Woohoo~ Reading thriller manga in the morning after a gory nightmare is ... eh, thrilling?
I really wish I can have a good dream sometimes. Wonder why it's never happened to me before T^T

'RESET' by 筒井哲也 is a one-shot thriller about three main characters: an internet psycho who tries to play god to all the local area network online players due to a grudge that rendered him third degree burns from years ago, a smart, talented ex-prisoner now working community service for the police over this case as the internet psycho kills people through the internet, and lastly a very normal, young housewife whose husband was killed by the psycho through the internet. There're also side characters such as a teacher trying to save a student who fell victim to the internet psycho's attempt to kill her.

The whole thing isn't very gory, just very interesting - the creative way of sending death messages to everyone who can hardly tell the difference between the virtual world and the real world anymore. Since the game that the psycho created is so realistic, people forget that they're in the real world, and so when they see the message 'Game failure, RESET', they kill themselves, even in the real world. The game itself is full of opportunities for people to kill each other, themselves, or just kill for fun - as the ex-prisoner observes, it's a sick game where people can let out their thirst for death and violence like it doesn't matter to the world or themselves.

As expected they eventually find the real criminal and arrests him, but then there's a small, pleasant surprise as to how they end the gaming problem. The ex-prisoner took over the game manager position, and turned everyone's bullets into little plastic pebbles, soft tipped knives, and for those who liked to kill themselves in the game, he sent them a cheesy gaming message of something like, 'lease love your own life. A message from the local police.' or something like that. Kind of a cute ending, after seeing so many people die and such a deep, chilling discovery of everyone's death wish.

All the characters, by the end of this one-shot changed their views toward life, and I think it had a nice, rounded ending.

...I still wish I had a nice dream. It has nothing to do with the manga though >"<

Link Storage (Chinese): [link]