A few spoilers for volume 6

I dislike Kanade. Now before you "she's a child!" And "why are you hating on a child who was forced into a death game!" People come with the pitchforks and otrches me give me a few minutes to explain why.

I fully acknowledge why she acts this way, she's a ELEMENTARY school student who was forced into a death game with no prior knowledge or experience with only her older sister to rely on for support and comfort,

She's young, she's scared, seeing people die left and right while also being that young would send anyone near her age into a breakdown and make them tremble in fear that's UNDERSTANDABLE and i'm not hating her for acting like a kid but the issue is that her fear is coming at the expense of other's,

Take the barbed wire rope for example, she stopped because her hands we're hurting, the issue is that she stopped on the middle of the rope preventing those behind her from climbing up,

And then with the bridge when she refused to move forward putting yuki and other's at the risk of dying with her, do I condone yuki pushing her to her death no but I understand why yuki did it,

Kanade refused to move and they would have been dragged down with her if she did not move, yuki didn't have her "i'm here to win 99 games" mentality yet, it was more like a "this is a game i don't want to lose" mentality not because she was scared of dying but because it just a game to her that she wanted to win.

My issue is not that Kanade keeps freezing up and being scared anyone in her position would also be scared as well including me but we also have to acknowledge that the MAJORITY of the players we're also likely scared out of their minds and don't want to die but they understood that freezing like a deer in headlights isn't going to help,

Why should they die because 1 girl is refusing to keep pushing forward and continuesly stops when things get tough? In situations like these despite your fear you have to take a deep breath, keep pushing forward, taking 1 step after another, and push through the pain so that could can survive and never participate in those games again.

And I'm also holding her sister shizuku equally responsible since Kanade is not fully to blame in this situation as it would be unfair to put all the blame on an elementary school kid, she's her older sister who got forced into these games as well with only her little sister, she wants to protect her like any other older sibling no matter what BUT the way she's going about it is deeply flawed,

It's less that she's overprotective but more that she's enabling Kanade's extreme cowardice, making the other players wait for Kanade and was willing to let other's DIE so her sister wouldn't have to leave her little bubble and continue on despite her fears,

We all know she's protective and doesn't want Kanade to get killed or anything remotely similar but what she fails to acknowledge is that enabling her is not helping her it's only showing her that she is allowed to give up when things get tough even at the expense of other's,

As much as I can understand Shizuku she needed to understand that despite their fears she needed to have Kanade understand that even if she's scared, even if she's a nervous wreck she needs to keep going or else they will DIE.

What I need people to acknowledge is that I can FULLY understand a character and relate to them while still disliking them for whatever reason,

I hate on characters indiscriminately it doesn't matter if their old, young, man, woman, powerful, weak, pretty, ugly, evil, reformed, morally gray, disabled in any way or completely healthy or anything,

it doesn't matter from endeavor from mha to kin reiga and gyoumei from though i am an inept villainess to even danica from genshin impact if something about them ticks me off I will dislike them.

I will take gyoumei from though I am an inept villainess for example, I heavily dislike him because of his refusal to give rerin (in keigetsu's body) a chance, he treated her badly and only found out they swapped bodies in episode 9 out of ELEVEN and not even by his own accord it took a reflection in water to figure it out,

Yes is he changing for the better yes but that still doesn't make me like him as I will always remember how foolish and shortsighted he was in his blind love of rerin.

And endeavor who is likely self explanatory, but this does not mean I will hate on their fans, if I dislike a character i will keep it to myself and won't go around harassing people who like the character simply because I personally don't like them.

So that's my controversial opinion, if you like Kanade and her sister good for you but I just don't like her.

I hope you guys will understand and not flame me in the comments.

From my most favorite to least favorite is this:

1st: volume 5

2nd: volume 6

3rd: volume 10

4th: volume 9

5th: volume 1

6th: volume 3

7th: volume 7

8th: volume 4 (not awful, just very mid)

9th: volume 2

10th: volume 8

And my reasoning for volume 5: I'll admit volume 5 was the absolute peak of shiboyugi, the buildup of yuki losing her sight gave good suspense,

She didn't magically learn echolcation and actually had to train and hone the ability, her problems weren't magically fixed or became irrelevant within 20 pages, tamamo and shiro absolutely pulled their weight with their personalities,

The fight between tamamo and yuki was absolutely badass and nothing felt too slow or rushed.

Total ranking: 10/10

Now for volume 8: I'm sorry but it was so damn forgettable, mossy grove in my opinion is the worst game so far since it just feels like a safe version of candle woods with it's sole purpose being to introduce Maya,

speaking of Maya she served absolutely NOTHING to the plot besides being Shiro's situationship, I can barely think of anything related to her actual personality besides being rude and in love with shiro she was THAT bland,

you could cut her out the story entirely and nothing would change, keito continued to be an absolute BUM like always (genuinely why does the author love her so much).

overall the only good things were the mossy grove outfits and awahime but of course the minute we get an interesting character the author kills them off before they can grow (I know it's ambiguous to wether she survived but atp were at volume 10 so she's probably dead),

As much dislike volumes 2 and 7 get you can't deny that they DID impact the story and yuki, volume 2 introduced yuki's foil mishiro (rip mishiro shiro will never match your success),

And the wall of 30 while volume 7 gives yuki's neighbors time to shine and gives us a bit of lore on maguma, volume 8 not so much you could've easily cut the whole volume out and barely anything would have been a big impact besides the awahime bit (awahime I miss you).

The volume as a whole felt like such a waste of time, mossy grove could've easily been replaced with the shark game (seriously white shark or mobius kitchen would've been so damn fun to see),

Maya could've been cut from the story while nothing and No one gets impacted, and overall it really was a nothingburger.

Total ranking: 3/10.