Liar Game/Headscratchers

• Let's assume for a bit that during the 2nd Game (Minority Rule), sunglasses man wasn't in league with Akiyama. When he, Mohawk guy, and Fukunaga agree to form a draw, why would they simply just hand their ballots over? Sunglasses could simply fail to put the ballots in the box, and according to the rules, abstaining is an automatic loss. All he would have had to do was put his own ballot in, the other two lose, and he and Akiyama would then share the prize, right?
  • Several reasons: First, their decision was rushed; remember, there was less than a minute left when the votes were put in, and they probably didn't have enough time for that possibility to occur to them. Secondly, they were watching him place the votes and made sure he put in three ballots; while there wasn't much time left, it was probably enough to make him put the ballots in if he refused to do so.
• During the first round, why did the teacher steal Nao's money so early in the game? If he had waited until the last few days to take all of it, Nao wouldn't have been able to find any source of help at all.
  • He was too relax to fear her. Mind that he knew her very well, and she is the archetype of a sucker.
  • Because he didn't think that far. Maybe the people who reached the next rounds could, but the people from the first one seem to be mostly normal people with no experience at ripping others off. Plus, the chances of her overhearing that conversation were extremely small, unless he actually called and said the exact same thing to every one of his friends.
  • I have several maxims that I live by. One is "If you're thinking about something and wondering "Why?" or "How did that happen?" the answer is often "Because people tend be stupid and to do stupid things." (That includes me, sadly.) I think that's the answer here. People do stupid things all the time, but it's only in stories that one considers it to be strange.
• During the Poker Game in the second Revival Round, what would have happened if both chose to exchange 5 cards? Because...that would need 10 cards, but only 7 are left in the stack.
  • This is why they go one at a time. I suppose you COULD have the Joker, and discard your entire hand just to fuck with them, ad then you'd be able to piece together the best possible hand they had, and work against it.
  • It would probably end up as a 'draw', with all the chips going to the dealer instead of the players. Remember, there are apparently several different ways to draw that wouldn't be there in normal poker, like both sides checking.
• How the hell could ANYONE mistake Fukunaga without the wig for a guy? Without it s/he looks like a woman without hair. S/he has huge boobs, ffs.
  • Fukunaga doesn't look like a guy just by taking off the wig, but with a little effort, Fukunaga could disguise herself as a man. If she took off the wig, didn't wear any makeup (or wore makeup that intentionally minimized how feminine her face looked), bound her chest, and wore nondescript loose-fitting clothes, then probably she could pass as a slightly feminine looking man to someone who was preoccupied with other things. What bugs this troper is how inconsistantly Fukunaga's gender identity is characterized: a man who crossdresses to get his way, a man identifying as a transvestite, and a transwoman aren't the same thing.
    • As if Fukunaga would speak honestly about means or motivations.
    • Fukunaga isn't a woman disguised as a man. He's a man disguised as a woman.
    • Fukunaga is actually a "New Half" which can either be a transvestite or a transsexual.
• Also on the subject of Fukunaga, what the heck is he doing to look like a man or woman in the "talent" area? For the second round, he has breasts, but they're hidden. Okay, fine. Revival round, nothing there. Also fine, it means the earlier ones were fakes, right? So how the heck does he get fully attached breasts between the revival round and round 3? The pictures show clear attachment, and I'm fairly certain he didn't just decide to spend his money like that with the Liar Game going on. On top of that, in the author "interview" of Fukunaga, it's stated that his breasts are saline bags. So what's going on there?
  • It's possible, and mind I said "possible", that he had the operation between games. She is hot for the protagonist, that is apparently hetero, so why not working on the feminile appeal?
  • This troper assumed that he's a guy (or at least was born as one) with fake eyelashes, an implant bra (or whatever those stuffed bras are called) and hormone pills. I don't know how accurate the scanlation was, but I'm pretty sure he said "Ever heard of a transgender?"
• Why the heck didn't anyone try just investing the 100 million Yen and using arbitrage? That's enough money to get a somewhat significant amount of leverage going, and arbitrage has absolutely zero risk.
  • For one, I suppose they were too busy being paranoid about heir opponent stealing it and rather invested in stealing their opponents. That and, they were supposed to return the EXACT BILLS. "Hi, I know I started with 100 mil and now have a net of 500 mil, but could I just get my original 100 mil. back for now?"
