The Fall 2023 Manga Guide

Game of Familia

What's It About? 

After his father's remarriage, high school student Sasae Hatsushima moves in with his three new step-sisters. That's all well and good, until the whole family is summoned to another world! Will they be able to band together and survive in a brutal, unforgiving land?

Game of Familia has a story by Mikoto Yamaguchi and art by D.P. The English translation is by Giuseppe di Martino, with lettering by Arbash Mughal. Published by Yen Press (September 5).


Content warning: This manga contains nudity, body dismemberment, and rape. Recommended for mature (18+) readers only.

Is It Worth Reading?

Rating:

There's a school of thought that fanservice fantasy series should shoot for simplicity to streamline what most people are here for. But then you have something like Game of Familia, which has more going on in its genesis than you might expect. It gets underway briskly enough, throwing its titular family into the fantasy world immediately, quickly expositing about them being magically summoned, and throwing a little fetishized violent sexual assault in there, you know, for the kids. But then, despite hitting the ground running, the series soon finds time to step back and delve into the distinguishingly dense world-building you expect from more straightforward isekai. That's honestly not great as far as finding a selling point, but it also means it keeps you guessing more than you might expect.

Game of Familia has the air of a story figuring itself out in real time. At first, it focuses on the spectacle of Sasae's super-hot and competent step-sister trio; we keep hovering around Sasae and how he decides to support them. Surprisingly, the book doesn't devolve nearly as hard into the step-family hookup fantasy, with only a couple of indications that Sasae's step-mom might be projecting her love for his departed dad onto him. But it's not like the story earnestly embraces a genuine family dynamic, instead positioning them as background motivators to fuel him magically min/maxing his way to a more standard isekai over-powered fantasy. Before the halfway point, the trio of tough ladies and fanservice elements are relegated to mere garnish around the portrayal of Sasae as the coolest, cleverest, most competent isekai hero you've surely seen this week.

Swinging things in this direction undercuts so many of the other defining elements of the book. Even as Sasae is descending into a "wicked" path to safeguard the guiding kindness of his other family members, it's not borne out in his actions save from finding out that he seduced the King's wife on the very last page of this volume. Even the edgier sexual assault fanservice snippets keep getting walked back with the revelation that they were perpetrated on mere golems created as decoys. Meanwhile, the art backing all this is punching way above its weight, thick with hordes of characters on both the hero and enemy sides, with dense backgrounds and magic effects. The lavish presentation carries even the overindulgent stretch of Sasae talking with the elemental spirits. It's a messy manga that I think many people will nonetheless mine plenty of enjoyment of. And it's got a gyaru delinquent karate champion who goes "Ora ora," so not even I am immune to some of its charms. But there could have been something way better here with just an ounce more focused coherence.

Rating:

Game of Familia feels like the creator wanted to take the “equivalent exchange” principle from Fullmetal Alchemist and push it to a more edgy extreme. When a young man and his remarkable family get transported to a fantasy world where women are killed and raped daily, they step up as society's saviors. Unfortunately, you are required to sacrifice something for the sake of obtaining power. Our main lead takes that burden upon himself to sacrifice everything for his family to shine without consequence.

I joke about the overall edginess of the series, but I only do that because it is a legitimate criticism. This series is trying to push too hard for the sake of being dark. That's a shame because the story does a good job of being unsettling without leaning into its incredibly graphic depictions. I like reading this story when it's focused on our Sasae because the writer excellently established that there is more to him than meets the eye. We focus so much on how unremarkable he is compared to the rest of his family, but then the story takes an interesting turn where I genuinely wonder if I was misled. Was the protagonist downplaying his abilities as an absence of self-confidence, or is he a deceitful manipulator who's really good at taking advantage of situations by staying in the shadows? Was he genuine when he sacrificed everything for power, or was there some other trickery?

These are the first volume's initial questions, and there should be answers that will be addressed later on. That's how it hooks you in, and it's effective. However, if it drags out the mystery too long, it runs the risk of losing readers if there is nothing else engaging about the material. It also pressures the writer to ensure the payoff is worth all of the buildup. That's not a condemnation of this volume but rather a concern for the larger story. But if I were to recommend this volume on its own, it's fine if you don't mind things on the edgy or graphic side. A fascinating mystery is going on here as long as you can sift through the blood and gore to get to it.