Les critiques de livres

YdYdLmDn4
Apr 09, 2021
Ousama Game review
Ousama Game!

Story: 7

A group of school students are given orders which they must complete within 24 hours. At first, the orders are childish like kissing each other and licking feet (foot fetish much!?), although it soon goes downhill for the students as the orders become increasingly harsh and violent. What I really like about the story is it's unpredictability; you never know what order is coming next and with the manga constantly giving slight hints about the true identity of Ousama, you'll want to know what happens next. Will the students kill one another to betray their friends? Or sacrifice themselves to save another friend? That is the beauty of the manga. The only main downfall is the pathetic which makes no sense.

Art: 7

I really liked the art in this manga, but it's nothing you haven't seen before. A lot of dramatic facial expressions to keep you guessing. The quality of the art is generally consistent, but not excellent.

Character: 5

Well, what can I say. Unfortunately this manga has very little character development and focuses solely on plot (none of them seem to have any family!) A lot of characters are dull enough to make you skip several pages of the manga. The main character is a very typical 'do gooder' who wants everyone to get along, which clearly isn't going to happen. Girls are portrayed as damsels in distress or psychopaths. There was only one character I liked.

Enjoyment: 9

I enjoyed this way too much. I'm a sucker for manga where students kill each other so this was right down by street. Blood and gore is always great to see!

Overall: 7

Not a bad manga at all. The low scores on here tend to be due to the terrible ending, but definitely give it a shot if you're interested by the prospect of students killing each other, provided you can put up with some gimmicky and annoying characters.
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AnnaVk4
Apr 09, 2021
Ousama Game review
This is honestly one of the worst things I've ever read. A youtuber I like recommended it, so I read it in a few hours.

Story
It starts out interesting, but quickly just turn into nonsense. There is no real objective besides surviving, then suddenly at the very end there is an info dump with a very unsatisfying ending.


Art
The art was really good, and one of the only things that I actually liked. It was slightly cutesy, which I thought was a good contrast to the situation. I also liked that they didn't add pointless fanservice, even though they could have at times.

Characters
The worst part. The first few deaths are mildly sympathetic, but as soon as they understand that the game is real, everyone turns black or white. They don't act like they want to survive, and will do things very unrealistically. The characters that do seem to want to live always are portrayed as evil, so it isn't sad when they die and those portrayed as "good" just sacrifice themselves. None of the characters are given any backstory or development, so we don't know anything until they die. After that, there are always like 10 pages with the main character brooding over them, even when they acted completely evil or stupid.
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In conclusion, I really didn't enjoy this. I had a similar feeling when I finished the Another anime and the Battle Royal manga, so if you enjoy those, you might like this. It did have an interesting premise, but that's about it. Perhaps the book is better?
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GGShang9
Apr 09, 2021
Ousama Game review
Well then. That's three hours of my life I'll never get back.

I've always had a soft spot for the survival game trope. Battle Royale, Hunger Games, hell, even Mirai Nikki - for all its ridiculousness and flaws - managed to keep me entertained right until the very end. There's something wholeheartedly fun about the idea of a group of people pit against each other in psychological/physical warfare to the death, nor is it a very hard thing to write and write well; so why is it that Ousama Game failed?

It all boils down to one single fact: Ousama Game takes itself way too seriously.

There's this desperation interwoven within the writing and art - a plea of "this manga is saying something deep about society and life...I don't know what, but something at least!" From the bloated cast of characters that go from one extreme emotion to the other to the exaggerated screaming expressions you'll become desensitized to due to overuse; all of this, and more form the foundations for a manga that will have you rolling your eyes more often than not.

It's stupid. I understand that's a pretty blunt thing to say, but that really is the only word to describe it. And I'm not above enjoying ridiculous entertainment for the sake of ridiculous entertainment; I love turning my brain off, chilling back, and watching something dumb to end the day on. But this kind of thing only works when there's a self-awareness contained within the work that keeps your logic from jumping in to ruin the fun. Here, Ousama Game is so convinced it's telling an epic survival tale that its shock value runs dry past the first two chapters, and it ends up tangled in too many threads and convoluted twists that result in an ending that just...stops.

