Plot
High school student Shun Takahata spends much of his time playing violent video games. One morning at school, he also whines that his life is completely boring. During class, the teacher's head explodes in a spray of blood and red marbles. From the stump of the teacher's neck emerges a sentient Daruma doll. Shun, along with his friend Satake and their whole class, suddenly find themselves forced to participate in a deadly game of Daruma-san ga koronda, with the students getting killed one by one every time they move. At one point, when the Daruma turns around, Satake notices a button on his back that the students can attempt to press to end the game before his timer runs out. Furthermore, the game has a time limit, with everyone getting killed if the timer runs out. Everyone panics and one by one, they attempt to press the button but the Daruma, knowing their movements, counts faster and everyone ends up dying, leaving Shun and Satake. Shun, with Satake's help, manages to leap over and reach the button without the Daruma knowing and presses it to end the game, but Satake dies, revealing that only the one who presses the button will live.
After finishing the game, Shun meets up with his girlfriend Ichika Akimoto and they make their way to the school gym. There, they initiate the second game, Belling the Cat, featuring a Maneki-neko, where students dressed as mice attempt to throw a bell into a hoop attached to the collar, while trying not to be eaten or crushed. The game is won with the aid of Takeru Amaya, a troubled classmate who beats up other students, seems to revel in the opportunity to see so many deaths, and who kills all the other survivors besides Shun and Ichika after winning the game. The three of them are then put out of consciousness by sleeping gas released by the cat. Meanwhile, the news around Japan broadcast what’s going on, revealing the city contains a giant floating white cube above the city and that the survivors are deemed “God’s Children”.
Shun wakes up to find himself with other students, Taira, Taoka and his ex-classmate Shoko Takase in a hospital-like room inside the giant floating cube cube hovering over Tokyo, facing the next test. Taira reveals that students across the world are facing similar tests, and the handful of survivors are being brought inside the cubes to continue their tasks there. Four Kokeshi dolls, Taro, Akemi, Kenichi and Hanako, enter the room and announce that the next game is Kagome Kagome, where the students one by one are blindfolded and have to guess which of the four dolls is behind them within 10 seconds after the end of the song. If they fail to do so, they will be hit with a red laser and the dolls will use telekinesis to destroy their bodies. If the player manages to guess who is behind them and the Kokeshis lose, they will all explode and one of them releases an answer key with the students being able to leave the room and enter the next phase. Taira and Taoka get killed, but Shun clears by using his phone to record Hanako’s voice, and leaves together with Shoko. Later, they reunite with Ichika and another player, Yukio Sanada, both whom they save from being killed by a fifth Kokeshi by holding hands.
The four join Eiji Oku and Kotaro Maeda to the next level, where they have to use their keys to unlock a giant Kokeshi head. Amaya brings in three more keys and kills another player that he brings into the room. The seven survivors use their keys along with being given their own clothes to change into and the giant head rolls away to reveal a tunnel leading into the next room. Meanwhile, each player is displayed on television screens for the others to see. The next game is Shirokuma, a white polar bear that appears to them inside a frozen room. The students have to all answer the white bear's questions honestly; otherwise, they will be forced to single out the one that they suspect to be lying to be killed. Shoko and Yukio get killed, and Shun soon notices a black patch on the bear’s fist and realizes that the bear is the true liar and that its real color is black, therefore winning the game and surviving with the other four students.
The final game, presented by three Matryoshka dolls, Fitness, Intelligence and Imagination, is a game of kick the can that must be completed before sundown. The remaining five each pick a stick, and the one who gets the red one plays the "Devil". Whoever's face is seen and called out by the "Devil" is caught and thrown into a cell. The Matryoshka dolls announce that the game is finished when the Devil catches everyone and kicks the can, or if a player saves the others by kicking the can. However, they also state the can will explode so the player will save the others at the cost of their own life. Takeru gets the red stick and soon Oku, Maeda and Ichika are caught by him while Shun finds armor to conceal his face while hiding. Takeru catches Shun since the armor is too heavy, but Shun chains Takeru to the armor and jumps into the sea, then removes the armor and climbs out. Takeru fights to pull the armor up to avoid being pulled down, then both race towards the can, and Shun succeeds in kicking the can first but with no explosion, thereby winning the game. The Matryoshka dolls reveals that in fact, the explosion is a lie and that none of them will be killed by losing the game. They have a popsicle party, where they learn their fates on the wooden stick. The Matryoshka dolls also teach them that they had experienced different abilities throughout the games, courage, transformation, fitness, intelligence and imagination, but that this ending is a demonstration of the last ability they needed, luck, and that the intention of the last game was simply for entertainment. Shun and Takeru get to live while Ichika, Eiji, and Kotaro are killed by a fourth Matryoshka doll with lasers that disintegrates them. Shun and Takeru emerge to the top of the cube, where they see crowds cheer for them, while Enokida Takumi, a hikikomori who has been watching them from his room, goes out of his house, possibly to find the real identity of "God".
Takeru celebrates while Shun kneels in despair from the loss of his friends, stating that "there is no God". One of the Matryoshka dolls corrects him and suggests that those deadly games will lead them to "God", as it shows him a vagrant who was also an observer and the "God" behind these death games.
Box office
The film earned $1.5 million domestically in Japan in its first weekend in November.[5]
Controversy
The 2021 survival thriller K-drama series Squid Game has been accused of plagiarizing the movie, as both involve children's games where the penalty for losing is death, with the first games in both being Red Light, Green Light. However, writer-director Hwang Dong-hyuk claimed he wrote Squid Game's script in 2009 (five years before As the Gods Will was released), saying "the similarities that were pointed out are purely coincidental and there is no copying from either party."[6]
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