    • But then that's not to say nobody ever tried it. Knowing Yokoya, he could have pulled off something like that, or tricked the other guy into trying tha-oh wait no. He switched in in the second round. Disregard that.
    • Also, if you lose, you have to pay tham back anyway. And that'd be impossible with the original bills. You'd just say "Yep, lost all my money". They'd say "Now you're 100 mil in debt". And you'd say "Fine, take it". And run off with the money. But you're right, they were probably way too paranoid for that. And it would raise questions if you suddenly invested 100 mil.
      • Actually, come to think of it, maybe that's how Yokoya learned about the Liar Game. He invested his money and intentionally lost the game. After that, he got bored and decided to take someone's place in the game, maybe the first round opponent he let win. On the other hand, he apparently already had a ton of money back in High School, so... >_>
  • The rules of the first round state that you have to return the same bills. Though theoretically you could just do that, lose by virtue of not having the same bills, then pay off the debt...
• In chapter 8, at the beginning of round 2, Leronira states that the purpose of the tournament is to crown the 'liar king' because people are paying the LGT to find them a 'genius liar'. If this is the case then why do the LGT allow people to drop out once they've won. The way the tournament is structured it means that all their best liars are likely to drop out, not win, and it's the moderate liars who can win the revival rounds that continue on.
  • I think the best liars would drop out, but the VERY best liars, like Yokoya would stay in. Or they foresee that the best will come up with a plan like Akiyama.
    • Akiyama only came up with that plan after the second, which he would have dropped out of had it not been for fukunaga. Fukunaga would also have dropped out if it wasn't for Akiyama, and Yoyoka would have dropped out after the third round had it not been for Nao psyching him out. It seems to me that the LGT office have been very lucky so far, but they definitely didn't chose the most effective way to achieve their stated goal.
      • Maybe they are working on a similar route to Naruto's Chuunin exams. The Liar King is chosen from all participants after they were able to gauge their abilities, rather than to simply choose the winner. Or Leonira was just lying.
      • The thing is, anyone who's worth being called the king of liars really should have a reason to play the Liar Game besides money. Yokoya, Nao and Akiyama all have very different reasons for playing, and even Fukunaga seems to be stepping away from just playing for money. I know that if I were to take part in the Liar Game, I would love it and wouldn't drop out no matter how much money I made. Well, besides that, I don't think it's a coincidence that Akiyama and Fukunaga cause each other to stay in the game, that Nao convinces Yokoya to keep playing, or that Nao got Akiyama involved. I think the LGT plans those things, at least somewhat.
        • Wait, you want to risk a couple million US$ (Or whatever currency)!?
        • What better thrill could there be, than playing a game of liars against people like Akiyama and Yokoya, with the bets going up to millions of dollars?
  • Plus, they could be, you know, lying. Because one of the ways that the LGT gains money is by people dropping out, since not only do they collect on the debts of the losers, but they also get half of the winner's winnings.
• When Nao played Fukunaga's card game the second time, Akiyama told her how to cheat and limit her suspicious actions to four turns. But since she only marked the double-sided card, there was no reliable way for her to draw the Joker face-down; half the time, it would be drawn face-up. So she would've had to draw the Joker over and over for an expected number of 10 turns, which would've definitely made Fukunaga suspicious.
  • Fukunaga is suspicious, it's just the fact that Nao effectively cornered her mentally makes her can't do shit about it.
• In the first phase of the second revival round, why did the gun tend to stop with its center of mass as low as possible? Since it only spins one direction, it should still have kinetic energy left when its center of mass is as low as possible, since its gravitational potential energy was just converted into kinetic energy; it should really stop while the center of mass is rising (and is thus losing kinetic energy by transferring it into gravitational potential energy).
  • We substituted in lay-man terms and moved the science-y part of that to the discussion page and attached a Tropers Viewers Are Geniuses link to it. It probably qualifies on the author's part as Did Not Do the Research. You get a cookie.
• It didn't happen in this playthrough, but isn't the second round a complete game breaker? I mean, imagine if you actually managed to win it, without promising to share it or anything? You'd have 2 freaking billion yen! To make matters worse, although you don't know this yet in the second round, the third round might give you a 500 million yen debt. But dropping out after the second round costs you 1 billion, twice as much! There's absolutely no reason for someone who wins the second round to drop out, and that person would have a permanent, insanely huge advantage in every following round. We can only hope that Akiyama and Nao never run into such a person. Actually, it's fairly unlikely they will, since it probably didn't cross the writer's mind that anyone who wins the second round would be nuts to drop out.
