Distributing thrilling videos in secret. A school game that puts life and death on the line.
26 Volumes (Ongoing)






It might as well have ended at chapter 56, leaving some questions about the main heroine unanswered. But even that is preferable to drag the story on (new characters are introduced and you're supposed to care about the conflict between the main character and his admirer).
Dont listen to all the haters. This is a really good manga. The art is amazing. The plot is great. The protagonist is cool. All the people who give this a low score are just too dam picky
Pros: Incredible commentary on competing for views in the modern age w/youtube, instagram, tik tok etc, with some Joker-esque "one bad day" philosophy thrown in. Also the two MC's romantic plot is riveting, even though Hanae is obviously best girl.
Cons: Contrived plot, but what was the last manga you read without one? Don't think of this as some kind of period piece that has to make sense as though it were really happening. Just take the plot at face value, it's the subtext that's worth analysis. If you can enjoy watching a David Lynch film (which I sure af can) then you can enjoy reading this, no psych issues necessary ;P
Your average suspension of disbelief is not enough to accept what happens here. You have to ignore all logic to read through this because of how the plot falls apart otherwise. The characters are fine, but the way things keep happening is simply not plausible at all. If Dead Tube was kept in a low enough scale, hidden, secretive, it could work. As it stands right now, you have to think that anyone that finds out about it (and apparently almost everyone and their grandpas and pets discover it) does nothing against it in any shape or form, which is simply not a reasonable conclusion.
If you're ok with that, go ahead. It's fun in its own stupid way, but don't expect anything deep or well thought out. And yeah, it's full of gore and rape, so don't even bother if you're not ok with that.
As a new series, I picked it up out of curiosity. Due to its premise being an "underground" competition that has the competitors outright murdering other people and recording it all on video, I had the manga Underdog in the back of my mind. Unfortunately, I was wrong to believe that the series would be anything like Underdog, as the premise is so incredibly flimsy*.
Due to there being such a weak premise established, it only goes to show how the author barely cares about properly establishing the driving force of the manga, and only wishes to focus on the parts with lots of gore and nudity. The author practically asks some characters in his own manga what would be the best material to "generate the most viewcount."
And after a few random girls guess the wrong answers, the heroine replies with a joyful smile, "H and Violence!"
I totally understand that people are into this kind of material, involving rape, excessive gore, torture, etc. etc. Such material tends to be quite dark, bleak, and crushes any hope for the idea of "good winning out by the end." That being the case, my issue is that the author had the nerve to make the protagonist and heroine "the good guys" by having her kill "EVIL PEOPLE." As residentgrigo pretty much said, it's ridiculous to publish this kind of story as a shounen...
People Say this sucks. They don't like stories like this but i'll tell you read this manga up to chapter 6 then we'll talk. if not please don't spoil people biggrin and don't say this manga sucks. because you haven't finish the story all the way.
@ayami123
Ok, so let's talk. I read this when chapter 6 came out the other day, and in all honesty, I didn't have any serious problems with the series UNTIL chapter 6 came out and held my earlier mentioned issue with this series.
>The intended goal for the Directors + club-mates' death was to have our protagonist come to fully trust nobody else but the heroine of the story. With the director outright admitting that she and the others had all along planned on tricking and betraying him was already enough to prove a point. I was under the belief that Dead Tube was the source of their sudden change in personality, having their greed for all that money turn them into such inhumane beings. Of course though, that's NOT THE CASE AT ALL! The author decided to add on the fact that they had all been sadistically evil sex-addicts all along, with our protagonist + heroine opposing them as "pure" virgins!
If you want to like this series, by all means, go ahead; I don't have the right to dictate what you or anyone else can/can't like. But honestly, if you say that other peoples' comments are wrong, don't provide proper reasoning as for why the series doesn't suck, and simply give it a flawless 10/10 toward the fact that you like its gore + H, don't expect me to take your recent comment (1/8/15 - 2:17AM) seriously.
*(2/10/15) Update:
For some reason, the author decides to explain things to our protagonist (and audience) in chapter 7 rather than chapter 2 when there was a perfect opportunity... whatever.
We're explained how Dead Tube is able to exist as the mysterious person/group behind it has enough money to substantially reward the contestants, all while bribing the cops and media to prevent the contestants from getting caught for their terrible crimes. If you fail to get enough views, the quality of your videos will be considered as "boring," and your life will be targeted! Oh no!But wait...
A. How many fucking people are there making videos for this stupid competition?! Are there so many to choose from that some of them won't be viewed at all? Seriously, all you'd have to do is click on a video to give it a view, and even if you found the video "really boring this time around," it should still technically count as a view. Wouldn't it make a HELL OF A LOT more sense to use a simple rating system in order to seek out who's videos are amongst the "top quality?!"
