it credit for. After numerous stories of streamers reeking havoc and YouTubers running amuck, not to mention the amount of shock content that can be found on social media, Dead Tube seems a little less like fantasy and more like an extension of the worst sides to internet culture. We are a society that rewards attention grabbing marketing, and internet content creation has thrived on that system.

  What do you look for in online content creation? Entertainment; The average person is always seeking to be mentally stimulated and that is no different while exploring the internet, be it on YouTube or other social media. And I want to put a big emphasis on the word “stimulus,” it’s what will make us continue watching a video; it’s what will make us come back to watch another video. YouTube shorts and Tiktok are so popular because their platforms offer a constant influx of stimuli. Over time, people become bored of seeing the same thing over and over. For YouTubers, that means one thing: You have to grab your audience’s attention with impressive thumbnails and catchy titles, while making the topic consistently gripping. To the most extreme degree, while still remaining harmless, MrBeast has cultivated the perfect cycle of catching the attention of those who see his videos in their feeds and keeping their attention with absurdly fast pacing and, more relevant to Dead Tube, pushing the limits of what could be expected of a YouTube video. Of course, this does impact other content creators and that’s the source of these news articles of pranks going horribly wrong, IRL streamers being public nuisances, and Logan Paul filming a body in a forest. It’s all a game of seeing how far reality can be pushed, all to garner the attention of the everyday audience that lives vicariously through these videos.

  This is why Dead Tube is fascinating to me; It was released in 2014, and that might have been the perfect window for a story about what is essentially diabolical YouTubers doing crazy shit for views and a system that rewards shocking content. It is a poor excuse for a story, yes, but I think its commentary on where social media, content creation, and YouTube were going to be heading was surprisingly on point, if a bit exaggerated, and definitely ahead of its time. That stands in contrast to a manga like Mirai Nikki, which used cell phones as a pivotal mechanic in its battle royale styled death game but failed to comment on how we use cell phones in any meaningful way, which is missed potential because it came out in 2006—right at the dawn of cell phones becoming a dominating part of modern life. At the very least, Dead Tube makes the effort to make a social commentary that was relevant to the time that it was released. Even as the story has evolved over the years, technologies that hardly existed at its release have been implemented. There’s been VTubers and the current arc has something to do with a cryptocurrency; I haven’t read enough to know exactly what’s up with that. New technology and trending social media has had a noticeable impact on the long term direction the manga has taken. It evolves alongside technology and social media in a way that’s pretty cool.

  __Part II: Dead Tube is Awful__

  Now, take everything I’ve said, and throw it out the window because Dead Tube is not some insightful meditation on modern society. This is a trashy, horrid manga that fails to impress in any regard, other than scratching the part of my brain that finds Llamageddon or Angelic to the Core hilariously bad. As would be expected of the premise, these characters get roped into an awful cycle of endlessly upping the ante for the sake of staying relevant and alive within the online space of Dead Tube. For that to happen, the story consistently pushes new scenarios as plotlines, with each one demanding the participants to do something more intense than the last. Of course, that attracts a ton of deranged individuals that want to get rich through some pretty horrible means. Even our main characters choose to actively participate in Dead Tube until their knees are so far in shit that they can’t simply leave. Not to mention, the protagonist is introduced as a guy who doesn’t get aroused by a naked girl, but by her killing her boyfriend as he films her. He is no better of a person than all the other awful people contesting in Dead Tube, as he becomes nearly addicted to making the most extreme films possible until he can shut down the platform himself.

  One of Dead Tube’s most heinous and, honestly, damn-near evil moments is in chapter 13. Furui Kazuo wants to unalive himself, so he talks to the film club. They choose to film the event, but not before first giving him an illusion of a happy life. They pay an actress to have sex with him on film, beat up the bullies that give him a hard time, and give him tons of cash every day. By the end of it, his life is finally looking up and he has a genuine smile on his face. That’s when he is asked to finally do it. He is offered one last chance out of it, but he decides to put on an exploding collar because everything presented to him was a lie. Then, they decide to bring in the paid actress and she begins to cry because it wasn’t necessary for him to die. She tells him that she is sad to see him die, which makes him beg for his life. He is literally kicked down to the ground as he cries that he doesn’t want to die anymore. The main character stands by and films him with zero emotion. All he can say after the filming is done, is that it was boring. Dead Tube is needlessly cruel, for no reason other than to push how morally bankrupt these people are. I find zero enjoyment in moments like this, not because it’s overly dark, but because there’s no humanity to it. For as much as I think some content creators have been truly awful people, this is such a blown out representation of YouTube’s worst qualities that the worst of the worst YouTubers are still not as bad as the main character of Dead Tube, who is an unbelievably horrible character. This is not how you should ever write a main character, even if they are supposed to be morally deplorable.