Yeah. It just finishes. As if even the author can't wait to be done with this work.

In the end, I give Ousama Game a

3.3/10

POOR

With a recommendation to Skip It

Look, there's better survival game material out there than this. Better stuff that at least treats its audience with respect, or has even the slightest hint of subtlety to complement its art and writing. Reading Ousama Game was the equivalent to being beaten over the head repeatedly with a spiked hammer: I get it, people can be assholes when they find out they're going to die, but you're going to have to try harder than over the top constipation faces and one-note characters to get your point across.

GOOD; Only the most hardcore of survival game fans will find anything good here. It has its brief moments of entertainment and unintentional hilarity, but it's not worth the painful ride to get there.

MIXED;; The art is serviceable, but its dragged down by just how over the top it becomes. Be prepared for a dozen panels of people screaming with spittle hanging off their lips. After the first two times, it becomes funny, as opposed to shocking. Could have been a cool idea, if executed right.

BAD;; Bloated cast that fluctuates between 'angelic' and 'asshole.' Ending is not only rushed, but confusing and downright "whaaaat?" Poor writing that garners no sympathy for its characters.
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DeliciouScience13
Apr 09, 2021
Ousama Game review
The concept of survival has been heavily explored in nearly every form of media imaginable. A product of this concept are games that pit people against each other such as the hunger games and Battle Royale. However Ousama Game is a bit different. Despite Ousama Game having great promise, it clearly spiraled into a disappointing mess to be perfectly honest with you.

The Story of Osama game is easily the best part. It exentuates intrigue in the reader and you definitely want to know more. The author also does a great job of actually telling the story and building up great suspense. This is expected due to this being based off a series of Light novels. The central mystery to Ousama game was quite well executed and I wanted to know more about who the King was and why this game is being played. The transition between the light hearted beginning of the story and how it spirals into something much more sinister was well handled.

However unfortunately this great story is hardly supported by the cast of characters that are present in this manga. The characters were outright bad in this story. For a class of 32 people being present I only genuinely liked one of these people. However in one way the characters triumphed was there realistic relations to each other. However this was literally their only redeeming qualities and it seems just like in Doubt( though probably worse than doubt) they just seemed like devices used to carry out the events of the plot. There's no depth no development they're all just one dimensional.

Our main protagonist was probably the most boring one out of all of them. He's the standard cliche: I want to save everyone without everyone getting hurt. He's also a bit of a Mary Sue and none of the characters including him take the initiative to try to solve the Osama game. The only interesting character was probably Ria. Maybe it was because of her mysterious and aura and the fact that we got some background detail on her. And do you know what the worst part is? So many of these characters died and I couldn't even care less.

The art in Ousama game improves as the series goes on due to its 5 volume length. Many frames were reasonably detailed. However I'm not really a fan of the character designs and this was especially apparent during the first half of the series. The death of the characters
were also well drawn. The ending to Osama game was decent but there is a sequel which has not been translated to English yet unfortunately.

In the end Ousama game is a manga that went from something good to only an ok manga. It kind of fell under the weight of its concept and the characters were very bland. However I can't deny the great story and the fair artwork and also the fact that I read this in two sittings due to the heavy suspense. So read this if your interested it's a fine read but certainly not the best out there.
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amy2205
Apr 09, 2021
Ousama Game review
I actually read this story's prequel (Ousama Game: Kigen) before I read this. The prequel was fairly average, so I had hoped that its predecessor would have been about the same or perhaps a bit better. Sadly, I was disappointed.

The story follows a high school class as they participate in "The Ousama's (King's) Game". The Ousama gives an order, the class obeys or else suffers the consequences. While this setup seems promising, the execution is rather lack luster. The early orders are very immature, involving sexual activities between the boys and girls of the class. While I have nothing against sex in my manga and anime, when characters are forced to have sex with each other for a ridiculously contrived reason it feels needlessly gratuitous. The later orders ramp up the intensity, being more centered around choosing classmates to kill and the like, but the poor writing persists for the entire story so the effect is ruined.

