Doubt (manga)

Not to be confused with the Kaneyoshi Izumi shōjo manga series, Doubt!!.

ダウト (Dauto)
Doubt
The cover of the first Japanese manga volume release featuring the cast wearing the rabbit masks.
Genre	Mystery, Horror, Psychological thriller
Manga
Written by	Yoshiki Tonogai
Published by	Square Enix
English publisher	^NA Yen Press
Demographic	Shōnen
Magazine	Monthly Shōnen Gangan
Original run	December 27, 2007 – February 12, 2009
Volumes	4

Doubt (-ダウト-, Dauto), also known as Rabbit Doubt (ラビット·ダウト, Rabitto Dauto), is a shōnen horror manga written and illustrated by Yoshiki Tonogai. The series focuses on the "Rabbit Doubt" cell phone game, with rules similar to Mafia. The players must find the wolf, or killer, amongst their group of rabbits as they are picked off one-by-one. Six players of this game find themselves trapped in a building with one of the group already dead; to avoid the same fate, the remaining five must play a real-life game of "Rabbit Doubt" and find the wolf (liar)hiding among them.

The manga was first serialized in Square Enix's Monthly Shōnen Gangan on July 12, 2007 and ended its run on February 12, 2009. Square Enix also released the first volume on December 22, 2007 and released the fourth and final volume on February 12, 2009. The series has continued with a sequel, titled Judge (ジャッジ, Jajji).

Plot

Doubt revolves around a fictional cell phone game called "Rabbit Doubt", in which the players are rabbits in a colony; one of these players is randomly chosen to act as a wolf infiltrating the group. Each round, the rabbits guess which is the wolf as the rabbits are eaten one-by-one until only the wolf is left.

In the story, four players of the "Rabbit Doubt" game Yū Aikawa, Eiji Hoshi, Haruka Akechi, Rei Hazama and a non-player Mitsuki Hōyama meet to relax together. They are knocked unconscious and awaken in an abandoned psychiatric hospital to meet Hajime Komaba and discover Rei hanged. The group find Rei's cell phone and realize that they're playing a real-life game of "Rabbit Doubt". To survive, the wolf, described as the liar, must die.

Further into the story, the groups tries to find an exit and the wolf using bar codes found imprinted on their bodies. However, their chances are limited as each bar code will open only one door. As the story progresses, the "rabbits" are killed off one-by-one, until Yū discovers that it is Mitsuki who has been killing everyone. Mitsuki's father had agreed to be the guarantor on a friends loan, but he was betrayed and saddled with an enormous debt, and he attempted suicide. For this Mitsuki explains that she wants to punish all liars to achieve her father's revenge, and thus she no longer trusts Yū, because he lied to her about not being able to hang out with her afterschool a week ago. He had been out with a female classmate to secretly buy Mitsuki a birthday present, but Mitsuki saw them together and assumed that they were a couple, even killing the classmate. When Mitsuki leaves, Hajime reveals his real identity as a detective investigating teenage disappearances and hands him a scalpel to use as a weapon. Yū and Hajime successfully knock her out.

When Yū tries to open the exit with Mitsuki's bar code, Rei is revealed to be alive and she identifies herself as the actual wolf. Rei is seeking revenge because the media believed her hypnosis was a sham, causing her parents who supported her to commit suicide. In order to achieve revenge, she manipulated Mitsuki, using hypnosis to pretend to be her father, who actually died in the hospital, and giving her orders as 'him'. However, the love Mitsuki has for Yū occasionally overpowers the hypnosis. Rei releases the surviving players and calls the police. Mitsuki, who has fallen into a coma, is accused of the murders as there is no evidence of Rei being there. At the hospital, Yū receives a call from Rei. She reveals the fact that the reason that no evidence of Reis presence at the game site because one of the forensics agents working the scene is one of her Wolves, and although Yū tries to contact Hajime, who is at the scene to find evidence, about it, he is too late to save him from being strangled. Rei also tricks him into saying a phrase that causes Mitsuki to awaken in her "wolf mode": 'For the ones I love'. In the last scene, she approaches Yū with a knife.

Media

Written and drawn by Yoshiki Tonogai, the chapters of Doubt have been published in Square Enix's Monthly Shōnen Gangan since its premiere on July 12, 2007.^[1] The series ended its run on February 12, 2009 with a total of twenty chapters. One chapter was also serialized in the magazine in May 2009 to commemorate the release of a drama CD adaptation, which was released May 27, 2009.^[2]^[3] A sequel titled Judge began serialization in Monthly Shōnen Gangan January 2010.^[4]

The individual chapters were published in tankōbon by Square Enix. The first volume was released on December 22, 2007. The second volume was released on May 22, 2008 and the third was published on October 22, 2008. The fourth and final volume was released on May 22, 2009.^[5] The French language release is licensed by Ki-oon.^[6] The manga is also published in Finland by Punainen Jättiläinen, ^[7] and in Poland by JPF starting in January 2013.^[8] Yen Press licensed Doubt for United States release in Sept. 2012. ^[9] The two volumes in English were released in omnibus format on April 23, 2013.

Sequel

A sequel titled Judge (manga) by Yoshiki Tonogai, sequel to Doubt (ジャッジ, Jajji) began serialization in Monthly Shōnen Gangan January 2010.^[4] His third series, [[Secret (manga), by Yoshiki Tonogai], has been published in English as well by Yen Press ]A live-action film adaptation of Judge was released on November 8, 2013.^[10]

Reception

The fourth volume placed fourteenth of thirty in manga in Japan for the week of May 18 to May 22 selling 45,770 copies that week.^[11] The next week, from May 25 to May 30, the volume rose to tenth place selling an additional 47,323 copies.^[12]

References