Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table

Main

Yuki (幽鬼) / Yuki Sorimachi (反町 友樹, Sorimachi Yūki)

Voiced by: Yuki Nakashima (PV),^[2] Chiyuki Miura (anime)^[3] (Japanese); Suzie Yeung^[4] (English)

A 17-year-old veteran player who participates primarily for her own entertainment, finding ordinary life boring and wanting to set a record by surviving 99 death games. Calm and composed, she is actually far kinder than most veterans, going out of her way to protect her fellow players, even if she only claims to do so to curry favors. However, she can be ruthless and is willing to kill people should the situation demand it.

Maiden Race

Yuki's 1st game: an obstacle course on a track field.

Setsuna (雪名)

Voiced by: Yukiyo Fujii^[5]

Yuki's private agent, who transports her to and from games. Though she maintains a cold, businesswoman-like demeanor, she has occasionally shown genuine care for Yuki. She was once a suicidal newbie player who participated in Yuki's first game, Maiden Race. However, after seeing Yuki utterly dominate the game, along with nearly dying herself, she regained her will to live.

Kanade (花奏)

Shizuku's younger sister, a newbie player who got tricked into participating. Throughout the game, she is a nervous wreck who holds back the other players, with Shizuku needing to help her keep it together. She gets killed by one of the obstacles.

Shizuku (静久)

Kanade's older sister, a newbie player who got tricked into participating alongside the former. Throughout the game, she attempts to keep Kanade safe. As a result, after Kanade dies, she snaps and attempts to kill Setsuna, only to be killed herself.

Candle Woods

Yuki's 9th game: players are divided into two groups—“Bunnies” and “Stumps”—with the Bunnies needing to survive in a forest for a week as the Stumps hunt them.

Hakushi (白士) / Manami Shiratsukawa (白津川 真実, Shiratsukawa Manami)

Voiced by: Shizuka Itō^[6] (Japanese); Dawn M. Bennett^[4] (English)

Yuki's mentor and a 96-game veteran player who got slotted into the Bunnies. She is widely considered the greatest living death game player, with Yuki's goal of completing ninety-nine games originally being hers. Though sustaining grievous wounds, she survives Candle Woods thanks to body modification that she performed on herself. However, she opts to retire after Yuki, who believes her to be deceased, chooses to carry on her legacy by completing ninety-nine games in her place.

Airi (藍里) / Airi Hitose (一瀬 藍里, Hitose Airi)

Voiced by: Yume Miyamoto^[6] (Japanese); Erica Mendez^[7] (English)

A newbie player who got slotted into the Stumps. She survives Candle Woods, quietly fulfilling her kill quota while the veteran players are occupied each other. Afterward, despite wanting to retire from death games, she is forced to continue playing to support her family. After becoming a successful veteran, she once again participates alongside Yuki in Cloudy Beach, which she also survives.

Sumiyaka (墨家)

Voiced by: Ayana Taketatsu^[8] (Japanese); Rebecca Wang^[9] (English)

An acquaintance of Yuki, a twenty-nine-game veteran player who got slotted into the Bunnies. Kyara kills her during her rampage.

Moegi (萌黄)

Voiced by: Natsuko Abe^[6] (Japanese); Jenny Yokobori^[10] (English)

A three-game veteran player and one of Kyara's protégés who participates to gain courage. Being the only experienced Stump, she quickly assumes leadership and teaches her teammates how to kill. Upon realizing Kyara is participating in this game, she hurriedly attempts to complete her kill quota, only to be killed by Yuki.

Kyara (伽羅)

Voiced by: Rina Honnizumi^[8] (Japanese); Anairis Quiñones^[11] (English)

A ten-game veteran who got slotted in the Bunnies. She is a psychopath who participates to satisfy her murderous urges by killing her fellow players, except for those she takes a liking to and trains as her protégés. Unsatisfied with the game's rules, she eventually begins indiscriminately slaughtering both Bunnies and Stumps alike, until Yuki finally kills her.

Scrap Building

Yuki's 10th game: escaping from a booby-trapped polling station before time runs out.

Mishiro (御城)

Voiced by: Rio Tsuchiya^[6][12] (Japanese); Allegra Clark^[13] (English)

A nine-time veteran player who participates primarily to satisfy her ego, causing her to develop a one-sided rivalry with Yuki after the latter proves herself the better player. She survives Scrap Building and goes on to become a successful player, training multiple protégés. In the end, Yuki kills her when they face each other again in her thirtieth death game, Golden Bath.

