Manga / As the Gods Will

"Dear God...please, give me my boredom back."

As the Gods Will (Kami-sama no Iu Toori) is a Japanese manga series written by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and illustrated by Akeji Fujimura.

The series consists of two arcs: I and II.

In the first arc, Takahata Shun's day at high school begins just as normal and boring as ever, but it doesn't end that way. After his teacher's head explodes in front of the class and a daruma doll emerges from the headless body, he and his classmates find themselves forced to play children's games, starting with Daruma ga Koronda (a game similar to Red Light/Green Light), with deadly stakes. With no idea who is behind this mysterious deadly game session, and no way of knowing when it will finally end, the only thing Shun and other students can do is keep trying to win.

The second arc focuses on Akashi Yasuto, who ditched school before the daruma dolls appeared. As "trash" who ditched, he finds himself collected along with other truants to be "educated" through a "Kamiculum." But what waits for him afterwards goes beyond anything else the game has thrown at him...

The first series ran for 5 volumes in Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine from 2011 to 2012, while the second part was serialized in Weekly Shounen Magazine and ran for 11 volumes from 2013 to 2017. It was adapted into a live-action film directed by Takashi Miike and released November 15, 2014; it was released in the United States by Funimation on Blu-Ray and DVD on June 5, 2018, nearly four years later.

The second part is serialized on Crunchyroll's Manga app under the title As the Gods Will: The Second Series.

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Tropes:

General Tropes

• Anyone Can Die: Yes, even Takahata and Akashi, the main characters of their respective parts.
• Angsty Surviving Twin:
  • Subverted in Sanada's case. He doesn't even mind that his brother's dead (not even that he was killed right next to him) since he bossed him around most of the time.
  • Played straight in Part II, where Hiroki is depressed about his brother Daiki's death and wishes to see him again if he got the chance to ascend to godhood and bring him back. He at least ends up Together in Death with him after the Rock-Paper-Scissors fight.
• Asshole Victim: A lot of the students that get killed are looking out for themselves most of the time, and don't hesitate to start sacrificing others for the sake of their own survival. They all still die brutally, but you can't help but think that they had it coming on some level.
• Art Evolution: By the later sections of part 2, there's a clear change in style from the first series and the early second. Everyone's more streamlined, screentones are used with gusto, and the art in general takes a quality increase.
• Book Ends: The first and second parts begin with the Daruma challenge. The second part ends with the Daruma challenge, now that everything's been set back up to that exact moment.
• Characters Dropping Like Flies: Don't expect to get attached to anyone in this story, since most characters outside of the main two or three bite it fairly quickly. Sometimes in the middle of their backstories, which would otherwise signal survival.
• Crapsack World: Even discounting the massive elephant in the room that is the Gods and their games, the main characters have pretty awful backstories for the most part, and many of the contestants have their uglier sides brought out by the game.
• Dark and Troubled Past: You have kids from broken homes, kids who've been assaulted and abused, kids who've seen war up close, kids who've been experimented on... and all this isn't even touching the bullshit they have to go through now.
• Deadly Game: The entire premise of the story, actually. Japanese schoolchildren are forced to play supernatural life-or-death versions of common children's games.
• Death of a Child: News reports after the Daruma and Lucky Cat games note that all of the schools involved were high schools. The hospital that housed the kokeshi doll game also had some college students running around, and Kamimaro even splits up the survivors in the second round into age groups that don't seem to go on before grade 6. Finally with "Portrait of Hell", Mana and Kamimaro decide to get everyone involved, and the manga shows a couple of panels of children about to be killed by the monsters.
