Certainly not Bunnies for Cuteness...
Doubt is a horror manga written by Tonogai Yoshiki with enough bloodshed and plot twists to make your head spin.
Yuu Aikawa is a typical average teenager who plays a cellphone game called "Rabbit Doubt" with his friends. In this game, the players are a warren of "rabbits" who must figure out which player is the "wolf" hidden amongst them before they are all picked off one-by-one.
Unfortunately, Yuu's normal life is cut short when he is attacked and kidnapped by a strange man wearing a grotesque rabbit mask. He wakes up to find himself trapped with the rest of his friends in an abandoned psychiatric hospital, where they will be forced to play a real-life version of Rabbit Doubt.
Which member of the group is the "wolf" tasked with killing the rest? Who is "Hajime", the stranger who acts as the sixth player of the game? And can the group find a way to trust each other long enough to escape the hospital with their lives intact?
Definitely not to be confused with the Pulitzer-prize winning play of the same name (or the movie based on it). Also not to be confused with the manga Doubt!! by Kaneyoshi Izumi or Doubt! by AMANO Sakuya.
See also Judge, which is either a sequel or a Spiritual Successor, and Secret, the third entry in the series.
This manga provides examples of:
- Abandoned Hospital: Most of the story takes place in an abandoned psychiatric hospital, which still contains some effects such as scalpels and other minor medical supplies.
- Anyone Can Die: Considering the only two confirmed survivors are Mitsuki and Rei, with Yuu possibly dead.
- Arc Words: "The Liar Must Die," which is found written in blood next to most of the corpses and is the slogan for the Rabbit Doubt game.
- Big Bad: The Wolf is the one who uses her hypnotic abilities to trap people in a mafia-esque Deadly Game called “Rabbit Doubt” and infiltrate the group as the murderer. It turns out to be Rei Hazama, who was controlling Mitsuki Houyama and lashing out at society because she was accused of being a fraud psychic and her parents killed themselves, and attempted to kill her, out of shame.
- Brainwashed: Using hypnotism, Rei does this to Mitsuki and all the other Wolves through the TV and through coded messages.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: All of the Wolves are being hypnotically manipulated by Rei and might not have any violent tendencies on their own.
- The Chessmaster: Rei Hazama.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: In the story, the group of friends learns that one of them is the Wolf, the one who trapped them here. Come The Reveal, the Wolf is Mitsuki, but the Wolf controlling her and all other Wolves is Rei Hazama, the meek wheelchair-bound girl who seemingly was the first to die.
- Downer Ending: Hajime is likely hanged, Mitsuki likely kills Yuu and is prosecuted, and Rei kindly asks for the check in some random café somewhere.
- Expy: Compare Yuu to Mamoru Akasaka in the Higurashi arc Tonogai worked on.
- Fanservice: No matter what's going on, we get to see a good shot of Haruka's cleavage at least three times per chapter. Or at least, until she gets killed off.
- Foreshadowing: On the first cover Mitsuki is wearing the same rabbit mask as the person who hit Yuu over the head to kidnap him, and on the first title page Rei is holding it on her lap. Also see below...
- Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Rei carries a large bunny plushie everywhere she goes.
- Girl with Psycho Weapon: In the climax of the manga, Mitsuki starts dragging around a fireman's axe as she pursues Yuu, and she used it several times before that point to kill people.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Rei. The mastermind behind all 'Rabbit Doubt' games who has Brainwashed multiple wolves including Mitsuki, using hypnotism.
- Hair-Raising Hare: It's not called Rabbit Doubt for nothing. The murderer wears a creepy rabbit mask, and several backups are found stored in the hospital.
- Idiot Ball: Thanks to the stress of the situation, the characters end up fighting amongst themselves and refusing to hear each other out in favor of throwing accusations and loudly protesting their own innocence when they should be searching for a way out. They also repeatedly split up due to their suspicion of each other, despite realizing early on that doing so gives the killer an opening to pick them off.
- Karma Houdini: By the end of the manga, Rei has gotten away with her crimes and likely killed everyone who knew she was the real culprit.
- The Man Behind the Man: Rei to Mitsuki and all other Wolves, whom she had hypnotized into kidnapping and killing people on her behalf.
- Marshmallow Hell: Haruka does it to Rei, the Big Bad.
- The Medic: Hajime is a medical student and thus the only member of the group trained in first-aid. It's actually just a cover story; he's really a police officer investigating the crimes.
- Missing Mom: Mitsuki's mother died when she was a child, leaving her father as her only family. They're very close as a result and his death drives her over the edge.
- Nice Guy: Yuu is a good-hearted boy who just wants to trust in his friends and keep them safe. This ends up working against him when he has to figure out which one of them is the killer.
- Not What It Looks Like: Yuu and Haruka in the first chapter; Mitsuki was not pleased.
- One-Word Title: The title of Doubt, which is a contraction of the Rabbit Doubt game, and about the game itself, where the players are a warren of "rabbits" who must figure out which player is the "wolf" hidden amongst them before they are all picked off one-by-one, which is also what the characters end up doing, for real.
- Parental Abandonment: Mitsuki's mother died before she met Yuu. Also, Rei tells Yuu that the reason Mitsuki came to her to become the Wolf and despises liars, is that her father has actually been dead for a while.
- Peek-a-Boo Corpse Haruka's head is found inside one of the rabbit masks and falls out in front of Yuu while he is searching for clues in the storage room.
- Poor Communication Kills: Obviously. The Reveal contains a particularly nasty example - Mitsuki basically murdered Kei and put Yuu through the game because the two of them bought her a birthday present as a surprise.
- Smart People Wear Glasses: Hajime, a medical student, wears a pair of glasses to signify him as The Smart Guy of the group.
- Stepford Smiler: Rei and Mitsuki, of the Unstable variety. Underneath their smiles and kind demeanor are vengeful Ax-Crazy killers.
- Teens Are Monsters: The backstories for a number of the characters involve things such as gangs and prostitution.
- Undercover Cop Reveal: Hajime is a cop investigating recent disappearances.
- Yandere: Mitsuki is in love with Yuu and so terrified of being abandoned by him after losing her family that she is driven practically insane with jealousy when she thinks he's blown her off to hang out with another girl and cites it as her reason for killing both of them. It is ambiguous how much of her behavior is truly her own, and how much is due to Rei's hypnotism, however.