Keito (毛糸)

Voiced by: Wakana Maruoka^[12] (Japanese); Riley Fussenegger^[13] (English)

A six-time veteran player who claims to have a talent for determining a game's survivors. In truth, she is an opportunist who allies with whoever can help her survive. She survives Scrap Building and later plays alongside Yuki again in another death game, Mossy Grove, and once again makes it through.

Kotoha (言葉)

Voiced by: Shion Wakayama^[12] (Japanese); Xanthe Huynh^[13] (English)

A five-time veteran player whose primary asset is her intelligence. Tired of modern society, she participates in death games to save up enough money to become a hikikomori. During the game, her legs get blown off, but Yuki saves her, and she survives. Afterward, she begins using a wheelchair and retires from death games, becoming a recruiter instead.

Chie (智恵)

Voiced by: Rui Tanabe^[12] (Japanese); Kimoy Lee^[13] (English)

A four-time veteran player who describes herself as a jack-of-all-trades. Though an opportunist who allies herself with whoever can help her survive, she is also a genuinely kind and sociable person. She dies after losing the game's final challenge—a vote that kills whoever gets a plurality—getting singled out for contributing nothing to her teammates.

Ghost House

Yuki's 28th game: escaping from a dollhouse-like mansion before it burns down.

Beniya (紅野)

Voiced by: Mutsumi Tamura^[14] (Japanese); Morgan Berry^[4] (English)

A rookie player who participates to settle her business debts. Throughout the game, she grows sympathetic toward fellow player Momono and helps her make it out. She survives the game.

Momono (桃乃)

Voiced by: Rina Kawaguchi^[14] (Japanese); Kayli Mills^[4] (English)

A rookie player who was tricked into participating after accepting a fake job offer. A nervous wreck throughout the game, she garners sympathy from fellow player Beniya, who helps her make it through. She survives the game.

Kokuto (黒糖, Kokutō)

Voiced by: Haruka Satō [ja]^[14] (Japanese); Sky Santacruz^[4] (English)

A one-time player who participates for the prize money, being too lazy to get an ordinary job, and a self-described opportunist who sides with whoever can help her survive. She is the first player to die, killed by a booby-trap.

Aoi (青井)

Voiced by: Rena Motomura^[14] (Japanese); Brianna Knickerbocker^[4] (English)

A rookie player who participates due to struggling to find an ordinary job. She is the second player to die, killed by giant saws during a challenge to unlock restraints after the other players fail to give her the key in time.

Kinko (金子)

Voiced by: Inori Minase^[14] (Japanese); Michelle Marie^[4] (English)

A rookie player who participates to pay off her father's debt. Throughout the game, she becomes guilty over the other players' deaths, even offering herself up so her teammates can beat a challenge, but Yuki convinces her to continue. She is the third and final player to die, killed by Yuki in the game's final challenge: kill three players to unlock the exit.

Golden Bath

Yuki's 30th death game: escaping from a bathhouse by stealing keys from other players.

Azuma (吾妻)

Voiced by: Haruka Oribe^[6] (Japanese); Tiana Camacho^[15] (English)

A seven-game veteran who participates due to her lack of femininity, struggling to fit into normal society. She becomes the leader of a group of players whom Yuki later joins. She is killed when her and Yuki's plan to charge the exit fails, getting drowned by Mishiro’s team camping there.

Riko (狸狐)

Voiced by: Sumire Morohoshi^[16] (Japanese); Sarah Anne Williams^[17] (English)

An eight-game veteran player whose body has been mostly replaced with prosthetics following injuries in a previous game, granting her superhuman strength. While initially participating due to being suicidal, she continued playing out of loyalty to Mishiro after the latter saved her during a game. Following Mishiro's death at Yuki's hands, she attempts to avenge her, only to be killed herself by the game’s final obstacle: an electrified floor (automated turrets in the anime).

One Fine Day

Yuki's 40th game: survive a whole day against murderous mascots at an amusement park.

Maguma (真熊) / Sayuri Shaguma (赭熊 早百合, Shaguma Sayuri)

Voiced by: Aino Shimada^[18]

A 39-game veteran player with a tall and muscular physique who generally works alone. She survives One Fine Day and once again plays alongside Yuki in Cloudy Beach, which she also survives.

Essay (永世)

Voiced by: Anna Nagase^[18]

A veteran player known for her intelligence. She survives One Fine Day and once again plays alongside Yuki in Cloudy Beach. Although initially appearing to be Cloudy Beach's first casualty, she is later revealed to be the game's "murderer", having faked her own death by modifying her own body to survive even fatal injuries. In the end, Yuki kills her by disassembling her body piece by piece.

Cloudy Beach

Yuki's 44th game: a murder-mystery on a deserted island where players must identify a murderer hiding amongst them before said murderer kills them all.

