Liar Game - Drama Review

Update: I decided to re-watch the Liar Game drama. And, this prompt me to re-edit this post that I originally wrote it about two years ago. It's mostly the same, but I tweaked some things.

This is a review or my thoughts on the Liar Game drama and first movie adaptation.

The first season of the drama starts off with Nao Kanzaki (Toda Erika), who is a naive collage student that recently found a large black box with one million dollars or hundred million yen inside. Including a message saying that she is now a contestant in the Liar Game Tournament. As well as explaining the rules of the game. Both her and another opponent received the same amount of money and they have to try steal the money from each other. Any money that is taken from the opponent will keep it as their prize money. Her opponent is her former high school teacher. Nao seeks help from her teacher and she gives all her money to him, who promises her that he will take care of the money. However, she finds out that her teacher has deceived her and has stolen her money. Now, she ends up with hundred million yen in debt. She then hires a "genius swindler" named Shinichi Akiyama (Mastuda Shota) to help her to recover the money that she has lost. But that is only the first round of the game.

In season two, Nao and Akiyama gets invited to a another round of the Liar Game Tournament. They get to meet a few of the previous contestants from season one. But this time, Nao decides to help out the contestants, so that nobody will end up in debt and everyone can have a chance to win a little money at the end of the game. But Akiyama meets his rival who wants to out smart him.

Liar Game is a place where players are randomly selected to play games and challenges. The winner gets rewarded with money and the losers have to pay their debts. They can lie, cheat, and deceive other players by any means necessary to win the game. Nao's is very honest and gullible person that there were times where other people easily deceived her and used her as a stepping stone to get one step ahead of the game. But luckily she has Akiyama on her side, who is very smart in deducting logic in the game and knows how to psychologically manipulate the players.

As soon as I watched this drama, I immediately got hooked into this series. There are a lot of twists in this story and on top that there were a lot of unpredictable moments. It was exciting to watch Akiyama and Nao work together and come up with a plan to successfully proceed through the game. But the story lacks character development and depth. With the exception of Akiyama. He gets the most developed out of the other characters in the story. It showed his past and where he comes from. So, he does became an intriguing person. However, I thought that the games itself were very entertaining and engaging that I've completely forgotten about the flaws.

After the second season, they made a movie to help put a closure to this series. Although, there wasn't anything new about the movie. It repeats the same pattern like it did in the drama. As usual, Nao gets deceived by the other players and Shinichi is always there to help her out and solves the problem. It pretty much feels like I'm watching a two hour special than a movie. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed as much as I did with the drama series.

Overall, I think this drama is worth watching. It's interesting to see how far these people are willing to betray and sabotage the other players in order to win the game. I guess not all people have good intentions in their heart. In the end, the key to winning the game is to work together and learn to trust each other, even if there is hundred million dollars at stake. But I think that trust is the most challenging game to play than the actual game.