English Dub Review: Liar Game “The Legendary Con Artist”
Overview (Spoilers Below):
A naive young woman named Nao is dragged into a Liar Game and seeks the assistance of a notorious conman.
Our Take:
When you get invited to participate in a competition, there’s usually a chance you’ll end up having to do something drastic to receive the big prize. But in this case, there’s one mysterious contest that forces its participants to commit crimes far worse than death: lying and cheating. Unfortunately for Nao Kanzaki, that’s something she will have to do to survive a competition full of betrayal and deception. The problem is that Nao is known to be incredibly honest and unintentionally naive towards others. While that may be helpful to her in real life, her personality puts her at a severe disadvantage when it comes to the rules of this “Liar Game”. When her first opponent of the contest happens to be her former middle-school teacher, Fujisawa, she’ll have to get some help from former conman, Shinichi Akiyama, to steal back the money he stole from her.
For those unfamiliar with the source material, the first episode wasted no time in introducing the contest’s conditions. People have thirty days to steal their opponents’ money without worrying about the consequences of their actions. They can pretty much do whatever it takes to achieve this goal, including lying and cheating. However, those on the losing side before the round is done will face a humongous debt for the rest of their lives. Those opponents can be people you once trusted, who reveal their true nature through greed and selfishness. In this case, Fujisawa’s kindness is only a facade to conceal his true pleasure in scamming people to benefit himself. I don’t really give a shit that he lost his job and family. He deserves to go into debt forever after what he did to Nao. But what should I expect from a world full of selfish and stupid people?
While some of the dub performances sounded a bit flat on some occasions, “The Legendary Con Artist” provides an easy-going introduction to this psychological concept for those who haven’t read the manga. I can also see it being a welcoming revisit for the manga’s fans if the upcoming episodes remain as interesting as this. However, given that this is the first anime adaptation of Liar Game since the previous versions were live-action, there’s a lot riding on it to retain the psychological stress and suspense of the source material. As someone who hasn’t read the manga or watched the live-action adaptations, I’m pretty much strapped in for this first round.