Furthermore, all the characters are too over the top. Their characterization is unrealistic and there's no progression. The characters who are terrible humans are immediately terrible, and the characters who are good people are immediately good (and they never change). In this type of story its fun to watch characters slowly lose their minds, succumbing to despair and paranoia, but when you have characters acting crazy immediately it has no effect. Furthermore this suffers from the problem many other poorly told horror stories do, that being the characters continually make stupid, illogical decisions. This may keep the plot moving, but its annoying to watch characters act in a way no human in their situation ever would.

I won't give away the ending, but I will say that the climax feels rushed and the reveal is pretty lame. The sequel was decent enough, but this was a tedious read with its sloppy story telling and sloppy character development. I neither enjoyed nor would recommend this manga.
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MoshiMochi10
Apr 09, 2021
Ousama Game review
Ousama Game is ambitious. It strives to be character-driven. And this clearly becomes challenging as we delve further into the story. With the mysterious entity "Ousama" being the prime antagonist that is responsible for the story to continue on as it is, the manga often tries desperately to keep the story intense by having melodramatic conflicts between characters, sporadic killings and the question "who is the Ousama?" hang perpetually over the heads of the readers. The story handles the first two issues surprisingly well and unfortunately, disappoints with the latter (which is the main complaint of most readers as well).

Ousama Game involves a variation of the King's Game, except this time, the "King" reigns for the rest of the story and the people who're chosen for the challenges are revealed right off the bat. As usual, characters lose their shit and the inevitable philosophical soliloquies of "who can I trust?" and "who are the real monsters" begins to stir as the bodies start dropping. As far as a survival horror goes, its story runs pretty much the way you'd expect. As I mentioned before, there is a mystery as to who the "Ousama" is but it's disappointingly resolved with some pseudoscience. I'll go as far as to say that the resolution is its weakest link.

What Ousama Game surprised me with was its set of characters. They're students who behave like students, which is what mainly makes the manga so exciting to read. Their actions are reasonable given the context and even so, the manga still manages to be completely unpredictable at times because that's really what humans are like in the face of their impending deaths. They're irrational, fearful and desperate. Unpredictable. Even the MC himself is not an exception, which is something I'm quite happy with. As a result, their emotions feel real. They feel real. This is something that I think is integral in making a survival horror work and Ousama Game succeeds beautifully in that regard.

The art is crisp and clean. Being someone who's been drawing for over 7 years now, I'd say it's as good as your average shounen manga, which is - pretty good. The artist is able to depict grotesque scenes well without making it look too awkward, which is more than what I can say for most survival horrors.

Ousama Game is a refreshing read that falls short of what it wants to be. It's not clever and not all that enlightening. However, the people and the story itself is gritty and unforgiving.


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LadyAxeFace7
Apr 09, 2021
Ousama Game review
I want to preface by saying I received Ousama Game from a Secret Santa during 2016's Christmas event. I am so thankful and it feels so great to know that someone looked at the things I enjoy (horror manga!) and picked something out for me. I know my score shows that I found it rather foul and tasteless but I am still grateful that someone offered this to me. It means a lot to me, even if I think this manga was, well, real bad.

So, without further ado~


Story:
Really quite horrid. It's exploitative, abusive, and offers nothing in return to the reader. It's constant abuse on the characters as well as the reader who is left wondering why this was ever created. Maybe the mangaka poorly translated the source material, but I don't think that's the case. This story is absolutely horrible. I mean, it's one thing to have a strong introduction, but it's even worse to constantly repeat the depressing acts of the first few chapters over and over without substance.

So, constant horrid barrages on the reader and then you finally get to the ending and learn there's no resolution what-so-ever. Yes, this is a finished manga and yes there is, in fact, a climax, but no it's not worth it. It was all a waste, and the original writer shouldn't write another story ever again.


Art:
The artwork is overly dramatic. I mean, everyone's screaming and yelling all the time, and the facial expressions are ridiculous. It's hard to tell if it's a parody or if it's a legitimate choice by the mangaka to just go over the top with everything. Perhaps the source material had a lot of yelling? Well, the mangaka doesn't need to interpret yelling as a huge open mouth with beady eyes all the time. Goodness gracious.