• Deity of Human Origin:
  • Kamimaro is this. Mana explains that he was just a regular human that got imbued with a higher form of Tomfoolery because she and her sibling just wanted to test it out. Eventually Amaya, Ushimitsu, and Akashi become this, but only Ushimitsu survives.
  • This is also the case for Mana herself, who originate from a Aman, a human girl from a future Earth. Technically, she is the only "true" human from the series as all the others are created from her imagination.
• Developing Doomed Characters
• Foreshadowing: All of the games are just twisted versions of games that children would play. That's because the gods are children. Well, plus one Manchild.
• Hero of Another Story: Shun and Akashi participate in different games and events that transpire around the same timeline. Their stories slowly intersect in Part 2 starting with the two interacting with each other during Akashi's shadow-stepping challenge, and finally when Ushimitsu rescues Shun and Amaya from falling to their deaths. For both stories, the NEET is this as he eventually partially discovers the truth of the situation even though he's not participating in the games, and Aoyama is one of these for the second part since there is constant mention of his adventures and actions while the other two games occurred.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners:
  • After all they've been through, Akashi and Ushimitsu basically become each other's reason to live, and they care for each other quite a bit. Akashi also used to have this relationship with Aoyama, and Ushimitsu had one with Roku.
  • Also counts as Bash Brothers, but Shun and Amaya serve as this for the first part and well into the second. They get off to a rocky start, but afterwards they work together like a well-oiled machine. After Shun takes down Kamimaro during the Old Maid game, Amaya turns out to be repressing some serious mourning for him.
• Jerkass Gods: Kamimaro, Sein Kami and Mana.
• Karma Houdini: After all is said and done, only Acid Mana escapes the story scot-free. At the very least Kamimaro gets taken down with Shun and Sein Kami not only gets decked by Akashi, but killed by Mana as well— Mana on the other hand doesn't even get a chance to be brought down to size.
• invokedLife Imitates Art: It turns out that all of the crazy events of the manga were based off of the comics Kamimaro made when he was human. They're also shown as video game adaptations as well.
• Lovecraft Lite: When the gods are nothing but cruel bullies who aren't even phased by the deaths of millions of humans, there's nothing the human race can do but try to survive the deadly games they're thrust into, and Earth turns out to be some kind of glorified toy for higher beings, you know your universe is fucked beyond relief. Even so, it is possible for humanity to go above and beyond what's expected of them, and they do have the power to affect their world on the level of the Gods, provided they have all the necessary tools.
• More Deadly Than the Male: Mana most definitely, since she wanted to raise the stakes on the game and straight up kills her brother because his games were getting "boring".
• Muscles Are Meaningless: This trope is played straight with characters like Amaya and Ushimitsu who are lean, but throw around people like tissue paper and hurl helicopter propellers like they were nothing.
  • Lily averts this trope by being built like a tank and hitting like one too. Hell, he even gives Ushimitsu and Amaya a run for their money.
• Psychological Horror
• Series Mascot: The Daruma doll from the first trial, seeing as that it has the most appearances of any of the different things used in the games, and appears on more than one manga cover.
• Theme Naming: All of the Kamis have Kami hidden their name somewhere. Mana is the only one of the gods to break such a rule.
• Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: For some inexplicable reason, all of the cubes from around the world are all gathered in Japan in the last stretch of the game.
• Troll: All the "Gods" are this, Especially Mana. They gladly will place "players" in games without telling them a single limitation or how to do certain key things.
• Your Head A-Splode: A great many of the games have this as a consequence, but this trope is more remembered as the punishment of losing the Daruma game.

