After the brutal events in part one, I don’t expect part two to be any lighter or less gruesome. It’s basically a free for all. The game is in full swing and the students are dropping like flies. The two main plot points here are Noriko Nakagawa and Shuya Nanahara teaming up with Shogo Kawada – a veteran of this game – and Shinji Mimura teaming up with Yutaka Seto to try and hack the system and bring the game down.
Noriko’s gunshot wound from the beginning gets infected; as it should considering they are all in the middle of nowhere with no access to proper medical care. The bulk of their time consists of evasion and Shuya and Shogo trying to find medicine and a place for Noriko to rest. They encounter students and try to get them to join their merry band, but to no avail. Just as well since the three of them seem to travel pretty quickly and work together well.
Shinji manages to find a laptop and tries to hack into the computer system running the island. When it fails because their collars are wired for sound and Sakamochi heard the whole plan and shut them down, Shinji and Yutaka try to find a way to bomb the central location where Sakamochi and his crew are running the whole thing. This fails because Kazuo Kiriyama shows up with his machine gun and kills both boys.
Mitsuko is in rare form, too, popping off former friends and any random person she happens to come across. I have to say, she is the character to despise right now. She’s a ruthless, manipulative, liar, who has no care for anyone but herself. She shoots the injured Takako Chigusa after Takako bravely survives a brush with Kazushi Niida. Mitsuko is another character who seems to just have needed a forum like The Program to allow her to take her crappy behavior from before it into a larger stage. If they weren’t such obvious sociopaths, I’d say Mitsuko and Kazuo would make a very lethal team in this game. Let’s hope they’re both too crazy to realize this.
Confused by the names? Yeah, me too. It’s not like we get a lot of character time with these kids. Just a couple pages to get a general idea of what they were like before they came to the island (a track star, a delinquent, a martial artist, a rocker) then BAM! Gone.
Shuya is thankfully less “we can save everyone” as this part concludes. Who can blame him, really? He’s grabbing allies wherever he can, very aware of the nutjobs around the island who are participating in the game. This is a thought process I can get behind; hopeful but practical.
17 students remaining.