Backgrounds are blank and spacious. There's nothing all that specific or special about each scene. It's like reading the funnies on Sunday but worse because it's not funny, it's exploitation.


Character:
Pretty dang bad. I mean... Alright I'm just gonna admit it, I've been drinking 100 Proof Captain Morgan and it's so hard to focus on this. I mean, let's be real here, the manga itself is so hard to focus on because my mind kept thinking, "Why don't I just read some more Dragon Ball?" or "I started 20th Century Boys 2 years ago. I seriously need to finish it. It's great!"

Yet, here I am, sad and tired, hunched over a desk while I type out a review for a present that, while I do appreciate, I question the general morality of the mangaka, the individual who sent it, and myself for finishing it.

I'm not cutting corners anymore, I'm forgoing my normal review pattern of breaking everything down, I'm just gonna get serious here. This manga is disgusting. It throws people into no-win situations without recourse. I don't mind that, in fact I like narratives like that. But, here's the thing, nobody does anything right. Let me compare this to Gantz, a manga that I actually quite enjoyed despite it's depressing and no-win-esque nature.

Gantz starts out heavy and everyone's dying left and right. You don't know who your main characters are and you don't know who the focus will be in the next chapter because everyone will die. That said, everyone fights to survive, and there's something beautiful about fighting adversity with tooth and nail. It's just awesome. And, while every character is at fault and really deserves to die, they recognize their faults and seek to correct them. Sometimes they don't, and that's sad, but sometimes they do, and that rocks.

Ousama Game has characters thrust into equally unwinnable situations and everyone kinda does some pretty nasty stuff. However, nobody is trying to do the right thing. For instance, although this doesn't happen in the manga, this sort of thing fits in well as a metaphor. Imagine your class from High School was trapped in a cave. Only 90% of the students can get out in time before the cavern finally closes. What do you do? This is what Ousama Game is about and each day there's less and less students to basically play this game.

Now, if you've ever played this philosophy game, you've probably heard people say, "Well, I have a family." or "My mother is in the hospital and only I can care for her." although people all have proper and morally understandable answers, the answer people would most connect and almost feel rejoiceful is the answer, "I'll stay in the cavern and you guys go out without me."

Gantz has characters like that. Gantz has characters where people, in the face of adversity, seek to sacrifice themselves. Sometimes it's in vain, but they still sought to do the best for others. Ousama Game has no one like that. Everyone is selfish, disgusting, horrid, and the events that takes place to these characters amplify how gross they are. It's on a degree that is unrealistic and not able to be connected with. I hate it. Not because the story is so immoral, but because it's also exploitative of horrible acts like Netorare and sexual abuse, let alone murder.

That's about all I can say about Ousama Game. There's other issues like the insistence that the police will not get involved despite Death Note doing a great job of convincing the reader that the police could TOTALLY investigate what seems like PARANORMAL killings. If Death Note could convince me, Ousama Game should have, too. I would have loved to read about the police investigating these games rather than watch a bunch of stupid high-schoolers (or, even worse, were they middle schoolers?) try and "solve" this case, even though they don't pursue solving it at all, they just suffer and die and it's miserable and stupid.

Man I hated this manga.


((If you liked this review, check out my other reviews by going to my profile and clicking the 'reviews' tab. I review virtually all anime and manga I find!))
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sentience13
Apr 09, 2021
Ousama Game review
One day, the students of a high school class all recieve the same text message and suddenly get caught up in a dangerous game. Everyday, an order is issued, and if it is not obeyed within 24 hours, the student who was given said order will die.

Ousama Game could have been an average, but somewhat enjoyable, 'deadly game' manga among many others. It is, however, not the case, and shows perfectly how a story that starts in a mediocre way can end up being a catastrophe.

Story:

Ousama Game doesn't have a particularly impressive start. The first orders given by the Ousama mostly revolve around kissing or touching people of the opposite sex, which makes it hard to take the story seriously, even though people are actually dying because of it.