  • It's only a game breaker for anyone who knows what the third round entails. Fukunaga mentioned before during the final part of round 2 that he didn't want to go on to the third round because he predicted it'd be harder than the second round, which was hard enough as it was. However, if someone's crazy enough to go on to the third round after winning second round... >_>
  • Then again, looking at it from a complete point of view, it really makes no difference to the LGT whether or not that person decides to continue onto the third round or not. Let's say that somebody wins and decides to go onto the next round. First, remember that at that point, they don't know about revival games yet. For all the winners of the second round know, they would be facing the other winners of the second round, meaning that they will probably be facing more skilled people, and considering that these people who theoretically won their round by themselves would also have large back-up funds, the stakes might just be at the level where they risk losing more than 1 billion yen or more (not that it is, but they wouldn't know that yet). But even then, let's say somebody did win and continue on to the third round. At this point, all his large amount of funds means that if he loses, he'll be able to easily pay off the debt. In other words, he won't have as much pressure on him as his fellow competitors. And even this may not be an advantage so much as a disadvantage, considering that being relaxed makes it much more likely for that person to make a careless mistake and lose. At the very best, that person would be a crappier version of Yokoya, who uses his money to win and make more money in the process (while trying to dominate everybody, but that's just Yokoya), and well, they are already facing Yokoya.
• Infection game: why the heck doesn't anyone have a camera phone. They're prevalent enough in the US by now, and this is JAPAN. It would completely remove any issues of trust.
  • They could just be confiscated...
    • Certainly didn't see anyone doing that.
      • Maybe the screening room walls are unphotographable? :p
  • Remember that, in the test round, they already went into the chambers to test themselves. It would be completely possible for them to take a picture of a "clean" result from the test round and display it during the real game while being of infected status, meaning that such pictures couldn't be trusted by default.
• First Revival Round (Yokoya version): When Yokoya started handing out those 70 million yen bribes, why didn't anyone think to betray him? Just take the money and vote for whoever they agreed to vote for in the first place? They could've at least done that during the second round of voting. Did Yokoya use the M-tickets as contracts? His bribes were in cash, though... One more thing, do the large wads of cash count as part of the prize money? If not, why not just team up with one other person. Exchange all 100 million in M-ticket money for 50 million in cash, all his votes, and all future votes in his possession (including the ones you give him by voting for him). That way, your partner will be in dead last, but have 20 million yen in cash as a profit. Assuming all of your partner's votes and yours put you in first place, you'll get the 100 million yen prize money. Give back the prize money to cover your M-ticket debt, setting your total prize money to zero (again, assuming Yokoya's cash doesn't count), and drop out without having to pay a cent. Then, pay back your initial 2nd round debt of 100 million yen using the combined cash you got from Yokoya and your partner. Both you and your partner are out of the liar game and made a 20 million yen profit each.
  • Because even teaming up with another person doesn't guarantee you being the winner, considering that everybody else is voting for Yokoya. Also, at the point, there's a good chance that they didn't know they could transfer votes, since it doesn't seem to play a role until the end of Yokoya's second round, and everybody was surprised when it happened during Nao's second round. Also, this wouldn't work, because the winner doesn't get 100 million yen, but the winners split the 100 million yen evenly between themselves, and considering that Yokoya would have the other members in his pocket by then, at best you could get would be 50 million of the prize money, and this is discounting the fact that Yokoya would sell his extra votes and make new winners, decreasing your share of the prize money even further. Going by that, you wouldn't have won enough money to pay off both you and your partner's debt, since you'd have around (100+100+140+12.5)=362.5, but the debts would be (100+100+100)=300 for your partner (the debt for being the loser, the debt from the M-card, and the debt from the second round) and (100 + x)for you, the 100 being the debt for the first round and the x being the whatever free it costs to drop out of the second round (probably half of your winnings), leaving you with at least 400 in debt.
