🦑 The Anime That Made Squid Game Possible

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Liar Game: The Anime That Inspired Squid Game & The "Death Game" Genre

The world has been fascinated by heightened death game scenarios for over a century. Richard Connell’s 1924 short story, “The Most Dangerous Game,” is an early piece of fiction that finds the rich hunting the poor for sport in a twisted survival story that blurs the lines between murder and entertainment. Stephen King’s The Long Walk in 1979 imagined a world in which young contestants walked til the last man was standing. Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale, which was published as a novel in 1999,  is widely considered to be the first true death game title with Takami adapting his work into a manga and movie in 2000. Battle Royale may have dipped its toe in this extremist subject matter, but it’s Shinobu Kaitani's Liar Game that really set the framework for modern death game storytelling that’s been embraced in dozens of titles, including Netflix megahit Squid Game and one of Hollywood’s biggest blockbuster franchises The Hunger Games. 

Shinobu Kaitani's Liar Game ran for just shy of a decade in Weekly Young Jump and chronicled the naive Nao Kanzaki and conniving streetwise Shinichi Akiyama's ascension in the titular twisted mind game. The manga doesn’t just lay the groundwork for what’s since been further developed upon in titles like Squid Game and Alice in Borderland, but it also prioritizes psychological challenges over feats of physical strength. 

Many death game titles like Deadman Wonderland, Gantz, and Future Diary feature supernatural elements and literal life-and-death scenarios. Liar Game is a deeply-grounded title that’s more interested in deconstructing humanity’s capacity for empathy and selfish desperation. These are characters who are saddled with insurmountable debt, which in some respects is even more terrifying than death. The Liar Game Tournament's contestants are randomly selected and consent to participation upon opening a package that contains 100 million yen (the equivalent of $1 million). What initially seems like an exciting opportunity turns into a stressful challenge to claim the competition's money or be saddled with debt that corresponds to their lost funds. Deception, greed, and manipulation become the players' most valuable tools to survive this sinister scenario.

Liar Game also set the path for other death game titles, like Squid Game, that include a grander rebellion against the system itself. Nao and Shinichi aren’t driven to compete in the Liar Game Tournament because they want vast riches or bragging rights. They work towards buying out their competition’s debts and taking the game down from within. It’s a noble take on death game storytelling that helps Liar Game build genuine emotional stakes and moving relationships instead of relying on death games alone. On the topic of these death games, Liar Game showcases humble exercises that involve swaying the other players’ opinions, voting, bluffing, and other acts of deception, while macabre variations on musical chairs, Russian roulette, and poker are performed. 

Squid Game creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, was explicitly inspired by Liar Game, Battle Royale, and Gambling Apocalypse: Kaiji when he was down on his luck and a struggling debt-ridden writer. Hwang couldn’t help but draw parallels between these hyperbolized survival stories and his own lift, even wishing that he had a Liar Game-like opportunity to turn his life around. Liar Game ran as a manga for a decade, prompting a live-action adaptation, feature films, and a Korean drama series before finally getting turned into an anime by the acclaimed studio Madhouse, which premiered earlier this season on April 7. Liar Game’s anime is already getting rave reviews and exposing a whole new crowd to this essential death game series. 

Liar Game created an infrastructure in which death game storytelling can evolve through subversive ideas that take the premise to original places. Death Parade distills death games into an anthology series character study instead of an ongoing tournament. SHIBOYUGI: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table is a self-aware evolution of the genre’s excess. Blue Lock even takes a high-stakes soccer training program and turns it into a battle royale-style death game between 300 prospective strikers. Liar Game’s trials have even been spun off into their own series. The “Minority Rules” game becomes the entire premise of another recent death game anime from 2024, Tasuketsu -Fate of the Majority-, in which a majority vote translates to execution.