But as silly as the story may seem, it still manages to catch the interest. Almost as soon as the manga starts, we are confronted to the mysteries of the Ousama Game. Who is behind it? Why is it happening? How? Considering the fact that the story is not really interesting at that point, it is probably the desire to see those questions answered that keeps us reading.

However, as the story starts becoming more serious, it feels like we are only getting farther from the answers to the mystery. And this is where a scenario that was already unsteady completely falls apart. The revelations, as well as the final plot twist, make absolutely no sense, especially when taking into consideration all the things that happened previously in the story. In conclusion, after finishing reading Ousama Game, you are left with a feeling of incomprehension, as you wonder whether the author actually thought about his story before writing it.

Characters:

This manga does have a large cast of characters if we include all the students of the class. Of course, some of them are never really developped, but those who are are mostly uninteresting or annoying.

This seond category of characters seems to be divided into two sub-categories: the 'nice' characters and the 'bad' characters. There isn't really much room for normal people, in fact, the characters being either selfless people who are ready to die for their friends anytime, or selfish and cruel people who would probably let everyone die if it could allow them to survive.

In other words, no one is really likable, and most characters have motivations that are either not explained or simply not understandable.

Art:

The art is mostly average, with some inconsistency in its quality. While it is sometimes quite good, it often seems to become a bit messy in certain parts, especially when the characters have more intense facial expressions.

Enjoyment:

The story wasn't particularly enjoyable from the start, and if it tried to become more interesting towards the middle, it was to eventually end up falling into the abyss of stupidity and nonsense. As short as this manga may be, I would not recommend it, even if you enjoy this genre.
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Nameless07
Apr 09, 2021
Ousama Game review
I stumbled upon this manga through the Youtuber "The Anime Man", and I kind of regret reading it.

Story 5/10

The story starts off being kind of childish, with silly orders, although the orders quickly become difficult to follow. While the story does become interesting at some points, sometimes there are lulls, in which the same information is repeated over and over again, which can get really annoying. The pacing is just awful, since the manga starts off at an extremely slow pace, but in the latter chapters, a lot is happening at once, almost too much for a reader to really follow. I also found the ending to be absolutely awful, so if you're looking for a manga with a satisfactory ending, this is not the manga for you.

Art 6/10

The art is pretty decent most of the time, although the amount of terribly shocked/crying faces really annoyed me. Throughout the series you will see an incredibly large amount of ugly crying faces, although the faces are not as extreme in the end as they were in the beginning, where you would see one of those faces with an extreme expression almost every page.

Characters 5/10

Most of the characters (the ones that are actually worked out) are incredibly flat. They have only one motivation, and all their actions revolve around that. They don't gain any new motivations, their responses to a situation never change, and overall, there is zero character development. There is only character who was remotely interesting and mysterious, and she doesn't really appear until halfway through the series, so for the rest of the time, you have characters who have extremely black and white, but predictible reactions, and I don't like to read about characters like that.

Enjoyment 6/10

While the story managed to keep me interested at certain points (mostly towards the end, but then the ending left me feeling extremely unsatisfied), at others I had to force myself to finish the manga, and so, for the limited entertainment it gave me, I will give it a 6/10.

Overall 5/10

The story is badly paced, but with an interesting concept, the art is average to bad, the characters are, apart from one, incredibly flat, and I didn't have a lot of fun reading the manga. This all results in me giving this manga a 5/10
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ClockLock4
Apr 09, 2021
Ousama Game review
First of all, Ousama Game is a manga title that is not of yet completely translated in English. The translation group only did 10 chapters. I had the "privilege" of reading this manga in Chinese, which had complete translations.

Having completed this manga, I don't blame the English translators for abandoning this manga. Not one bit.

Granted. This manga starts with an amazing set up. A class of high-school students receive mysterious instructions to participate in the King's Game. If somebody does not do as told, he will die a gruesome death. Until chapter 10, everything looks great. The artwork is cutesy, the characters seem fine, but most of all, readers are entranced by the marvelous story.

Then, everything took a downward-spiral. Soon, it became apparent that the author did not plan ahead. Plot holes appear here and there, as well as widening in magnitude. It gets to a point where I want to just quickly finish the manga and see the ending, whether good or not, for myself. Readers get the bad feelings that the mangaka will never come up with a plausible conclusion for the unnatural event that are occurring.