Part 1

Part 1 contains examples of:

• Ax-Crazy: Amaya - he has no issues with killing other participants in the games and is often laughing while doing so.
• Cliffhanger: Part 1 ends with Takahata and Amaya falling to their deaths and Kamimaro still actively playing his game.
• Downer Ending: Part I ends with both Takahata Shun and Amaya Takeru failing to kill the Big Bad of their arc, and falling to their demise. Or, rather, what initially is their demise...
• Early-Bird Cameo: Acid Mana shows up in Kamimaro's room wearing an alien costume near the end of Part I. We don't know exactly why she's there at first, because she blows up the room as soon as she's discovered.
• Fingore: An early flashback into Takahata's childhood treats us to the delightful image of his finger being cut clean off his second knuckle. It's reattached at present, though.
• Godhood Seeker: Amaya. He seems to think that he is the Chosen One in these death games and that his purpose is to ascend into godhood. His ambitions at least earn him that much by Part 2.
• Gratuitous English: During the second game, the characters are asked to answer some of the questions "Yes or no" in English (as opposed to "Hai" or "Iie" in Japanese).
• The Hero: Takahata, who comes up with the solutions to most of the games.
• The Hero Dies: Or did he?
• Hope Spot:
  • After the first round of the games are over, the survivors are taken to a version of Ryugujo and are given actual food and entertainment for a while, with no death games in sight. They talk, laugh, and even promise to exchange contact information if they make it out alive. Towards the end of their time there, they're all given sticks with either an X or no mark at all... and the Taro doll that's with them informs them that the last game is a game of "luck", killing all the contestants with the X sticks.
  • Takahata decides on a plan that might stop the current game they're playing without any bloodshed. He and Amaya then take the bomb poles used in the game, and chuck both of them at Kamimaro in the last couple of seconds. Smart plan, right? Well, he shrinks the poles down, "disqualifies" the two of them, and spits them back out at them for the bombs to explode in their face.
• It's Personal: Shun's motivation for partaking in the sports festival. He has it out for Kamimaro when he found out that he was responsible for the death of his friends.
• Lean and Mean: Kamimaro for sure, considering the hell he put everyone through.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Both Ichika and Takahata have this reaction after winning the first game.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Amaya and Ichika are both sexually aroused by the danger they're in; Ichika in particular gets disappointed when Takahata tells her that they will survive a particular task.
• Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: All Takahata wanted was a thrill in his boring, plodding life. What he got, however, was way more than he bargained for.
• One-Steve Limit: The aversion of this is what ends up saving Christopher Akimoto's life, since Takahata thinks that Ichika Akimoto had been transformed into one of the monster kokeshi dolls. Keep in mind that their names are spelled with different characters, but the names written on the dolls are written in hiragana, which caused the confusion.
• Passion Is Evil: Amaya's character motivations are centered around this. He only truly feels alive when doing acts of violence.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After surviving the first round, Shun made it his life goal to kill the mastermind behind the games after everyone (Shouko in particular) was killed for nothing.
• Self-Made Orphan: Amaya reveals himself to be one during the pole toppling game. His parents mistreat him one too many times, and he retaliated with a Tap on the Head. Think that gives him a Freudian Excuse? No, not really.
• Shirtless Scene: Amaya gets quite a few during the initial cube portion of the first game. And boy, is he ripped.
• Time Skip: Minor one, but the second round of games takes place three months after the first round.
• Token Evil Team Mate: Amaya literally derives pleasure from killing others and justifiably makes everyone around him very nervous. However, once they decide to work together he does become a part of Shun's team and his complete disregard for human life ends up saving them. Not that anyone can be particularly happy about it.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: After surviving the first round of the games and becoming a celebrity, Chris turns into a vain, kind of jerky idol.
• Wham Episode: 21: Takahata Shun, and Amaya Takeru failing to kill Kamimaro and falling to their almost certain deaths.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: As soon as Shun has an opportunity to off Kamimaro during the games, he takes it immediately and devises a plan to kill Kamimaro while his guard is down. Unfortunately for Shun, Kamimaro is able to catch his plan and literally spit it back out at him.

Part 2

Part 2 contains examples of:

• Aborted Arc:
  • Sein Kami wants to put Kamimaro's ideals to the test by having his surviving students go against the survivors of Kamimaro's games, emphasized even more by the fact that Shun and Akashi's main groups each had about five people by the time the second games began. With Sein Kami getting killed by Mana and most of Kamimaro's children dead, that never had a chance of happening.
  • Tomfoolery is only ever used in the Demon Extermination arc, and then only rarely brought up afterwards. It should be noted that this is more due to the fact that most of the people who received Tomfoolery either died or gave it up, so it is a justified trope because God's Children never even got to touch something close to Tomfoolery.
• Affectionate Nickname: Akashi and Ushimitsu get "Aka-shii" and "Ushimi-chan" respectively.
• A God I Am Not: Even after Ushimitsu ascends to godhood, he doesn't do much with his powers besides reset time to the first day and become the new GM for the games. He says that it's because he's not fit to be a god, and he waits for Akashi to take his place and kill him.
• Always Save the Girl: During the Three Kingdoms Cops and Robbers arc, Natsu-Megu is tagged and runs the risk of being executed come the six hour mark going off, and Akashi desperately tries to avert this trope while trying to have winning the game on his mind. Everyone else convinces him to go through with it because saving people is "who he is", but he comes to the jail cells just in time to see her say some final words and die.
• Amnesiac God: For the final battle, all three remaining candidates run the risk of this. As they attack one another, they lose memories of people they've met one by one until there's no one left. In Amaya's case it doesn't affect him much, but it's critical for Akashi and Ushimitsu, as their lives are defined by how they interact with others and they don't want to run the risk of losing their true selves after their ascension.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Akira makes one to Mei during the Rock-Paper-Scissors game, and Mei herself makes one to Akashi during the "Demon Extermination" mission. In both cases, the confessing party is in a position where they may or may not die. And then they do.
• And the Adventure Continues: The Second Series manga comes to a close with Akashi dying and Ushimitsu becoming a God. Ushimitsu, unable to come to terms with Akashi's death, rewinds the clock and becomes the new Game Master in this new-timeline.
• Arc Words: "Beef or Chicken", Aoyama and Akashi's code words for being brave or cowardly. Akashi ends up bringing Aoyama back from his rut because of these code words.
• Art Initiates Life: Mei's knack for drawing ends up becoming her greatest strength in the Demon Extermination portion of the Kamiculum, as her Tomfoolery can bring to life anything she draws of something/someone she likes. This mostly just manifests in making Akashi body doubles.
• A Taste of Power: After the Kamiculum is completed, Sein Kami gives the survivors another assignment to take care of— one that involves Tomfoolery, a creation based power that takes the shape of something that the user is fond of. After the assignment, it's only used sparingly, and then not at all after Three Kingdom Cops and Robbers. Mana later says that it's just a lesser form of the Power of the Gods, which is also creation-based, so in retrospect Sein Kami was preparing his "students" with this.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: How Amaya makes his godhood debut on Earth.
• The Atoner: Akashi's main motivation for participating in the games, to meet up and apologize to his best friend Aoyama. Lily becomes this later as well, and he's shown feeling remorse for all of the violence he'd taken a part of.
• Back for the Dead: Once the story of part 2 has chronologically caught up with part 1, multiple part 1 characters show up only to die rather quickly.
• Back from the Dead: Akashi's main goal for getting the power of God is to restore his lost friends. ...Only to discover it's impossible. You can create a duplicate of someone, but their personality would be entirely shaped by the image of them in your head and not their true self. Alternatively, you can create a genetic clone and age them up, but they'd be the same as a baby, mentally. You simply can't bring the real person back. It is not known if this could be averted by studying for millions of year like Acid Mana did to make the universe to begin with, however. Acid Mana herself never clarifies outright.
• Bittersweet Ending: Ushimitsu finds a way to bring back everyone who died in the series... but he's just going to put them through the games again, because he wants to be reunited with his friends from the final round, and it was the games that shaped them. We're left to wonder if anything will be better in his world than in Kamimaro's.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Discussed during the Old Maid game by Kamimaro. He sees everyone's resolve to win the game and ascend to godhood, but he specifically raises the point that there'd be a moral line that humans could not cross, proving that they'd never be able to fully understand the power and mentality of a god.
