Machiya and Mashiro, home movie makers.
Sex and murder are probably the two easiest ways to draw attention. What would happen if there was a website that made its business exclusively off those two? Horrible things would happen, that's what.In this setting, there’s a video hosting website called DEAD Tube that thrives off of sex, murder, murder during sex, and sex during murder. Users can watch these orgies of violence and are encouraged to film pieces of their own. They will be paid for them, and the more popular the video is, the higher the fee will be.
Machiya Tomohiro is the cameraman for his school's film research club. One day during his club activities, he is called over by Mashiro Mai, a beauty from the Swimming Club. Mashiro asks Machiya to film her for 48 hours straight, under two conditions:
- Be the only person responsible for filming during those two days.
- Don't stop filming, no matter what happens.
Machiya complies, though all the while wondering why such a beauty would tell a plain person, out of the blue, to follow her around for two days. Mashiro is first seen going through her normal routine, working through her club activities, going to school, talking to her friends, going home, sleeping, etc. Then, on the second day, Machiya is surprised to see Mashiro going on a date, with a really rough-looking guy no less. He starts to feel embarrassed, but he still keeps filming each step she takes.
After a rather normal date, Mashiro and her partner settle down in a warehouse to engage in sexual intercourse, and Machiya reaches a low point, thinking Mashiro just wanted to embarrass him. However, Mashiro insists that Machiya keep filming, and keeps on going. With both Mashiro and her supposed boyfriend naked, things look to get hot and heavy... and then Mashiro grabs a baseball bat and bludgeons her unsuspecting "boyfriend" to death, in pure glee. Machiya thinks this is weirdly hot. Things get even darker from there.
DEAD Tube is a manga series written by Yamaguchi Mikotonote and drawn by Kitakawa Toutanote . The series started in 2014, published by Akita Shoten, serialized in Champion RED.
Note that since this series focuses on the deaths of others, uncensored spoilers may be present.
Now with a Character Page, character specific tropes go there please.
DEAD Tube provides examples of:
- As Long as There Is Evil: No matter how hard Machiya tries to dismantle the titular website, for as long as there exists a demand for snuff content and a means to substantially profit off of it, DEAD Tube will find a way to continue to exist in some way, shape, or form. Especially since his only way of directly confronting it is by becoming an active participant.
- Asshole Victim: A great many. Yamamoto used to bully Machiya, and the entire film club pretended to be his friends, only to turn around and stab him in the back.
- Ishizaki, the fat nerd in the Crazy Rascal arc first forces Agari and Mizuno into lesbian sex and then proceeds to rape Agari, revealing she was actually a virgin. Suddenly the titular Crazy Rascal appears and offs Ishizaki before he has a chance to climax by cleanly slicing his head off.
- Ax-Crazy:
- Mashiro the beautiful girl from the swimming club, amiable and friendly in her school, also a completely murderous individual infatuated with a video hosting website where the videos contain real murders and sex-related violence, and she is thrilled to produce those videos herself.
- The film research club is also revealed to be collective of insane people, but their methods of killing are more methodical, unlike Mashiro’s frontal approach of killing by herself with whatever's on hand.
- Betsuki-sensei, who kills anyone not able to sexually satisfy her.
- Yomiko the Ender is revealed to be Machiya's own father, who faked his own death and masterminded every terrible thing that has ever happened to Machiya in his entire life, including the gang rape and murder of his own daughter Kana, just so he could record his son's never-ending spiral of misery as his DEAD Tube magnum opus. He is also revealed to have been one of DEAD Tube's founders, and has done even more monstrous things in the name of content creation for the platform.
- The post-chapter 56 film research club, with several members insanely worshipping Shinkai to the point of being manipulated into participating in DEAD Tube Neo and used to lure Machiya out of hiding.
- To put it bluntly, if a character is creating content for DEAD Tube at all, the likelihood of them being a good person is slim to none.
- Betty and Veronica: Mashiro and Miwa are this to Machiya, with Miwa (Betty) being the kinder and more level-headed girl with a moral conscience, while Mashiro (Veronica) is alluring, flirtatious, and very dangerous.