AND guess what, I was right. The manga ends in a spectacular failure. It comes up with the most ridiculous explanation. It was truly a "in your face" moment for me.

All in all, it is a superb decision for the translators to not follow up with this manga.

Story: 3
Art: 8
Character: 4
Enjoyment: 6
Overall: 4

note: if we only reads the first 10 chapters, I might even give it a 8/10.

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Playcool2
Apr 09, 2021
Ousama Game review
I would like to preface this review by saying that I haven't finished this manga, nor do I ever intend to, but after looking at other people's reviews I doubt that the ending would change my opinion of the story at all.

Story: 2

The story for Ousama Game is simplistic, which isn't necessarily bad but doesn't help it much. A whole class of students begins to get texts from someone named "Ousama" that tells them to do things, but the tasks quickly escalate from juvenile things such as kissing and licking another's foot (for some reason...) to telling other students to die. This could be an interesting study of group psychology, but it's handled poorly. One point that I noticed immediately was the lack of any intervention from authorities. Other series with similar plots explain this by either having it set in an isolated area where no one could possibly help or have it so getting authorities involved would be in direct detriment to the contestants to the game. These situations don't apply to Ousama Game, and as the series progresses it only becomes more silly that police nor the school administration haven't taken action. I know that Japanese school systems don't like to touch the matters of suicide, but when multiple students in a class have all died in a short period of time, with almost all of them being "suicide", you'd think that someone would say "Hey, wait a minute, something's not right here.". Later on, some students say that they've tried telling the police and have gotten no response, but at this point it just seems unrealistic and contrieved, which totally broke my immersion in the story. Also, as the story continues past the initial mystery, more and more plot holes open up and make everything confusing to the point of it being unenjoyable.

Art: 6

I enjoyed the art style, and there weren't many glaring flaws in the art. However, it isn't really special. Not much to say.

Character: 1

I have never experienced such an unlikeable cast of characters that do not seem to serve any other purpose than to push the plot forwards, even if it seems wholely irrational. Part of this is intentional, because a murder game like this would understandedly stress people out and cause them to act weirdly, but there comes a point where it passes realistic stress and falls into the pit of absurdity. The only character that I came remotely close to liking was Daisuke, and that's probably only because he died before he could become annoying.

Enjoyment: 10

Don't get me wrong, I wholly dislike this manga. However, reading it is such a wild ride of things that make no sense that it's almost a comedy. I may not have enjoyed it for the reasons the author intended, but goddamn some of this was unintentionally funny. If you want something to read with friends on a call, this is absolutely it.

Overall: 3

I'm sure others could find this enjoyable unironically, but I didn't. I wouldn't recommend it unless you either are willing to look past major plotholes or are looking for something that's so bad it's looped right around to being a fucking comedic masterpiece to read with friends.
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azuriknight10
Apr 09, 2021
Ousama Game review
First of all, I want to say that English is not my native language so I may have a lot of grammatical error throughout the review, please bear with me.

This book started off great, really great. The story was interesting, the characters are okay, the realism in this manga is pretty good. It depicts quite well what people do when they are in fear and how desperate they are when encounter death.

Now, the manga do give you goosebumps at many times, it really questions people whether what the characters in the manga are doing is correct or wrong, say if the order was to let register number 12 and 13 kill each other, if they do not do so they will both die in the end, would you murder the other guy? Or would you rather die like a dignified person? It is hard to say which is right and wrong, as if you let the other kill you, you save that person, but the same can be said about the other person as we know. There are many implications to a lot of the cases.

It is really is tense when the plot reached its climax where the remaining students struggle to survive, and then it just went bum.

The ending was unsatisfying, feels uncompleted to me, but perhaps this is what the author wants, overall I think the manga adaptation did a great job in portraying the emotions of people, their desperation, sadness etc, and is definitely a worthwhile read, I mean come on, it only has five volume, go read it, be reminded though, you may not like the ending.
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Ousama Game
Ousama Game
Auteur Renda, Hitori
Artiste --