• Big Damn Heroes: Ushimitsu would have been this for Akashi after hijacking a helicopter to rescue him, but Mana foils that plan and teleports him away. He's actually able to play the trope straight after saving Shun and Amaya from falling to certain doom.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Inverted. The second arc, while still violent (lots and lots of people die), tones down the amount of violent dismemberment that is involved. The easiest example to point to is the Red Light Green Light game in both parts. In part 1, anyone who fails gets their head blown clean off their body. In part 2, anyone who fails gets a lethally giant hole blasted through their chest, but their head remains fully intact. Subsequent games at the start are similarly less gory, though this loosens up as the story progresses. It ends up being bloodier at least, with most characters just turning into puddles of blood when they're killed. This is shown in events like Rock, Paper, Scissors and Old Maid where the losers just burst into blood.
• Brown Note: Sein Kami uses this to demonstrate his god powers to the "trash" students. It blows the unfortunate kid's head clean off his body.
• Cartwright Curse: It's impossible for Akashi to fall in love given the setting. All of his love interests die in one way or another, with Natsumegu being his last casualty. And ultimately, it gets inverted as Akashi, Ushimitsu's crush, dies after the final battle.
• Characters Dropping Like Flies: Kris, Bandou, Kyouko, and Junko are all killed after they get a proper place back in the spotlight after their cameos in the "Shadow Stepping" chapters. Kris doesn't even get the honor of fighting his dramatic foil as a Child of God.
• Child Soldier: Lily and his six most-trustworthy comrades before they enter the games.
• The Chosen One: There really was no such thing throughout the whole adventure, but after Ushimitsu resets to the first day, he makes Akashi this. On this second go-around, assuming there won't be any others, he's hoping that Akashi will be the one to save the world and take God down.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Dragged and beaten by the narrative any chance they can get. There's some kind of hope in having a person who will look out for you no matter what, but what good is having a person like that around when everyone around them will still die regardless? And when they aren't truly able to save the people they've worked so hard for, what of their psyche? Are they still able to hold onto their beliefs? Many of the contestants mock Akashi and Aoyama for having dispositions like this. Completely beaten and deconstructed when the final game has Amaya basically punishing Akashi and Ushimitsu for caring about others to the degree they did by making each punch against them remove their memories.
• The Conscience: Youhei's ghost acts as one to Harakai as he starts slipping further into madness.
• Contrived Coincidence: Chapter 46; it's a little too perfect for Megu to take out one of the School Mysteries and send them flying out the building just as Akashi and Tsuge were falling off the edge of a building.
• Cowardly Lion:
  • Akira all the way, after the sand-scooping competition. He gets pants-wettingly terrified of all of the nightmarish monsters and events that come their way, but despite that he keeps trudging through, partly because he can't bring himself to commit suicide, and half because he's thriving on his love for Mei.
  • Shimura's cowardice has saved his life on many an occasion, even though he chastises himself for it.
• Decoy Protagonist: The first few chapters play out the Daruma game in the perspective of Aoyama Seiichi. The real hero of the story is Akashi Yasuto, his friend who ditched class that day.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: When forced into a rock-paper-scissors game with Sein Kami for her life, Tsuge confronts Sein Kami on his actions and calls him "a mass murderer who does it for fun" and not a god at all. By refusing to play the game, she dies but she manages to seriously piss him off in the process.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Akashi follows up on Tsuge's sacrifice, and proved himself to be the biggest badass in the manga when he punched out Sein Kami across the stage after confronting him with the lives he'd just taken during the rock-paper-scissors game and even avoided death by telling Sein Kami that he pulled rock and won against Sein Kami's scissors. He defied a God and LIVED.
• Down to the Last Play: The Daruma game plays out like this. Where Aoyama couldn't accurately kick a soccer ball and score for his team, he gets to do so here by kicking another soccer ball into the button on the back of the daruma in the last ten seconds and saves the remaining class. Unfortunately, that just means he was the one that won, and everyone else is killed anyway.
• Dramatic Irony: During the "Three Kingdom Cops and Robbers" arc, we learn from Mert that Fathma is a very unusual seer in her family because all of her predictions are death omens and shouldn't be followed under any circumstances. Problem is, her subordinates don't know that, and the audience can only watch in horror as the Star and Moon teams ally themselves against the Sun team as she predicted.
• Dying Declaration of Love: Many of the love interests in the story go out like this. Megu, Mei, Ichika, and even Tenma get to pour their feelings out to their loved ones before their time is up.
• Dying Moment of Awesome:
  • Mitsukuni gets the dubious honor of taking out the monkey by summoning enough ice crystals to combat the monkey's flame output, and nearly blowing himself up to do so.
  • Shun gets to go out in a blaze of glory by taking GOD down with him, ending his boredom and earning Kamimaro's respect in the process.