- Beware the Nice Ones:
- Machiya is a quiet, nice and introverted person, happy with being the cameraman of the film research club lead by his beloved Senpai, his reaction to the first DEAD Tube event is of shock, but his sexual arousal towards it shows he isn't really innocent; when the film research club is revealed to be part of DEAD Tube and has been lying to Machiya all this time, the guy manages to trick them before said revelation, even when all signs pointed towards him being completely played like a fiddle.
- Mashiro herself has the outward appearance of an archetypal Class Princess which is bolstered by her status as the star member of the Swimming Club. But she is very quickly revealed to be a hardcore sadist who gleefully engages in wanton acts of gratuitous violence.
- Betsuki-sensei. When attacked by a group of students who proceed to rape her, she begins to show signs of actually being a pervert. Then when everyone is tired of her when she's still fired up, she proceeds to kill every single one of them, thinking they are fakes to her true "beloved" Kazuki.
- Big Bad:
- Mr. Machiya, who created DEAD Tube and had a large hand in orchestrating everything that happened to the protagonists. He even admits to raising his daughter just so he could have her murdered in a video.
- Post-chapter 56, the as of yet unnamed creator of DEAD Tube Neo, who manipulates the post-chapter 56 film research club into participating in DEAD Tube Neo in order to lure Machiya out of hiding.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Oushima, the Director and head of the film research club and Machiya's once beloved Senpai, never actually liked him, all of her generosity towards him was just to fuel a fake friendship, that she would shatter as part of her much expected film.
- This seems to be a running theme in the manga, with almost no "sheep" safe from being typecast into this role.
- Bland-Name Product: Machiya's Sonv camcorder, it's a clearly one of Sony's HDR series of Handycams.
- Body Horror: The series does not shy away from detailing the gruesome body wounds the victims experience as they're being offed.
- Boom, Headshot!: Betsuki-sensei, with aid from a pistol sneaked in by Mashiro, executes three of the four students who assaulted her with this. Then Mashiro takes the same pistol and takes out Betsuki-sensei in the same manner.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: How Machiya's first film session with Mashiro went. Just a simple video taping of her for two days, at school, at home, in bed. Then the next day almost the same except as a date, then they proceed to have sex...when Mashiro also bludgeons her "boyfriend" to death with a baseball bat. Yay!
- Broken Bird: Happens regularly. The most prominent example being Machiya once he discovers that his father was the founder of DEAD tube and orchestrated all of the horrible things that had ever happened to him.
- Broken Pedestal: While the betrayal from the whole film research club hit Machiya hard, the club’s President hurt him the most: Oushima was his beloved Senpai, Machiya admired and harbored romantic feelings for her; when she revealed herself to be part of DEAD Tube, also being a completely different person personality-wise and had orgies behind his back knowing full well he liked her, Machiya quickly doomed Oushima to her death.
- Characters Dropping Like Flies: If a new character shows up that isn't a main character, expect them to be killed off very quickly.
- Combat Sadomasochist: Mashiro.Mashiro: This is so exciting... are you feeling high after having your eye ball dug out? I'M FEELING SO HIGH BECAUSE YOU SMASHED MY HEAD!
- Covert Pervert:
- Nice and introverted Machiya claims he quite never filmed what always he wanted to put on camera. The first thing he does after witnessing a pretty girl bludgeon a guy to death with a bat, is hold his camera tight and get a raging erection.
- Turns out Betsuki-sensei is one after a group of students sexually assualt her and she enjoys it. This is the least wrong thing about her.
- Cute and Psycho: Mashiro's introduction and following scenes are made to establish her as a cute girl, diligent sports girl for her swimming club, sociable to her girlfriends, cheerful smiler all around; what follows that is she being thrilled about murdering someone in cold blood, and demanding that to be filmed.
- Decoy Protagonist: The group of characters the series focus on from the cover art and focus seem to be on the entire film club, Machiya, and Mashiro. After the death of 2/3 of the cast, it comes down to Machiya, Mashiro, and Miwa, with Mizuno riding along as a fourth member.
- Disgusting Public Toilet: The bathrooms at Kana’s school fall into this, being covered in blood and gore.