B. Why is nobody wearing a mask?! Take a second to think about it: Just give your characters their own unique masks to conceal their identity, and right away you've added something somewhat iconic (think Dorohedoro) and more "mysterious" (maybe something written by TONOGAI Yoshiki) to your overall story. It's a shame the author never went with that idea from the get-go, cause now...
Even if the news and the police are being bribed to frame someone else as the killer, you still have video-recorded evidence of the exact murders taking place for anyone to go watch online, with the killer's face shown, and their full name's right next to the goddamn video! So I have to wonder: HOW THE HELL CAN THIS ENTIRE CONTEST BE KEPT A SECRET FROM THE REST OF SOCIETY?
Well, none of those plot holes matters anyway! What matters is to proudly show off as much nudity and gore as possible, all while eventually giving the protagonist (and certain male readers) a boner!
(Context: have read through Ch. 46, up-to-date as of posting)
I've left my rating out of this. While I wasn't personally satisfied with the plot direction after the early arcs, the art is pretty good, so it's binge-readable. But I wanted to see more of Machiya's expressions and character development, and wasn't satisfied. (Let's be honest. I wanted to see him with smutty expressions like the female characters.) I suppose for someone who's into it, the gratuitous female bodies are well-drawn and entertaining. But the thumbnail drew me in looking for something different than I got.
If you're in search of a good male protagonist gore manga, Dendrobates is a suitable alternative. I recommend it.
To be perfectly honest, I'm in it for the torture porn.
The plot is completely convoluted and the characters are... I don't know even know what they are.
They talk a whole bunch, but little of it is particularly interesting...
The art is ok. I'm not a fan of this style, especially for gore, and I think the violence could've been more explicit (instead it's mostly just a lot of blood), but that's just my preference.
I guess it feeds off the snuff genre, but even when translated to film, there's an element of secrecy to those things. Not so much here.
The main group just does whatever. Sure, they manage to be victorious (and thus avoid punishment according to the Dead Tube's rules), but I would've loved to see what other teams were up to and how they failed and what was done to them.
Because of this, the setting feels very isolated and disconnected from reality, even though other characters had been introduced, they were just killed off.The mains aren't especially well developed, mostly because we don't know a lot about them. Most is still a mystery, I guess for mystery's sake, but they aren't particularly well written either.
All in all, if you want some gratuitous violence and nudity, this might be for you.
Don't be discouraged by the chatter. Blood will soon follow. ;p
Please Defend This Torture Porn forum topic contains reasonable reason for and against this manga and I can understand why someone would read this manga due to it. Honestly its the better thing to read than these comments.
Insanity. The world and setting doesnt work, theres no reasonable justification or explanation for how this secret and at the same time public murdergame is allowed to go on without problems. The male and female lead (thats ignorng all the other murderers) would in a normal world be found out at once if so many people around them died. There is no purpose to this except extreme violence, pain, blood, murder and shock value.
Tl;dr Fetish fuel, its gore hentai minus the hentai (mostly). No more no less.
I love kill or be killed manga, so I'm probably biased towards Dead Tube. Major plot wise, it's somewhat new- someone films, instead of the entire group being watched over by someone else. There's a lot of blood and gore, which is a plus, but there's also a large serving of fanservice- not exactly terrible, but still, a little...off sometimes. The fanservice does contribute to the plot, so overall, not much to complain about, really.
Character development wise, while most characters are pretty mysterious- especially the main two- their backstories are slowly revealed as the manga continues. It's also interesting how they form their team- in a survival type situation, they do have a pretty solid team, if I may just say so. Though how wide-spread Dead Tube is
(especially in the newest arc, where the main's younger sister's school has been totally taken over by it, and how all evidence of school-wide killing is also ignored by mainstream media) does get a little over the top, it's actually not bad for the snuff.
Overall, Dead Tube isn't really that bad. Personally, I'm not one who really cares about the different backstories of the characters, so even if Dead Tube didn't deliver, I didn't notice. It did push the limits too far once in a while, but tbh, I've seen manga that's done sooo much worse in terms of pushing the limits (eg Cage of Eden). It does have good snuff and chapter arcs that keep you entertained, but of course some would find the too-many-rape-scenes over the top, or whatnot.
My suggestion though: complete the first arc before you decide to drop it. The first few chapters really don't do any justice.
KITAKAWA Touta Art is ok' like always, if you are looking for romance from him go for any of his hentai works! most of them are nice, YAMAGUCHI Mikoto is.. Mmm... yea always over the top in the Gory department Gun x Clover is one of his writing works I can stomach only because D.P (the one how does the art for it) hates gore' & tend to change a lot of the material.. so read the first chapter you'll found out right away if it's for you, not my case