Doubt (horror manga)

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 two spiritual sequels, titled Judge, from January 12, 2010 to August 11, 2012, and Secret, from October 12, 2013 to February 12, 2015.

Plot and characters

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 finds 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 friend's 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 after school 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 that the reason there was no evidence of her presence at the game site is 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.

• Yū Aikawa: a kind and caring student, he knows how to be cold-blooded but also takes action if necessary. He is the main character of Doubt, and also a childhood friend of Mitsuki.
• Eiji Hoshi: a thug of very impulsive temperament who lacks a little tact but still remains sympathetic. He has a secret violent past.
• Haruka Akechi: pretty and gracious, Haruka is cheerful and loves to have fun. Nevertheless, she seems to hide part of her true personality. Likes to tease Eiji.
• Hajime Komaba: a medical student, Hajime is the brain of the team, showing a calm and imperturbable coldness, which sometimes makes him a suspicious person.
• Rei Hazama: a frail girl once known for her gift of hypnosis, before losing any credibility. Her life became a hell for her and her parents. After a failed suicide attempt, she moves in a wheelchair.
• Mitsuki Hōyama: Yu's childhood friend. She is endowed with a great sense of justice and order, and despite being unfamiliar with the Rabbit Doubt game, she also finds herself trapped in the psychiatric hospital where the events of the story take place.

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.

Judge

A spiritual sequel titled Judge (ジャッジ, Jajji) began serialization in Monthly Shōnen Gangan in January 2010^[4], and was later published in English by Yen Press. A live-action film adaptation of Judge was released on November 8, 2013.^[10]

Plot and characters

Hiro, a young man, is in love with his childhood friend Hikari, while the latter is dating his older brother Atsuya. After Hiro shifts an appointment Hikari had with Atsuya, he finds out his brother was hit by a truck and died, leaving him consumed by remorse during the two years following this tragedy. At the end of these two years, he wakes up one day handcuffed in a dark building, wearing a heavy rabbit mask. After a few steps, he enters a courtroom where seven other teenagers, also dressed in animal masks, await him, as well as a young boy who has died.

Each animal mask represents one of the seven deadly sins: gluttony (pig), avarice (fox), sloth (bear), pride (lion), lust (cat), envy (rabbit) and anger (horse). A video tells them through a stuffed toy the rules of the game in which they are forced to participate: every twelve hours, a voting takes place during which they would have to choose to sacrifice one of them until only four survivors remain in the game.

• Hiroyuki "Hiro" Sakurai: he is the main character of the manga. He was in love with his childhood friend Hikari, who was dating his older brother Atsuya. He decides one day, nevertheless, to confess his feelings, by shifting an appointment that she had with Atsuya, but this initiative indirectly caused the death of the latter, hit by a truck. Two years later, Hiro finds himself in a dark place, handcuffed and wearing a rabbit mask, symbol of the sin of envy, for provoking the death of his brother, before meeting eight other teenagers in a courtroom, one of whom died before his arrival. The end of the manga reveals that Hiro was the mastermind of the game alongside Hikari, with both aiming to make the judge and jury members who acquitted the drunken truck driver who ran over his brother watch their family members die before being killed themselves. However, Hiro is poisoned himself by Hikari, who found out that he was the one who shifted Atsuya's appointment with her.
• Kazuyuki "Kazu" Asai: a brown-haired boy who is in high school and quickly sympathizes with Hiro. He claims to be homosexual, which, apparently, constitutes his sin, judged of lust. He found himself wearing a cat mask, like Asami. The third victim of the game, killing himself with a poisoned needle.
• Rina Okamoto: a high-school girl whose alleged sin is avarice, represented by a fox mask, although she shows no trace of this trait. Everything suggests that she is the only one who has committed no sin, and that she is only a victim of the game. It turns out that, despite being a member of the jury thar acquitted the truck driver, Rina's mother rejected the bribery attempt, and both mother and daughter managed to survive the game.
• Nobuyuki Yamaguchi: a long-haired boy who found himself wearing a bear mask, an animal symbol of sloth. He seems to have a fairly violent past, apparently having killed his own mother because she criticized the way he lived. The second victim, killed with a poisoned needle.
• Ryûhei Shinomiya: a tall, thin young man, with gray hair capped in a Visual Kei style. He claims to have no real purpose in life, and was found wearing the mask of the horse, having sinned in wrath. His crime is unknown, but his reality is unquestionable given his aggressive and provocative personality. The fourth victim of the game, stabbed with a pair of scissors by Hiro when both received an equal amount of votes and had to fight until one of them died.
• Hayato Takizawa: a law student, dressed in a suit, with black hair and glasses. He seems silent and contemptuous, and says he is ready to do anything to get out of the game and take revenge on his father, Kazunori. He is calm and manipulative. His sin is pride, represented by his lion mask, referring to his status as a student of law and also to his haughty and manipulative character. Killed by his own father, Kazuyuki Takizawa (the judge of the drunk driver's trial, who never assumed Hayato's paternity) with a cross-bow arrow shot through his heart, after he tried to kill him (Kazuyuki then falls from the stairs and dies shortly afterwards).
• Asami Kimura: a blonde girl wearing a Christian cross in a wooden pendant. She displays a sexual behavior, trying to seduce Hiro to make him follow her votes. Found herself wearing a cat mask, representing the sin of lust. The fifth victim of the game, repeatedly stabbed in the neck with glass shards by Miku when both received an equal amount of votes and had to fight until one of them died.
• Miku Sanada: a shy, timid girl with long black hair and glasses. Her sin, gluttony (represented by her pig mask), is derived from her past as an obese teenager before becoming thin with an operation paid by the bribe her grandfather accepted to acquit the drunk driver that killed Atsuya. Killed by Hayato's father with a cross-bow arrow shot through her forehead.
• "The Pig Guy": an overweight boy, found dead next to a pig mask as soon as the other participants were allowed to remove their masks, due to removing his mask before he was authorized to do so. His sin is gluttony.

