As the Gods Will

Shun Takahata is a high school student worn down by the sameness of his daily life, and he wishes something would change. It does: during class, his teacher's head explodes and a talking Daruma doll appears in his place, forcing Shun and his classmates into a lethal version of a children's game. The survivors are pushed straight into further rounds, each presided over by a different toy, and losing any of them means death. Shun has no idea who is behind the games or why they are being played. He has only his childhood friend Ichika to protect, while a classmate named Takeru seems to take genuine pleasure in what the games let him do.

Takashi Miike directed the film, working from a screenplay by Hiroyuki Yatsu. It falls roughly two-thirds of the way through the director's feature output, arriving between Shield of Straw and Terra Formars. Sota Fukushi plays Shun, with Ryunosuke Kamiki as Takeru, Hirona Yamazaki as Ichika, Mio Yuki, Jingi Irie and Shota Sometani in supporting roles; the credited cast runs to 92 names. The production came from a group of Japanese companies including TOHO and Kodansha.

On IMDb the film holds a 6.3 rating from around 9,600 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7.1 from a much smaller pool of 589. A film critics' rating of 5 out of 10 rests on seven reviews, so reviewers were considerably cooler on it than the general audience.