“Cage”—a virtual reality game where you are your avatar. No one knows how it started or who made it, but one thing is for sure: the entire universe is obsessed with it! Siryeon, a young introvert, hops online to break out of his shell, only for his entire team to be slaughtered by in-game serial killer Natriel Gaisha. Natriel may think she's untouchable, but if he can survive long enough to level up, Siryeon just might have the last laugh after all.

CAGE: Murderous Level Up has a story by wuwang and art by HOTPINK. English localization is done by TAPAS ENTERTAINMENT. Published by TAPAS ENTERTAINMENT.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

On the surface, CAGE: Murderous Level Up seems like a very natural progression of stories where people are caught in a game world. In this MMORPG, you really feel everything you experience. And while newbies to the game are given a little island on which to get a feel for the game's ins and outs, there's also a secret rule that if you get a certain number of player kills (PKs), you can level up. As a result, the newbie island is a death trap, causing more than one new player to have a traumatic early experience. In any realistic sense, this is a very stupid rule, and surely it would keep new people away from the game. But this is fiction!

Siryeon, a young man escaping brutal bullying in his “real” life, finds himself, after his first party is slaughtered, uninterested in putting up with this bullshit in the game world.

Both the art and the story are rough. The game isn't fully thought through, probably intentionally to allow new information to inform Siryeon's decisions. Rather than feeling like a “horror” manga, this series has a Sisyphean quality to it, when one can guess that any movement forward is going to be rewarded by double that in reverse, with more than a little physical and emotional trauma.

The whole of these parts was not compelling to me. I found my attention slipping away time and again until I just stopped. I have reviewed several better examples of horror game K-Comics this season. That said, if you're looking for something with a sharper edge and more blatantly psychotic intent, then CAGE: Murderous Level Up might suit you better than it did me.

Bolts
Rating:

This feels like a story that is somehow lesser than the sum of its parts. There are a lot of elements here that are derived from stories that I've already explored dozens of times over. This is a classic story following a handful of characters fighting in a video game. However, there isn't really much here in terms of novelty, and what is here is severely undercooked to the point where I'm left wondering exactly what direction the rest of the story wants to go in. A young, nervous boy wants to get better at a video game that seems to be using some type of augmented reality where everything feels very real. However, this isn't a case of dying in the game means you die in real life, even though you can apparently feel all of the pain in the game that you feel in real life.

The story focuses on a player killer who seems to go around killing players for the love of the game, so a couple of low-level players decide to work together to take her on and prevent her from ruining the game. There are certainly hints of interesting ideas in here, like the stakes being more psychological rather than physical. In fact, there's even an example of someone in the story quitting the game after being killed because of some type of psychological trauma. However, that ends up feeling more like motivation for another character to get better at the game than it is a legitimate plot point that the story wants to hang on. Instead, the story just introduces more characters with random ideas or concepts to keep things interesting or to try to keep up some mirage of narrative tension. However, the story keeps failing at every turn.

All of this is the textbook definition of basic. The art direction is very simple and uninspired, the combat system barely even exists, and there is next to no world-building in this video game whatsoever. Wanting to take down a player killer who seems to get a thrill out of killing others because of some warped sense of rebellion is probably the closest thing to a fun idea that the story has, but all it really does is facilitate the most basic good versus evil story I think I've ever seen. I'll be honest, this was really boring to read because it's almost like the story wasn't even trying to do anything crazy or unique to hook me. This is baby's first action series, and since I know there aren't really any babies that read this guide, I can confidently say that you could skip this one.