    • Yeah... the theory was based on the J-Drama, which apparently really gave 100 million to the winner as a prize. Still, according to this the debt for being the loser and the debt from the M-card are one and the same. That means 200 million is all that's needed for the loser. Also, this is a plan that's in response to Yokoya being revealed to have taken 10 votes from everyone. He offered to sell his excess votes; this would be enough to let everyone know that transferring votes is possible. Once the second round is over and it becomes common knowledge that you can transfer votes, the plan can be put into action. The loser half of the duo only requires 200 million to be left with no debt or profit. The winner half of the duo... yeah, this plan would've only been plausible in the J-drama.
• Why did Nao want to make everyone pass the Infection Game? It seems much better for her to try to eliminate them and win R4, and then use the winnings to pay off their debts. It has been made clear that getting people out of the game with no debt is the best possible outcome - this was central to the resolution of the first Revival Round, and is pretty much Nao's overall philosophy - so why the sudden shift to "Let's keep everyone in the game"?
  • Because this is a preliminary round. Normally, she pays off the debts of the losers right away with the money she wins. But in this case, since it's a preliminary round, they have no idea what's going to happen next. For all they know, the losers are taken away immediately making it impossible for Nao to pay off their debts even if she wins Round 4 (since they're gone).
• Why is it considered such a problem that Fukunaga got eliminated in the Infection Game? She can always re-enter the game the same way Akiyama entered the game in the first place, by taking someone else's seat - which will have the added bonus of removing someone from the game without giving them a debt, which has been constantly established as the ideal scenario.
  • I don't think the problem is that Fukunaga was eliminated. I think the problem was that Fukunaga was beaten by someone. Remember, he's only considered nothing special if you compare him with Akiyama and Yokoya. He's one of the stronger players in the game, so it can come as a bit of a shock to the main cast for him to be beaten. Works somewhat like the Worf Effect, I guess?
• Doesn't the fake lawyer count as the LGT guys being dishonest?
  • Hell yes, but they lie a lot anyway, so doesn't matter.
    • I mean for the "we give you mountains of cash if you prove we've been dishonest" clause.
      • Just stating he lied is not itself enough to prove anything - you'd have to have some kind of record of what he's said.
        • So they could win with a tape recorder and the lawyer's previously-seen habit of gloating.
  • No actually. The deal was if the LGT Office was guilty of dishonesty during the course of the game. Technically, lying to Nao to get her to participate happened outside of the game.
• Why the LGT wants Nao so much, even before knowing she is a sort of messia? Not only they invested time and resources to keep her playing after she dropped out, but they clearly hinted her to recluit Akiyama. She would have been out after 24 hours, otherwise.
  • Perhaps their real target was Akiyama. But they knew that after serving his prison sentence, Akiyama probably wouldn't enter the game, so they found Nao, who was apparently similar to Akiyama's mother to sort of pressure him into entering.
  • I'd assume the pressure they apply to Nao is normal policy for them, they'd run out of players quite fast without some way to make the winners move forwards. The thing about Akimiya wasn't intentional, the fake lawyer admits it was just an offhand comment that Nao, being Nao, took literally.
• Why hasn't the strategic use of violence been considered? There's the 100 million yen fine, to be sure, but in some cases it might be worth incurring this penalty to get a favorable outcome. Take the endgame of the musical chairs game -- what if Fukunaga follows Yokoya to find out where his chair is, bops him over the head (something Fukunaga should be quite capable of), pays the penalty, and gives the chair to Nao? Given the fact that Fukunaga has multiple 100 million yen medals from Nao, but none from Yokoya, this seems to work towards his long-term advantage.
  • My idea was- if there's a blackbelt or something among the extras, they could beat the crap out of one of the "group leaders", take their box of medals, and then trade them the medals back for chairs. Then you can sell the chairs to a different group for, say, two medals per player in the group. It's a pretty decent net profit.
    • Heck, hire a gaya to follow somebody to their chair and take it. They can't guard it forever. Alternatively, blockade the totem pole and win in the first round.
      • Impossible, one team will outbuy just one guy with trash medals then use the person whose medals they didn't give away to win. 6 gayas needs, say, 300 mils or 3 medals each, which means a total of 18 medals. Outbuying one gayas just needs 4 or more, and even if that gaya thinks it's trash medals they'll say "No, we still have 19 of them left, so it's not". Plan broken.
      • Hiring a gaya to snatch somebody chair wouldn't work, either, since they'll risk the gaya being hired back, and that gaya will tell the numbers, placements of the team's chairs.