- Driven to Suicide:
- The DEAD Tube game beginning in chapter 12 involves people killing themselves in order to get the most views. Needless to say many people who had any thoughts for this have taken this as an incentive.
- When Machiya decides to film a suicide video for Furui Kazuo, the entire storyboard is trying to invert the desire to commit suicide. He makes Furui experience a feeling of happiness and being wanted by someone else that his final moments alive is how he becomes afraid to die.
- Establishing Character Moment: Machiya, when asked by Mashiro to film her no matter what happens, does so. No matter what situation, where he was, or even when the usual path would be to just stop filming at times such as when Mashiro is asleep, he still films it, staying awake. Then when Mashiro bludgeons her "boyfriend" to death, he still films it unwaveringly. Not only that, he is then revealed to be turned on by that, and actually finds it interesting, whereas everything beforehand was boring.
- Evil Versus Evil: No one is seen in a positive light in this story. Even Miwa, who is arguably the cleanest of the entire cast, resorts to crime in order to rack up views for DEAD Tube.
- Eye Scream: Mashiro stabs one of the film club members like this with an ice pick before slashing his throat.
- Faking the Dead:
- Oushima fakes her suicide by using the body of another student's in order to play on Machiya's feelings to murder Mashiro. Then its revealed that Mashiro faked her own death to allow the film club to reveal their intention and before murdering them all in cold-blood.
- While it's currently unknown how he faked his death, Mr. Machiya is revealed in chapter 54 to be alive.
- Fan Disservice:
- A bare Mashiro covered in the blood of her latest victim. Also Oushima, naked and mangled after being dropped from the school roof.
- Pretty much every time a victim of the game dies that is female, some kind of rape, sexual assault, or nakedness is involved, and it will usually be this. And there are a few instances where there was no death (at least initially) like the rape scene in the Crazy Rascal arc, though that could have been meant as a "twisted" form of fanservice, it involves an ugly fat guy and ends in his death.
- Forgotten First Meeting: Mashiro and Machiya met as children. It's just unfortunate that the latter can't remember a thing.
- Gambit Pileup:
- The film club hinge their video on tricking Machiya into murdering Mashiro by both killing off their own members and faking deaths, plus playing with Machiya's feelings to direct his rage towards Mashiro and killing her. Then, once that was done, they would kill Machiya as well after humiliating him with the reveal that the whole thing was a ploy. However, Machiya already figured out that the crew may be lying to him about their sincerity, so he and Mashiro staged the entire event with fake blood and a fake weapon to see if that was indeed true. Once it was, Machiya takes up a camera as Mashiro goes to town killing off every single person in the film club.
- The post-chapter 56 film research club attempts much the same towards Yotsuzaka. Too bad for them she was in contact with Machiya, who saw through it immediately.
- Gorn: There are a lot of gruesome violences here and there, as well as many gruesome deaths.
- Gory Discretion Shot: For a series that thrives on gorn, there are some scenes that actually avoid the brutal ends some characters faced. Most notably in the "suicide" arc. Such as the aftermath of Furui after the exploding collar goes off.
- Gratuitous Rape: DEAD Tube is vague about the eroticism they want in the murder films, “it gotta have Ecchi”, that of course usually translates to rape or the person being humiliated naked.
- Groin Attack:
- Mashiro pulls off an interesting and rare female variation of this on Ma-chan in Chapter 29 by STICKING A COLLAPSIBLE BATON UP HER VAGINA AND THEN REMOVING IT AFTER TAKING HER OUT WITH A GERMAN SUPLEX. And as if the scene couldn't get any more twisted, when she removes the baton, blood and what appears to be either pee or a female ejaculate visibly shoots out of Ma-Chan's crotch.
- George L receives a particularly brutal version of this towards the end of the DEAD Tube school arc when Mai cuts off his manhood and shoves it into his mouth as a gag.
- High-Pressure Blood: Gruesome murders are common place around here and all the victims tend to bleed a lot, some could be fooled into thinking someone dying like that in real life could result in that much blood, however even some mild beatings result in fountains of blood as if everyone is made of bloody piñatas.