Mozuku (海雲)

Voiced by: Hikaru Tono^[18]

A college-aged player who is generally considered the game's weakest participant. Despite this, when the murderer attacks her, she uses a self-made stun gun to scare them off, and she survives the game.

Koyomi (古詠)

Voiced by: Yukari Tamura^[18]

A 20-game veteran player from Hakushi's generation who participates whenever she needs money. She is known for her strong intuition, which helps her avoid dangerous situations. She survives the game but retires after concluding that she cannot compete with current players.

Mitsuha (蜜羽)

Voiced by: Riko Akechi^[18]

A 30-game veteran player and one of Mishiro's protégés. However, upon meeting Yuki, she reveals that she holds no interest in avenging her mentor. She is later ambushed and killed by the murderer.

Hizumi (日澄)

Voiced by: Konomi Inagaki^[18]

An elementary-school-aged veteran player and one of Kyara's protégés. Constantly giving off a murderous aura, she is a top suspect for being the murderer throughout the game, but later gets killed by the real murderer herself.

Light novels

Anime

Visual design

Ueno stated that the light novels' atmosphere reminded him of the ballet dancers in Edgar Degas's paintings, who often lived harsh lives behind their public appearances.^[26] In directing the animation, Ueno sought to portray the characters from a removed perspective using distant camera shots, avoiding exclusive focus on direct emotional reactions. While close-up shots were rendered in detail, more distant shots used flatter visuals, creating deliberate contrasts as an aesthetic effect.^[24]

The concept artist, Hewa, worked closely with Ueno on the series' visual design, particularly the settings. Hewa constructed the settings as 3D models to simulate camera placement, and the art team then worked on the background. Kayama noted that almost every part of the final production was built from Hewa's initial concept art.^[24]

Kayama praised Eri Osada [ja]'s work on the character designs, which were similar in intricacy to the light novels' drawings by Nekometaru.^[24] Particular detail was given to the characters' eyes, especially Yuki's heterochromatic ones.^[24] Ueno digitally composited microscopic photographs of minerals to create the animation of the eyes,^[27] and their reflects were drawn differently in every cut.^[24]

For one scene in a shower room, Ueno had characters be soaked in water so that their clothes clung to their bodies. He explained that their human silhouettes were meant to emphasize them as living people amidst a death game.^[27] In contrast, for character deaths, he made the scenes brief, since he wanted them to feel realistic rather than dramatized. He took inspiration from the film Cure, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, for the style of those sequences.^[26]

The series uses a CinemaScope aspect ratio, which is rare in modern anime. This aspect ratio leaves black bars near the top and bottom of the screen, which were intended to express the dual feelings of isolation and instability caused by the empty space.^[27]

Death and agency

Ukai explained that the idea for the series came from his despondency. During a period of depression, he fixated on the idea that "every human slowly approaches death". In terms of this shared inevitability, he felt that the only agency available to a hopeless person was the ability to die on their own terms. He concluded that "deciding on how to die is the same as deciding on how to live", which inspired by him to create a story focusing on death games in which players participate voluntarily.^[19]

As a result of this premise, several critics have regarded the story as being a subversion of the death game genre. Iori Kanzaki [ja], author of That Summer is Saturated [ja], argued that it differs from similar works because most characters participate freely, thus offering them a unique form of agency; he wrote that "although their lives are being toyed with [...] they are actually the ones in control".^[28] Similarly, Takemachi [ja], author of Spy Classroom, opined that that the work "completely shuns the common tropes" of the genre by portraying Yuki as having "no earnest reason" to participate beyond her own desires.^[29]

Moral ambiguity

Analyzing Yuki's character, Yuuki Shasendou [ja], author of An Illness that Leads to Love [ja], described her as an "outlandish protagonist" who "lives according to her own rules". She felt that this characterization allowed Yuki's actions to be easily grasped despite her motivations otherwise possessing little meaning to the reader.^[30] Similarly, Takemachi regarded Yuki as having a mindset that he was "unable to understand", yet characterized this "absurdity" as being "extremely appealing".^[29] Kanzaki contended that despite Yuki's calm nature, she has a "passionate resolve" for the games themselves.^[28]

Ryuichi Taniguchi of Da Vinci Web opined that because Yuki does not challenge the system of the death games, she cannot be considered a just character. By portraying Yuki as morally ambiguous, Taniguchi felt that the story achieves an unsettling effect.^[31] In contrast, Haruki Kuou [ja], author of Liar, Liar, stated that Yuki was someone the reader can "continuously root for", but only because she is the sole character who can be expected to survive the story.^[32]