  • Tsuge gets one, as noted above.
• Fake-Out Make-Out: A variation of this happened in Judgement Old-Maid game. Akashi and Ushimitsu kissed to pretend the card Ushimitsu took from Akashi was a kiss card (while it was a ticking time-bomb card) so that Male-Female in the next turn would be fooled into thinking he took the kiss card he needed to win. What went different was that Ushimitsu didn't know the plan until the moment they kissed (even after the kiss he didn't know full well about it).
• Five-Man Band: The (remaining) Kami's Jr., though it morphs into a proper team of five later on. Yasuto Akashi is focused on leading any fellow survivors and inspires many individuals who have a questionable sanity, self-centered or evil. Natsumegu is one of the more capable survivors who shares Akashi's desire to survive the Deadly Game. Trades her position with Shimura when she gets separated from Akashi, and is forced to give him limited support due to being with the enemy kingdom in Three Kingdom Cops and Robbers. Yae Hourai is the voice of reason and formulated a plan to bust Akashi out of prison in Three Kingdom Cops and Robbers. Kiyoshirou Ushimitsu is one of Akashi's close allies and can nearly match Amaya in strength and sanity. Can overlap with Genius Bruiser however. Kagemaru Shimura is the least capable of the group until his Character Development. Later gets promoted to Lancer and exchanges his position with Natsumegu when he and Akashi get forced to participate in The Portrait of Death.
• Foregone Conclusion: After learning that he dies in the game via Boom, Headshot!, Akashi weaponizes this and uses it to great effect against the monsters knowing that he cannot be killed by them. He does get shot eventually, but he doesn't die.
• Foreshadowing: We first get a glimpse of Akashi's Akashic Eyes when he fights against the smallest oni robots. Tomfoolery in general can be considered this to Godhood in the setting.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Tasuku has this trope in spades until he gave his life to save Akashi's.
• Gasshole: Kamimaro burps and farts a lot, mostly to reminds us how disgusting he is.
• Genre Shift:
  • With the addition of Tomfoolery, the Demon Extermination arc briefly turns the series into a battle shounen manga with all the Applied Phlebotinum it usually comes with.
  • It seems to go from a children's game-themed horror/survival manga to a science fiction war manga in the "Three Kingdoms Cops and Robbbers" arc.
  • The Old Maid game takes the series into a strategy tabletop manga or a card game manga, not unlike Akagi or Yu-Gi-Oh!.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: Sara seems convinced that she looks better when she takes off her glasses and lets her hair down... but no one else agrees. One of them even vomits when she does it again.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: The final battle, while involving some amount of god power, basically amounts to a three-way brawl where the last one standing is the winner.
• Gratuitous English: Ushimitsu likes to dabble in this way more than anyone else in the manga.
• Here We Go Again!: Instead of stopping the games altogether, Ushimitsu decides to reset it all over to get Akashi to take his place as a god.
• Hostile Show Takeover: Can't get any more hostile than killing the old host.
• Idiot Ball: Despite proven multiple times that Akashi and Aoyama are quick thinkers, they conveniently miss out one of Amanojaku Labyrinth's instructions which cost them Aoyama's life.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Akashi and Aoyama have one while they're hanging off of ropes. Over a spiked pit. While they're wildly swinging around and the rope is on fire.
• Imagination-Based Superpower: The Tomfoolery ability Sein Kami gave to Kami's Jr. loosely works on the users' imagination of what they want to do the most with their precious item.
  • Acid Mana later confirms that Tomfoolery itself is a lesser version of God's Power she and Sein Kami will give. Survivors of Judgement Old-Maid are given literally power of imagination to manipulate everything in the universe.
• Incompatible Orientation: Ushimitsu is in love with Akashi. Akashi does not and cannot feel the same way, as he is straight. Despite this the two are still great friends anyway.
• I Will Wait for You: Ushimitsu, after resetting the world, is expecting this version of Akashi to rise to the challenge again and kill him.
• Last Request: Tenma asks, once Akashi becomes a god and reshapes the world, that Tenma be reincarnated or reborn as a woman.
• Magical Girl: Megu's Tomfoolery turns out to be this, as she bases hers off of an in-universe magical girl. After she uses it once to heal everyone, she doesn't use this ability again.
• Manic Pixie Dream Guy: Ushimitsu's old friend Roku was a boy like this. Before the game started, Ushimitsu was a meek, scrawny nerd with no friends until Roku came along. With his friendship, he learned the power of living like it's your last moments, gained more confidence, and bulks up a fair amount as well. Like a lot of these types of characters, Roku turns out to be sick and dying, and passes on after a particularly bad case of his unspecified illness.
• Mêlée à Trois: The final battle is supposed to be this, with Akashi, Amaya, and Ushimitsu pitted against each other. However, two of them decide to gang up on the third, and in the end it gets averted as two duke it out while the third spectates.
