—FALLEN DOWN.
As The Gods Will is incredibly disturbing, even by Deadly Game standards. Hope you're good with blood.- The daruma game. Oh lord, the daruma game. For the first game, it's by far the most violent, being a "red light, green light"-esque game reminiscent of the one in the first episode of Squid Game. Somehow it manages to be worse than even that, due to the cause of death: instead of being shot, the losing players' heads are blown up with seemingly as much effort as one would pop a balloon. It's incredibly nerve-wracking to watch...and then the daruma starts mixing up its timing, making it so that the students can't predict its movements. If it weren't for the Indy Ploy that Shun and the class representative pulled off, the series probably would've ended then and there. And the daruma still manages to get the last laugh by popping the rep's head at the last second.
- The live-action film ups the ante even further with two big additions: the first is making the daruma much more expressive, which combined with its oddly fleshy look spikes the thing right to the bottom of the uncanny valley. The second factor is elaborating on just exactly how the losing students get killed in the first place - their eyes and mouth are suddenly flooded by marbles, which spread to every cavity in their head until it physically can't take any more and explodes like a watermelon, scattering the marbles everywhere, which results in other students slipping on the marbles and getting their heads popped as well. The realistic effects don't help in the slightest, either, since you'd be forgiven for thinking that those extras actually had their heads blown up.