Violence and competition

The story features an unusual visual portrayal of violent imagery by using a plot device (known as "Preservation Treatment"), which alters players' blood such that its appearance and even texture changes upon leaving the body. Nigojū, author of The Detective Is Already Dead, held that this allows the author to "leave shocking scenes to the reader's imagination",^[33] while Kanzaki argued that it "tones down the image of 'death'" and even "give[s] death a hint of charm". Kanzaki further suggested that by avoiding a "grotesque" depiction of death despite it being a "selling point" of death games, the work embraces genre conventions without allowing them to overshadow the story itself.^[28]

Ghost Mikawa [ja], author of My Friend's Little Sister Has It In for Me!, focused on the series's overarching themes. He regarded the work as addressing "familiar topics in everyday life" despite its appearance, and opined that the characters are driven by "commonplace emotions". Comparing the death games to typical games or sports, he identified familiar feelings such as the desire to win and the refusal to lose, as well as carelessness and inexperience. Mikawa concluded that the "most engrossing element" of the story lies not in its exploration of human nature or its entertainment value, but rather its portrayal of relatable themes in an abstract setting.^[34]

Taniguchi maintained that the story's themes of competition are relevant to today, particularly regarding the idea of prioritizing profit over emotions to survive in society. He contended that through its genre, the story successfully portrays the mindset needed for survival at all costs.^[31]

Entertainment value

The work's controversial elements have been widely discussed. Yozora Fuzuno [ja], author of Even If All Love Fades [ja] noted that light novel writers typically make "calculated decisions", such as including fan service and sympathetic characters, to attract readers' attention. He proclaimed that the story "does away" with those decisions and instead was solely intended to be "consider[ed] entertaining". From this perspective, he suggested that what some critics called the work's "monstrous" nature was simply a natural result of this approach.^[35] Nigojū offered a different opinion, asserting that certain elements, such as the restrained depiction of violence, were deliberately designed to appeal to a larger audience, and that the work's divisive nature was therefore inherent to the story itself.^[33]

Caitlin Moore of Anime News Network argued that the story addresses a dual audience, both within the narrative and within the real world. She observed that "by the simple act of viewing, we ourselves become participants", and contended that this framing is either meant to evoke reflection or sadness in the audience.^[36]

Light novel

The light novels of Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table are written by Yūshi Ukai and illustrated by Nekometaru. The series began publication under Media Factory's MF Bunko J light novel imprint on November 25, 2022. Nine volumes have been released as of January 23, 2026.^[37]

During its panel at Anime Expo 2023, Yen Press announced that it had licensed the series for English-language release.^[38]

Manga

A manga adaptation illustrated by Banzai Kotobuki Daienkai began serialization in Kadokawa Shoten's seinen manga magazine Comp Ace on April 26, 2023.^[1] The manga's chapters have been collected in five tankōbon volumes as of January 2026.^[54]

In February 2026, Yen Press announced that they had licensed the manga for English publication, with the first volume set to release in August later in the year.^[55]

Anime

An anime television series adaptation was announced in September 2024.^[61] It is produced by Studio Deen and directed by Souta Ueno, with Rintarou Ikeda handling series composition, Eri Osada designing the characters, and Junichi Matsumoto composing the music.^[3] The series aired from January 7 to March 18, 2026, on Tokyo MX and other networks.^[62][14] The opening theme song is "¬Ersterbend", performed by Lin from Madkid [ja], and the ending theme song is "Inori" (祈り; lit. 'Prayer'), performed by Chiai Fujikawa.^[14][63] Crunchyroll^[64] and Netflix are streaming the series globally under the title Shiboyugi: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table.^[65] Muse Communication licensed the series in Southeast Asia.^[66]

A sequel anime film adapting the light novel's Cloudy Beach arc was announced at the AnimeJapan event on March 18, 2026. It is set to open in Japanese theaters with a limited 2-week release date on July 10, 2026.^[18]

Other media

Starting on October 26, 2022, a spin-off story was serialized over the course of a month in video and text form. The story used an epistolary format of interviewing Yuki about herself and her participation in the games, with Yuki being portrayed by Himari Meimei from the voice synthesizer software VOICEVOX [ja].^[70]

Following the release of the first volume, another story was serialized, showing the perspectives of other players on Yuki in an interview-style format. It featured various voice actors.^[71]

The following volumes were all associated with media featuring voice actress Yuki Nakashima as Yuki. The second volume's publication came with the release of a promotional video for the series.^[72][73] The third volume features a scannable QR code that links to a voice drama where Yuki finds herself in a romantic situation.^[74] The fourth volume features another code which links to a voice drama in which Yuki visits a summer festival.^[2]

An artbook is set to be released on March 25, 2026.^[75]

Light novels

Anime