Darwin’s Game (Episode 2) – Gemstone Mine
Kaname and Shuka agree to work together as friends at first. Once Kaname is stronger, they’ll form a family, but that means they’ll both have to survive the event they’ve just been invited to!
What happened?
Having both received the invite, Shuka makes Kaname take her shopping as an excuse to scout out the location of the event. At this stage, all they know is that it will be a treasure hunt, but there’s bound to be more to it than that. Another player tracks down Kaname and takes his phone, forcing him to fight him to get it back. Kaname has no choice as he’ll be helpless without the app. Thanks to some clever thinking, Kaname managed to turn the tables on his attack and forces him to surrender. Before anything else can happen, however, they are all teleported to the event.
What was your favourite element?
This was a much slower episode, but it was still fairly entertaining. I definitely feel like this was more about setting up the event which is going to be epic based on the few seconds we saw of it at the end of the episode. It’s kind of hard to pick out a favourite element as nothing really stood out. I do like that we are still trying to figure everything out with Kaname. It would have been easy to hit us with a massive info-dump, but thankfully we still have the mystery which is going a long way to building the tension, which has probably been my favourite thing so far… Well, I guess I was able to pick something.
What have you learnt?
I like that we still don’t really know what is going on and why. Sure, there appears to be deathmatches and death games, but other than that, we’re in the dark. It definitely helps to build the tension as it makes you watch every action that much more closely. Suddenly everyone becomes a threat and every situation dangerous. At this stage, we still don’t know that we can really trust Shuka, although she does seem to be fairly straight with Kaname. She obviously has quite the back story though, which is alludes to. I like the idea of withholding information intentionally and using that to create paranoia in the characters and the readers.
Other reviews in the series
- Season One
- Bonus Posts
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I’m very much the opposite in that I hate intentionally withheld information. I don’t mind if the characters genuinely don’t know or can’t know something, or even if one character distorts something (such as Obi Wan with Luke about his father) but when it seems so many characters are deliberately being vague and the main character hasn’t read the rules or insisted on the information his current ‘partner’ clearly has it feels like they story is deliberately trying to create tension through stupidity. I find it very frustrating.
True. It’s kind of like Shuka not wanting to create the guild because she thinks Kaname should do it but he’s not of a high enough level yet… Hopefully, there’s more to it than just that she thinks a man should do it.
The part of it I’m enjoying is that we’re learning with Kaname. Sure Shuka could have sat him down and told him everything or we could have watched Kaname scrolling through the rules, but it would have been pretty boring. He needs a guide AI or something to walk him through a tutorial.
I agree that we’ve had enough mystery now and it’s time to start to reveal stuff.
I just wish Kaname would ask the right questions or at least pursue more information about the questions he’s asked. I don’t mind learning with the protagonist but when they seem determined to be ignorant of something that is going to get them killed it makes it hard to really care about the outcome.
Agreed, he could be more forthright with his questions, but then he did show us in the first episode that he’s not that good at asking meaningful questions when Shuka said she’d answer any question he had.
Agreed.
I don’t have particularly high hopes for Darwin’s Game at this point, though I am hoping to at least be a little less frustrated by it in the next couple of episodes. We don’t need to know everything, but some context really goes a long way to being able to suspend disbelief about a situation.
Absolutely. There’s got to be a list of missing people growing by the minute and how no one has become involved is a mystery. Makes me wonder if it’s all been a fake world since he was bitten by the snake and passed out.
That would actually make it make sense but then it wouldn’t make sense that his friend who was involved in the game was there in the real world to try to stop him from starting the app. I’ve been trying to come up with a theory that fits everything we know and I always find a hole in it. I’m really hoping the story has thought things through but I’m not optimistic.
So close… Oh, well. Back to the drawing board. I hope they have got a plan and we’ll get some sort of answers/resolution by the end of the season. That’s one of my pet peeves – an resolved story.