With the death game genre booming and Netflix’s Squid Game in a temporary holding pattern, it’s the perfect time for Liar Game to thrive. Its anime takes advantage of society’s growing desperation and desire for quick fixes where poverty and punishment double as entertainment. It’s very fitting that the original death game sensation can be leading forward a new generation of subversive survival programming.

— Daniel Kurland, Den of Geek contributor

THE BIG 3 - ANIME NEWS

Annecy Programming Teases Netflix’s New Anime Slate

As Netflix increasingly becomes a major anime destination, the streamer just announced its return to the Annecy International Animation Film Festival with a robust showcase of what they're adding to the library in the coming year. New titles include WIT Studio's highly-anticipated One Piece reimagining, THE ONE PIECE, the second season of Blue Eye Samurai, and recently announced projects like Sparks of Tomorrow and Yuki Igarashi's THE RIBBON HERO, a reinvention of Osamu Tezuka's Princess Knight. These exciting new additions guarantee that Netflix's summer and early 2027 are packed with top-tier material. THE RIBBON HERO in particular has the potential to be Netflix’s next Pluto and if Igarashi’s work in Jujutsu Kaisen’s season one finale is any indication then it will be a sakuga masterpiece, if nothing else. 

Ocean Bomb Redesigns Sailor Mars and Other Sailor Scouts In Refreshing Collab

Sailor Moon is no stranger to unconventional brand sponsorships and the iconic magical girl franchise is currently celebrating a collaboration with Ocean Bomb, a sparkling water company. On May 5, Ocean Bomb announced a new can design for its Sailor Mars Strawberry Sparkling Water. Sailor Mars joins Ocean Bomb's creative redesigns for Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Venus, Sailor Jupiter, and Chibi Moon. A line of chibi redesigns for Sailor Uranus, Sailor Neptuns, Sailor Saturn, and Sailor Pluto is also planned.

Martian Successor Nadesico’s Tatsuo Satō Dies at 61

Anime studio NAGOMI made the tragic announcement on May 7 that acclaimed writer and director Tatsuo Satō, passed away from liver failure on April 24 at the age of 61. Satō initially cut his teeth as an animator and assistant director before taking on full directorial duties. His most notable contributions as a director were on Martian Successor Nadesico, Atom the Beginning, Stellvia, and the Ninja Scroll series. Satō helped Martian Successor Nadesico find its distinct voice and his work on the anime's feature film, Prince of Darkness, is among Satō's best work. He leaves a major hole in the anime industry and it's worth checking out Nadesico for anyone who has yet to take on the plunge.

STREAMING HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK

New Release: Marriagetoxin

Marriagetoxin is one of the most exciting new anime to come out of the Spring 2026 season. It's a bold, brilliant spin on action shonen set in a creative criminal underworld that's populated with over-the-top assassins and hyperbolized hitmen. Marriagetoxin juxtaposes absurdist action spectacles with rom-com tropes to become something really special. Hikaru Gero, an assassin who specializes in poisons, finds himself forced to find a romantic suitor so his younger sister isn't forced to bear an heir. Hikaru's social awkwardness is contrasted with his criminal brilliance, while he works with a crafty swindler to find the perfect wife. Marriagetoxin offers audiences a little bit of everything and has already developed a distinct voice in only a handful of episodes.

Stream on Crunchyroll »

Retro Release: Dallos 

Created by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor) and Hisayuki Toriumi (Science Ninja Team Gatchaman), Dallos is an '80s cult classic that looks at a spiteful rebellion that breaks out on a moon colony as a response to Earth's recklessness with its resources. This turmoil intensifies when a mysterious relic known as Dallos is discovered and hints at a hopeful future. Told succinctly over four installments, Dallos is high-minded science fiction that's influenced by Robert A. Heinlein. Curiously, Dallos has the honor of being anime’s first official OVA, which makes it an enlightening piece of anime history that helped establish a new model for standalone and serialized storytelling. It’s a title that’s even more poignant four decades later.

Stream on Crunchyroll »

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