This takes the cake for the worst thing I have ever had the displeasure of watching

Big content warning for both the drama and this review: sexual abuse, murder, dead bodies (mostly women's)

Before I get into what exactly made this drama so disgustingly unenjoyable and so mind bogglingly regrettable for me, I want to say that I cannot believe that out of SIXTY SEVEN reviews, there were only two that rated this sad excuse for a drama 6.5/10, and that's as low as they get! The fact that the majority are 9s and 10s makes me sincerely question the authenticity of the reviews. No human being with more than two brain cells could genuinely give this shit-show a 10. Either most of the reviews are shills or I'm just some stupid lunatic who's lost their mind. Don't take my word for it, though.


Let's start with the characters. There is absolutely no reason to give a shit about any of them because this drama prefers to spend its hours upon hours of potential character development on useless scenes—failing to foster attachment to any of the characters or the story itself—and as a result literally every single scene that's supposed to carry weight ends up falling flat. Oh, character X is screaming his lungs out from grief because his best friends Y and Z (the three of whom we know jack shit about apart from a few flashbacks that last mere minutes) died, how sad! The emptiness of these supposedly "emotional" scenes is further emphasized by the epic-sad-angelic-dramatic music that J-dramas love to overuse.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a sucker for emotional scenes and the cliché J-drama tearjerker style. I love it when a drama is able to move me to tears, but this ain't it chief. This ain't even close. To empathize with characters and actually have an emotional reaction to any given scene we first need to be invested. This drama does the opposite of that, it pushes you away by trying to force a reaction too early and too hard.

The female characters are nonexistent. No, really. The first female character we're introduced to serves the role of a sex object, basically, who is then further degraded when she's easily restrained and manhandled by the token wimp character who's shorter than her, skinnier than her AND injured. Not to mention her opting for fucking high heels when she herself knows she might have to run in a life-or-death situation. Oh wait it wasn't her opting for high heels it was the stupid writers who created her character and made it so that she'd be pathetically attempting to run in high heels. It was painful seeing the first female character we're introduced to get humiliated (directly and indirectly) and reduced to someone who's good at nothing but being used for sex. It's not surprising when you take Japan's view of women into consideration but it still feels like some cruel joke. Oh and about that token wimp character, she decides to have pity sex with him hours after meeting him for no apparent reason. Maybe some self-insert fanservice for all the real life wimps?

The second female character is the female MC counterpart except she's actually brave, strong and capable. Sounds too good to be true? That's because it is. She is reduced to a sex object when she gets ordered to be taken to the stupid bald mustached tank-top wearing macho character's room at gunpoint because he's "taken a liking to her", the only thing stopping her from being taken away against her will and raped is another man (whose only virtue is having more authority than mustached bald-tard, otherwise it's obvious he's done his fair share of rape as well) stepping in to keep the peace. Cool, so does she get more character development? Nope, a few more episodes in and this time she actually gets taken to a room against her will and sexually abused (this time by the bald tanktop-tard's edgy, cringey henchman and his goonsquad—one of which is a woman herself), the only thing stopping her from being actually raped is the distraction of loud alarm noises signaling the start of a new game. Not to mention during said scene the cringe henchman monologues about rape and other similar crimes being normal and part of mankind's true nature, therefore his actions are justified. Some bullshit along those lines.

We have the self-insert mega gamer, high IQ, no purpose in life, NEET male MC character. We have the burly-bald-badass tank-top-tard male character. We have the cOoL bUt cRaZy, charming, cocky cult-leader character that midwits love to imagine themselves as, also a male. We have wimp male characters who make up for their wimpness through some other merit or virtue, we have aggressive male characters who care for their loved ones and aren't afraid to fight for them. We have mysterious male characters, cold hearted male characters, edgy male characters. If you're looking for a specific type of male character I'm sure you'll find them, or at least an echo of what you're looking for.
Female characters? Almost all female characters serve only one role: eye candy. Okay one of them is obviously smart and dissects bodies and stuff. Cool, she has no say in anything. No power, no authority, nothing. Her entire existence and character is reduced to looking pretty for every other male character. The other female character who is supposedly high in the ranks serves literally no role other than showing off her body throughout the entire drama until the very end where a weak ass-pull (that I won't spoil) occurs. Every other female character is only there to look sexy and die for shock value. That's it. Really. One scene was particularly disturbing in how specific it was, it practically screamed "Look at this pretty woman get brutally murdered for no reason!". Also about the aforementioned Ms. I-Dissect-Bodies, there's a scene in episode 6 where she's searching for a GPS chip in the brains of two dead bodies. Two dead bodies as in two dead women. Two dead women as in two dead women whose butt-naked bodies are exposed bare and shown off to the camera for some fucking reason. Like come on, really? What the fuck?

Another thing that really bugged me was how unrealistic some scenes were. You think an untrained NEET is going to be able to run for miles and miles without his body shutting down, LET ALONE carry a fucking MOTORCYCLE all the way back to his starting point without resting or drinking more than a sip of water? You think humans can somehow outrun a fucking ravenous panther multiple times? How the fuck can a panther not reach under a car that a fat fuck somehow crawled under? How the fuck does a bald mustached tanktop-tard manage to pistol slap a full grown airborne TIGER so hard that it goes flying in another direction? You think some stupid bald macho-man can just casually slap a 600 pound muscle-bound monster (who can leap with the force of a fucking truck) so hard it changes trajectory? Fucking impossible. Literally against the laws of physics. How the fuck does a tattooed skinhead who doesn't weigh more than 100 pounds soaking wet, holding his katana in ONE HAND, manage to slice an airborne tiger (again, WEIGHS AT LEAST 600 POUNDS AND CAN LEAP WITH THE FORCE OF A TRUCK) like some anime character? That's only scratching the surface by the way! There's so much more that I won't even bother with, just know that the choreography and direction of most action scenes feel like they were handled by an 11 year old who has no idea how real life works.

Finally, about The Beach. So we've got hundreds of people who have been separated from all of their loved ones, being forced to face the reality that they may never return to their old lives (or old world, for that matter) and the majority of these people can just party, drink, do drugs and have sex without a care in the world? Like that's all their happiness and stability hinges on? Zero qualms about anything, including the fact that they have to participate in life or death games literally every couple of fucking days? Are these people completely immune to stress/depression? I can get that there would be a certain group of people who would thrive in that kind of situation, hell some would even kill for that kind of life. It just felt so weird seeing hundreds and hundreds of people act so carefree and oblivious as if they didn't lose anything, as if nothing's at risk.

The story had virtually zero progression. Zero foreshadowing. Zero sense of mystery. Zero development. We're not even close to finding out anything, nor are we even left wondering what's next. All I could wonder was what the fuck just happened. It's all one big confusing cluster-fuck shit-storm of a ride that I wish I had never gotten on in the first place. I couldn't give this pathetic excuse for a drama more than 1 star if you held a gun to my head. What a waste.

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