    • Also, violence gets you a penalty, remember? So beating someone up to get their medals isn't really an option.
    • Yes, we remember. ^^ We're just talking about the possibility of using violence to make more money than you'd lose.
• IIRC, in the Revival round Fukunaga had bought 5 votes on every round from every player except Nao for 100 million. But in order to not have to pay that amount, he sells his 5 votes on every round to each player for 100 million, cancelling the debt and making this a contract by the rules of the Downsizing game. The problem is: he can't give every vote to every player on every round. If he promises to give every vote to every player, by default that should be a void contract except for one player. So, the Plot Hole is... how did that work?
  • I think you're misremembering.
    • Apparently there's a page missing in Mangafox between page 15 and 16 of chapter 22, but... here it is. Unless there was a translation error, that's what I understood from that.
      • Fukunaga didn't buy anything.He threatened to make the game end in a tie, unless they all payed him, and bought his strategy that would cause Nao to lose. He only gives his votes to one player, there were enough people in the group for each of them to get five votes from another person.
• Why did Yokoya's group need to check their statuses at the end of the Pandemic Game? I understand that they wanted to find out who was infected so that that person could cure themselves, but it had already been shown (when Yokoya was explaining to the unassociated 4 how Nao could have tricked them) that if you tried to cure yourself without being infected, nothing happened. Couldn't Yokoya, Fatty, and Forelock have just all pressed their self-cure button, and then moved on with their plan? Did they just get really psyched out, or was I just reading a bad translation?
  • One of Yokoya, Fatty or Forelock had just become infected, so they could only become a Normal+3, max (Started as a Normal+2, became Infected+2, would become Normal+1, only 2 people in their group left to contact). The crux of the plan was that they could avoid contacting Nao altogether, because the +3 could contact four-eyes. If anyone could be the +3, then all of them had to contact someone outside the group of six. Four-eyes would contact one person, then refuse everyone else, so Nao would inevitably become a +4.
• Why do people keep referring to Fukunaga as 'he' or 'Mr.'? She's a transgender woman - from an interview done with the character, we know that she actually identifies as a female and isn't a crossdresser or transvestite. What she was biologically born as or whether she's had surgery done doesn't matter; she's clearly a MtF transgender woman and should be referred to using female pronouns and words.
  • Although Fukunaga refers to himself as a woman, the profile clearly showed that Fukunaga was a "he". He just likes to be a woman, I guess.
• Akiyama, as well as the bogus lawyer, makes it clear that Nao is not legally bound to continue the game past the first round. Even when it is revealed that the lawyer is in fact part of the LGT, that doesn't change anything regarding her legal standing. She is still unaware at this point in the story as to whether or not the LGT will act maliciously on those who drop out (the thought hasn't even crossed her mind yet), and she only went to the LGT mansion to announce her dropping out in the first place, so why the hell does she still enter the game?
  • This is Nao we are talking about...what did you expect? Anyway: in the emotional state Nao was in after learning about the bogus lawyer--who she counted on to defend her when the LGT Office would say, "We want you to pay your 100 million yen debt or else!"--she probably had no other idea in her mind except to go along for the time being.
• What are the standards to choose the players? I mean, only a few of them were actually good (Yokoya, Fukunaga, Harimoto,...), most other players are just useless pawns and too dumb to even participate. And Akiyama only entered because Nao dragged him in the 1st round, and a lady just happens to lose on the second round, Akiyama wouldn't have a chance to play otherwise. And Nao would be the last person you'd think of to play in this game in the first place.
  • Akiyama, Yokoya, Fukunaga, Harimoto and arguably Nao are the only exceptionally good players we've seen so far. The LGT probably didn't expect Nao to turn out so well, the first three entered the tournament indirectly through other people, and Harimoto probably did the same. From this, we may conclude that the LGT have no standards for picking players, meaning it was likely done randomly, or they're biased in favor of "dumb" people, or at least against "exceptional" people. From this alone, one could infer that the LGT is simply meant to be a money-making scam. However, they also claim to seek a "Liar King", yet so far we haven't seen any proof that they've done much for it. In the end, it's not really possible or meaningful to speculate on this, since we don't know the LGT's true nature, or rather their real objective. It's worth noting, however, that the other players aren't THAT stupid, they just seem that way compared to the geniuses who use the rules and loopholes to their fullest potential.