- I Ate WHAT?!: A truly nasty and horrific example. In the "Breaking Kana" arc Machiya remembers, how the leftover curry he ate for breakfast had a strange taste to it. This happens while he's searching his home after being shown footage of his family being slaughtered. He finds the remains of his father (or so it seems) in the refrigerator. That's when he remembers eating the strange flavored curry.
Now if you put one and one together... - I Did What I Had to Do: Quite a few characters see DEAD Tube as a quick way to make money, not realizing the penalties they'll face if their videos fail to make a hit. This causes many students to do unpleasant things in order to win, and forces Miwa and a bunch of other students to plot the murder of Betsuki-sensei.
- In Love with Your Carnage: Machiya is visibly uninterested when Mashiro invites him to film her having sex with someone else, but before any penetration happens Mashiro beats her "lover" to death with a bat. This turn of events makes Machiya horny, showing a visible bulge in his pants.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence: The entire concept revolves around this, particularly both sex and murder and all possible combinations of the two.
- Last-Name Basis: Almost the entire cast is composed of teens in high school, so they all call each other by their family names. One hardly sees the main characters being called by their given names: Tomohiro (Machiya) and Mai (Mashiro).
- Locked Out of the Loop: Machiya is played like a fool by the film research club. He once believed they were all good friends of his, tight knit for their common hobby; turns out they were all DEAD Tube regulars, murder-loving psychos, and had orgies behind his back just to rub salt in the wound, all resulting in a mass string of Broken Pedestals and Machiya facilitating all of their deaths by Mashiro's hand.
- Becomes Exaggerated during the "Zombie" Arc, where Machiya effectively learns that his entire existence was to be the subject of his father's own DEAD Tube project.
- Mood Dissonance: Most of the time Mashiro is present, whether cheerfully talking to Machiya or gruesomely murdering someone, is done with a very large and cheerful personality. A good demonstration is during the suicide arc where she beats up three boys into a bloody pulp...while smiling and visual effects filled with comedic stars...and blood.
- Morality Pet: Miwa serves as one to Machiya, when Machiya helps her so she doesn't lose in the DEAD Tube competition.
- murder.com: The titular website allows people to post videos of violence and murder.
- No Sense of Personal Space: When watching the suicide videos Machiya finds every single one of them to be boring, Mashiro approaches him and questions why he finds the videos to be that bad, Machiya tries to retort saying it’s not like that, Mashiro then grabs Machiya’s crotch and states he definitely isn’t finding them to be of his liking if his dick isn’t hard.
- Off with His Head!:
- Nishijima due to "Crazy Rascal".
- And also Ishizaki.
- Only Sane Woman: Miwa Hanae. Out of all the characters, she's the only one so far to note how everything is "not normal", and may be the only character so far to still have their sanity intact.
- Out with a Bang:
- In the "Crazy Rascal" arc, there are two instances of sex and the male getting killed during it.
- For the very first death, Machiya's old bully Yamamoto is brutally murdered by Mashiro while he was in the middle of foreplay with her.
- Rape by Proxy: Ishizaki forces this on Akari and Mizuno during the Crazy Rascal arc.
- Happens again during the "DEAD Tube House" arc, where the participants decide to manipulate a student into having sex with her professor in order to clear the first challenge.
- Really Gets Around: Noumi Reira will sleep with anyone who offers.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Machiya delivers one to Oushima after her betrayal. He and Yotsuzaka later deliver one to Kuroishi Moe after foiling the post-chapter 56 film research club's plans.
- Rousseau Was Right: Betsuki-sensei is a firm believer of this, she believes that her students would not do any harm even if she became a target and even becomes part of DEAD Tube's game willingly to test this.
- Sanity Slippage: Since his first involvement with DEAD Tube, Machiya has been slowly becoming more and more unhinged as he films each game.
- Self-Made Orphan: Mashiro, for reasons that are not yet clear. Chapter 54 confirms that she and her younger sister Hikari were both abused by their father, who filmed it all for DEAD Tube, and further implies that she murdered him because of it.
- Sex Sells: DEAD Tube videos are about real murders taken on film, and those get their usual quota of viewers. Murders with sex involved, however, are the Top Viewed; it is encouraged and the video producers get paid more for it.
- Shout-Out: The first panel of chapter one is an obvious one to Avatar.