• Might Makes Right: Harakai becomes a staunch supporter of this mindset after his Santa Trial, where since everyone couldn't communicate with each other to get the objective done, he knocks everyone else out and finishes the game himself. This way of thinking consumes his personality to the point where the sweet young man he was before the Kamiculum started nearly vanished. Luckily, he regains his composure after the first fight with Ushitora.
• Multistage Teleport: Akashi's Tomfoolery is the "Akashic Eye", which allows him to teleport short distances, wherever he kicks his soccer ball.
• Mundane Made Awesome: The Old Maid game. Despite divine alteration, it's for the most part a very long, ordinary game of Old Maid. But it's a very awesome game of Old Maid nonetheless.
• invokedNeutral Good: Sanada during his brief stint back in the spotlight. He doesn't really care about people's goals one way or the other— he just seems to help out whoever he thinks is alright. And at the moment, he just so happens to have taken a liking to Akashi.
• Opposite Day: Basic rule in Amanojaku Labyrinth. Do the opposite of what was told there. Consequently, the solution to solve the labyrinth is to get back to starting point without bringing any keys.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Amaya, again, and this is exactly what he aims to be on a divine scale once he gains access to the Power of the Gods.
• Plot Hole: One that shows up at the very end of the manga, no less. When Ushimitsu and Akashi ascend to godhood, they try reviving Natsu-Megu, only to be told and shown that the people they "revive" will only be their mind's eye versions, and not the actual people themselves. However, Ushimitsu is told that he has the power to turn back time, and he takes that opportunity. How he is able to do this and not revive people outright is never explained, since he essentially brought the whole world back as it once was before the games.
  • As revealed in 0 -zero-, the prequel manga, the "earth" upon which the series takes place and all its people are essentially a big simulation. Ushimitsu's just hitting the "rewind" button on it.
    • While that is true, the rewind ending also removes Ushimitsu from the overall setting. Ushimitsu is one of the main factors Akashi made it as far as he did to begin with, so unless Ushimitsu interferes then Akashi might not even make it past the Oni.
• Puppet King: It turns out the cult of Shiner had Aikou pulling the strings all along, since he was the one who hypnotizes Shimura in the first place and feeds him all the information that he later tells the cult while Shimura's asleep.
• Raging Stiffie: During the Demon Extermination arc, Ushimitsu doesn't quite know how he first activated his Tomfoolery. All he remembers doing is running off with an erection, and tries to whip up another one to do so.
• Recap Episode: Since the second part of the series is hosted in a different magazine than the first, the daruma game serves as one. They start with the same two games from the first, and explain the situation and what's been happening.
• Refuge in Audacity: Akashi pretends to be a member of the Space Police to prevent his involvement in the games from being found out after teleporting in front of a group of grade schoolers.
• Refusal of the Call: It turns out Kamimaro didn't even want to be a god in the first place, when he was offered the chance by Sein Kami and Mana. The games of the first and second parts are the result of that, setting up a situation in order to find a decent replacement for him.
  • The NEET turns out to have also done this, as he flat out refuses to take the Kamiculum when one of the statues comes for him. He only survives due to the statue interpreting it as filial piety.
• Reset Button: Ushimitsu pushes it at the end, setting it back to the very first day. But even he knows that it's not a full reset, as everyone as he knew them is dead and the reset only has copies of everyone.
• Retcon: Minor; Christopher was referred to as "Crystal C" in the first part, but his nickname changes to "Crystal A" in Part II.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • When Rui dies protecting Akashi from Ushitora, Akashi tracks down the monster to avenge her and delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to it, restricting its movement and when it managed to escape, Akashi finds him and kicks the grenade to kill it.
  • When Ushitora tried to use its powers to bring up painful memories and teleport him to another part of the school, Akashi wasn't affected by the power. Rui's death was his most sad memory and he proceeded to beat down Ushitora.
• Second Coming: Shiner's cult seems absolutely convinced that he can see the future and ascend to godhood, and he lets them indulge in their fantasies as he's just as crazy as they are.
• Secret Test: Turns out the whole game was one by the Gods, as they were trying to see which of the participants would be the best candidate for godhood.
• Seers: Fathma's family is traditionally made up of these, usually making paintings that give happy predictions of the future. Fathma's, however, are instead omens of death and should not be followed.
• Shout-Out:
  • The picture that accompanies the exposition about Johann going off to search with some students is meant to invoke the Abbey Road cover. Johann even looks like a dead ringer for John Lennon!