Secret

Tonogai's third spiritual part of the Doubt series, Secret (シークレット, Shīkuretto), began serialization in Monthly Shōnen Gangan in October 2013. Like its predecessors, it has been published in English as well by Yen Press.

Plot and characters

After months of therapy to help them cope with a bus accident that killed all of their classmates, the six high-school students that survived the accident are told by their counselor that three of them are murderers, and that he will turn the evidence to the police if they do not confess in a week. All of them suddenly find themselves engaged in a race against time to prove their innocence, but it is not so easy to trust others when everyone has something to hide.

• Iku Sanada: the main character of the manga. He tries several times to find the criminals, but comes to the conclusion that he is one too, since he believes himself to have caused the death of one of his classmates by removing the bar that had pierced her back after the accident, at her request (it turns out that this wasn't the cause of her death).
• Rika Konno: a young idol, who had to abandon her career following an injury to the right eye caused by the accident. She is manipulated by Mitomo, who tells her that Iku and Eiji are the culprits of the accident, what leads her to she burn the building in which they were, unaware that they survived. She later attacks Mitomo, but it is not revealed whether he died or not.
• Eiji Amano: a quiet student, whose brother works in the hospital where the sleeping pills used to drug the bus driver had been stolen. Because of this, he is seen as a suspect by his comrades. He later gets seriously injured by Rika, under Mitomo's manipulation.
• Tsuyoshi Ozu: a red-haired teenager who is Iku's best friend and saved his life at the end of the series, when Mitomo tried to hang him. He was in love with a classmate and feels guilty of her death since they exchanged place shortly before the accident.
• Ryoko Kunikida: she takes care of other people to divert attention to the fact that she (apparently) accidentally killed a classmate who she was in love with (and who turns out to have been the boy that impregnated Mitomo's deceased sister) by making him fall from the roof of the school after the bus accident, during a discussion caused by her jealousy of his love towards Mitomo's deceased sister.
• Yukito Shima: a black-haired teenager, who killed a classmate in an access of fury just after the accident. He tries to injure Ozu after he claims to have seen someone standing on the bus. Afterwards, he tries to commit suicide by jumping from the roof of the school.
• Shinichi Mitomo: the school counselor who accuses three of the accident survivors of being murderers. A mysterious person, he seems to have a hidden agenda and to know more about the accident than he lets on. It is later revealed that he drugged the bus driver to cause the death of the student that impregnated his sister (but said student was sick and ended up missing the trip, while Mitomo's sister herself ended up dying in the accident).

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

External links

• Doubt (manga) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• Manga News Review Vol 1 (in French)
• Manga News Review Vol 2 (in French)
• Manga News Review Vol 3 (in French)
• Manga Sanctuary Review Vol 2 (in French)
• Manga Sanctuary Review Vol 3 (in French)
• Animeland Review Vol 1 (in French)
• Animeland Review Vol 2 (in French)
• Bd Gest Review Vol 1 (in French)
• French Publisher (in French)