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man: During the 48 hours of filming Mashiro teases Machiya with many cases in which his hormones and urges could get the best of him: filming her go pee, filming her during her sleep; Machiya keeps his cool and doesn’t take advantage of Mashiro, she states this being the reason why she likes him, because he is a “good boy”. This of course might be only a part of her reason, or it is a farce altogether; Mashiro knows Machiya is thrilled about murders and she likes to perform said actions, the two are a match made in heaven (or hell).
- Slut-Shaming:
- Jouen believes that sex is sacred, and admonishes girls who have sex out of wedlock. This includes his girlfriend, who lied about being a virgin, and Akari, who was raped.
- Ishizaki also does this to Akari, all because she has a "slutty" face. He discovers she's a virgin when he starts raping her.
- Smarter Than You Look: Plain and socially awkward Machiya can tell when fairly convincing footage and photos have been manipulated by just looking at it; this dooms an entire group of people who have been pretending to his friends only to have him killed later. Machiya keeps being his awkward self but is always quick to revert any situation when someone he tried his hardest to trust turns out to be some manipulative person who is out for his neck.
- Snuff Film: A variant on the concept, but at its core it's still people making money from homemade videos of sex and murder.
- Social Deduction Game: The "DEAD Tube House" arc is essentially this crossed with a Reality Show in the vein of Big Brother. Twelve participants must live together in a house rigged with twenty-four hour surveillance cameras where they must cooperate to complete a daily task. But there are two "traitors" among the participants with the goal to sabotage the group's effort to complete the task. If the task is failed, one of the participants will randomly be killed while the traitors are rewarded with a hundred-million yen cash prize. So the "innocent" guests must deduce who are the traitors before they can act against them.
- Splatter Horror: Considering the concept, this is a given. Contestants vying for the most views will try to film the most spectacularly violent and bloody videos, starting as soon as the first chapter.
- The End... Or Is It?: Chapter 56 seemingly wraps up the story, as Mr. Machiya was killed in the previous chapter and Hanae is recovering in the hospital from the last DEAD Tube game, but then reveals that even with its creator dead, DEAD Tube is still going. The next chapter introduces a new protagonist and DEAD Tube Neo.
- Too Good to Be True: The fifth DEAD Tube game. The game calls for the participants to film a "target", with reward based on film time (with one second - one million yen), the staging area has basic necessities, and everyone participating will get a cut of the reward! What's so bad about that? Their "target" is a serial killer named "Crazy Rascal", who begins the game by beheading one of the contestants.
- Violently Protective Girlfriend: Betsuki-sensei tries to continue her sex craze with Machiya, Mashiro calmly states “that” [Machiya’s dick] is hers and Betsuki can’t have it, Mashiro blows her brains off with an automatic pistol to show she means it, and to protect Machiya since that’s how Betsuki initiates a murder: fuck then kill under the pretense they couldn’t satisfy her.
- Was It All a Lie?:
- Machiya’s reaction when Oushima and the remaining Film Research Club members reveal their true selves, by confirming what Machiya didn’t want to believe he goes on to pay them back in kind, that is getting them killed.
- Also his reaction to learning his father setup his wife and daughter's deaths. The problem is that he did love them both, and treated them as his pride and joy—but that's exactly why he wanted them killed, because ruining those that are precious to him gives him pleasure.
- Yotsuzaka's reaction to the post-chapter 56 film research club revealing their true selves, with her still retaining some of it even after the reveal that she and Machiya already knew.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Due to the nature of this series, a lot of characters die with little to barely any screentime.
- Wondrous Ladies Room: Subverted. The female bathrooms at Kana’s school are (presumably) just as disgusting at the men’s bathrooms, due to them being covered in blood and human remains.
- World of Buxom: Every female character introduced so far.
- Yandere:
- Mashiro to Machiya, insisting that he is for her and her only.
- Betsuki-sensei as well, in a weird sense she idolizes a "version" of her love interest rather than him himself. If the person being sexually involved with her cannot satisfy her sex urge, she determines them as "fake" to her love interest and kills them, even if he is the love interest.
They get hooked on a real gore website called "DEAD Tube".
