Once again, we return to taking the concept of The Ring (Ringu) and turning it into absolute chaos. Sorry, I mean updating it for the modern age! In this one, Sadako attempts to curse a young girl, but this mysterious young girl, who is locked in a closet by her mom, cheerfully greets Sadako like she’s an ordinary person. As modern conveniences have inconvenienced Sadako (lack of people watching TV or buying BD/DVDs, etc), the young girl convinces her to do the next best thing to curse people: by becoming a video creator. That’s all the rage now, and with Sadako’s mysterious powers and knowledge from the young girl, these two newbies will aim to curse people around the world!
So they create their alias, Double Sadako, and start producing quick Y**tube videos of interest. It starts with them introducing themselves, Sadako-san (the real one) losing energy really fast, and Sadako-chan (the mysterious young girl) chiding Sadako-san for losing energy so fast. This gets the attention of another video creator, Kazuma, who’s in a rut. His views aren’t going up at all and he’s struggling to come up with ideas. But he ends up clicking one of the trending videos, which was the Double Sadako video. He starts pondering the cursed video trend that was a thing years ago. Then he hears an eerie voice that finishes his sentence: “If you’re cursed by Sadako…
“You die a week later.”
And just like that, Sadako-san appears in Kazuma’s house!…And asks specifically if he has a TV. Once he says he doesn’t, she moans in despair.
This is definitely the most hilarious version of the Sadako manga spinoffs that I’ve read this year. Creator Aya Tsutsumi notes in the afterword that as big of a fan as she is of Ringu, she can’t draw horror. So turning it into a comedy version was the next best thing, and it’s a good decision. This manga leans heavily into the fish out of water scenario, where Sadako-san has to adjust to all the modern conveniences, as many things have changed over time. It is a simple premise (video-making), but that means the Ringu lore doesn’t play much of a factor into things.
If you were in the market for this being a scary manga, this ain’t it. It takes that concept nowhere near seriously. Heck, it even leaves mysteries. Why did Sadako-chan’s mom lock her in the closet? What abilities does Sadako-chan have? How come we don’t see her mom’s face? None of this gets an answer in this manga. Instead, we get Kazuma asking his sister to find a CRT TV for Sadako-san to jump out and curse people. We also get to see Sadako-san learning about turning on ads for videos. Yes, that is extremely funny for her to do that.
While I have seen the first Ringu movie ages ago, I can’t speak if much of the lore is here. That said, Tsutsumi’s take is really well done. The entertainment factor is there from character interactions to the art, and Sadako-chan is a fairly cute, fascinating character, especially since she clicks with Sadako-san really well. All in all, even if you just know of the franchise by osmosis, you’ll have a great time with these two attempting to curse the world by making videos.