  Eventually, the scenario becomes less about making more violent videos, because it hits that apex pretty early on, and more about making surprising videos—stories that twist and turn in unexpected ways. The story is about as nonsensical as you could imagine, with each and every arc coming with dozens of plot twists, from changing a character’s entire personality to retconning previous plot points for the sake of drama. Frankly, I’ve read 22 volumes of this series and I think each one had at least 10 major twists. It doesn’t make for a very well structured story, but it ensures that it’ll always find a way to top itself as a shlock fest. The twists themselves lose a little flavor over time because every character is so abhorrently bad natured. I can’t be surprised when the cute anime girl turns out to be a villain when the last 10 also have been villains. That said, Dead Tube has one of the most absurd plot twists I’ve ever seen in a manga, enough so that I genuinely was surprised, partly because I never expected the series to get this bad and partly because it retconned a previous twist that was also ridiculous. This is a roller coaster of a cringe, going through the ups and downs of trying to impress the reader with the most mentally unstable characters and their massive plots to betray their friends for the most violent Dead Tube video—it’s all very corny but the ride is fun. Personally, I continue reading Dead Tube because I am always curious to see how it outdoes itself in trying to be as dark and unpredictable as possible.

  I do have a heavy obligation to mention that, obviously, this is an extremely violent manga, much of which I cannot show on YouTube. I sparingly enjoy the violence, and when I do it’s in complete irony, despite being a fan of many gory and brutal manga, but, in this case, it so rarely serves a point beyond worthless shock value. Not only is it important to inform those that could have adverse reactions to its content, one of my biggest qualms with the manga lies within how it tackles violence: the disproportionate targeting of women, who are treated very poorly, often being beaten, most commonly assaulted, and sometimes killed. Of course, men are beaten and killed as well, but if there’s a woman in Dead Tube, chances are she'll inevitably be subjected to some pretty gross happenings. The worst part is that it fetishizes these events and, honestly, that’s when the series is at its least entertaining, even in the context of it being this ridiculously edgy and self-indulgent story. Despite my persistence to mock this manga and its contents, I find myself a little grossed out by the frequency of women being put in exceedingly unfavorable positions, especially because of the way these scenes are framed, and I do think anyone that is sensitive to those triggers, should proceed with major caution.

  __Part III: Should You Read Dead Tube?__

  Still, if you can push past that, what you’re going to find is a complete mess of a story with some of the least likable characters ever put to page. Dead Tube is an interesting reflection of modern social media, but it fails to make itself worth anything beyond that—it is no more likable than the shitty content creators that it is satirizing. The story can have a great idea as its backbone, but it needs good character writing, structure, and presentation to put some meat on those bones, and Dead Tube fails on all of those fronts. My point is, art can have a distinct purpose, something of merit, or substance to its story, while still being irredeemably bad. Most people are never going to take away anything positive from their experience with this manga, because it is so bad, but I think there’s value in looking at bad art and finding interesting qualities about it. In the case of Dead Tube, as much as I can say it’s a true blue 1/10, there’s more value in what it is trying to do than plenty of other series at this level of quality. I would love to see a manga that embraces certain ideas from here and implements them into a better story. I think it would be more interesting if, within this awful and violent platform, the main character could find a way to overthrow it by means other than becoming the worst of it all, maybe by being a commentary channel that takes down the biggest creators. Something other than whatever the hell is going on here. As it stands on its own, do I recommend you read Dead Tube? Well, for most people, Heavens, no. This is the kind of manga that only people who show Mars of Destruction to all their friends—yes, I do that—will find something to enjoy in it. This manga sucks; it’s so poorly written and needlessly offensive, with not a single character worth following. Don’t waste your time reading it, unless you think you’ll be entertained.

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