  • The regions where Lily and the Sun crew hailed from are called the Yabiku and Rikiishi regions.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: To every notion of being called inhuman, Kamimaro replies that he already knows that. To Akashi's offer of being reborn, he rejects such an offer because he expects less out of himself than he would anyone else on the planet.
• Single-Target Sexuality: After Akashi started to prove himself in Ushimitsu's eyes, he's pretty much obsessed over him ever since. Part of it's because Akashi reminds him of his old friend Roku.
• The Seven Mysteries: The third phase of the "Kamiculum" has the students explore school in the hopes of eliminating the mysteries. However, they multiply the number of mysteries by seven, making there 49 different mysteries to defeat divided across 3 different teams.
• Soulless Shell: As it turns out, Akashi turns into one during the final battle. His memories had been beaten out of him by Amaya, so his personality as he knows it is gone. He can only run on the feelings he had based on his lost memories.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: All of the first part's main cast save for Amaya do not survive to the final battle. And even then, Amaya lasts just until the penultimate chapter.
• Suicide by Cop: Ushimitsu's ultimate long-term goal at the end of the game, now that he's ascended to godhood.
• Taking You with Me: Shun throws away his chance to become a god and leave the Judgement Old Maid alive in order to kill the Big Bad that started the death games to begin with.
• Tanuki: The Amanojaku Labyrinth features a number of these in symbol and statue (oh, that statue) form.
• There Can Be Only One: Akashi, Ushimitsu, and Amaya have all ascended to godhood. But because of Akashi and Ushimi's different mindset from Amaya, they all agree to do one final game; the winner becomes the only god of the universe. And as of the end of Part II, the winner is Ushimitsu, as Amaya loses the final game proper and Akashi's body gives out after Amaya goes down.
• Title Drop: After Akashi figures out that Hitsujisaru of the "Seven by Seven Mysteries" challenge can show him the future, he wonders if he could change the outcome of Rui's death had he been shown the future sooner, or if everything is predestined "as the gods will".
• Top God: Subverted— Mana is the creator of "this" version of Earth and all its inhabitants, but it's heavily implied that she is just another speck.
• Tragic Bromance:
  • It was Aoyama's spirit and motivation that kept Akashi running for as long as he did, and he desperately wanted to go see his friend throughout the Kamiculum. Come the time when he's finally out of it and learns that Aoyama survived, and Aoyama's lost all of his memories from the shock of winning his games. He eventually snaps back to life after "Portrait of Hell", but for the most part he's detached from most emotions except a survival instinct until the Amanojaku Labyrinth episode. He ends up getting squished by the guardian of the place.
  • After the end, Akashi and Ushimitsu's relationship takes this turn, as Akashi's body gives out immediately after Amaya's been defeated in the final battle.
• Tragic Keepsake: Rui's scrunchie, which is later given to Natsumegu by Akashi. Roku's skateboard is one for Ushimitsu (though this breaks during the "Three Kingdoms Cops and Robbers" arc), and Akashi and Aoyama's soccerball qualifies for this after Aoyama's death.
• Undying Loyalty: Ushimitsu's main priority after the "Mamemaki" game is to help out Akashi, even if that means he will perish himself.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Tenma is revealed to be male when Akashi solves a puzzle by finding a mannequin that most closely resembles Tenma; all the other mannequins were female, while the solution was the male mannequin.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Amaya is practically half naked for the entirety of the game, once he comes back.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 84: Akashi is teleported to the next phase of the game, only to discover Kami impaled by gigantic school materials with his sister, Mana, declaring that she's taking over.
  • Chapter 104: The timelines of part 1 and 2 fully intersect as Ushimitsu teleports to Takahata and Amaya (who are both falling from the sky.
  • Chapter 179: Does it again by revealing that Mana is the creator of their world and all the inhabitants in it.
  • Chapter 180: Follows it up with another shocking reveal.They can't bring back anyone who has died, they can only bring back exaggerated clones of the people they love.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Mana says as much when Ushimitsu decides to reset and become the new Game Master. She even points out that he could use his powers to end the whole ordeal whenever he likes. But despite that, she's incredibly pleased with the outcome.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Mei's backstory mentions that after her teacher got caught trying to sexually assault Mei, he tried to blame her by using her In Love with Love attitude as an excuse for his position. It works, and Mei is bullied harder than ever before.
• You Killed My Sister: Mert hates Male-Female because he's the one who killed Fatma, leader of moon team who doubles as his sister. And ultimately, he dies without getting the revenge he so sought as Male-Female laughs in his face. Akashi and Ushimitsu do make good on Mert's revenge, though.

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