Maze of Minds: Genius Game Review
Chiba High isn’t your average school. Here, academic genius is the biggest flex anyone has. Some fight for sports. Kids here duel with proofs, chess boards, mathlets, or riddles. For episode seven, our spotlight swings to Sora Kimura, age 16. She’s always had all the right scores but zero friends. “People don’t really want to talk to calculators,” she once joked to her mom over burnt takoyaki strips.
Why is it so hard to feel normal? Every year since age twelve, she’s broken another national record. She remembers her first math comp in third grade—ten girls, ninety-three boys, with pale light streaks on honed faces. Now Chiba has a Genius Council who “accidentally” make things too tough for half the students to ever join.
One week before summer, chaos ignites. A transfer student from Hokkaido arrives after his own scandal: Kazuo Miyazaki. He beats the Council president, Jin Soga, at Number Boxing, the code game that not even teachers can follow. “How’d you do that?” Sora asks Kazuo during the crowded lunch break, hands gripping her ramen like it’s made of paper. He shrugs. “What do you do when you can’t break a pattern from the front? Push from the sides,” he whispers.
The faculty realize: Chiba is too ‘tight.’ The principal wants a Genius Game to “reset the pecking order.” It is survival—but not in a physical sense. Are these rivalries fair? Ten of the school’s most-watched scholars are chosen. For the first event, the Science Tower closes for two days. All access cards except theirs are void.
Did you ever face-off against someone who knew what you’d do, four moves back? Sora scans the lined faces: there’s Seo the executive, Minoru the chess prodigy, Shun with perfect recall, two shy twins known as ‘Binary’, and two new students, Alice and Riku—one crunches code, one solves puzzles at lunch with pastry sticks instead of pens.
The rules of the maze hit at once: The ten must team up or fend alone through six floors of locked challenge labs. Solve everything—get out—and the team or player wins title of Apex Genius, access to private project money, and a huge boost to their future record.
Classic tests—a sealed room with dozens of entropy codes, a logic gate escape, memory grids, and a joint-weighing system with only one perfect answer. “Why’s it worth this stress?” Minoru sighs. “To prove—I’m more than a brain,” Sora says quietly. You ever feel like your worth is only measured on paper?
Loyalty cracks. Alliances shift. Riku flips to Seo’s side mid-puzzle. Seeds of old rivalry spring to life. Binary twins won’t speak to anyone now. That tense lab whispers old grudges back to life. The twins explode after Sora solves a string theorem she shouldn’t have known yet.
Kazuo gets stuck—trapped in a side room on floor three with an unfamiliar code. Sora follows to help him, risking her lead. He’s flustered, his usual glimmer gone. “This is a crazy game,” he mutters. “My dad used to hide riddles inside my flashcards, but this—” She interrupts: “Pull left, not forward. Nothing new hides unless we risk doubling back.” They edge forward together for the first time.
As midnight hits, high on the sixth floor now, Jin seals a key lab, only letting four through. Sora opens it by guessing Jin’s old password—which turns out to be a prime sequence. All teams are split by then except Sora, Kazuo, and Alice. Can anyone trust each other for one last unlock?
Ominous fog whirls in from the lit vents—atmospheric fog for pressure, but Sora loses sight. Jin whispers through the intercom: “Choose trust, or tread alone. Either way, nobody knows what’s coming after the last door.” Lights snap off. Just their own yellow glowsticks remain, faces behind reflections.
Will anyone really become Apex, or will rivalry ruin every plan? The speaker crackles with a noise Sora’s heard before—a glitch or a hidden riddle? Her hand shakes as she reaches for the code panel. You still trust these other ‘geniuses’? Should you?
Next episode: Only three figures pass through the final maze gate. But the record floor resets and Jin smiles as if this is all step one. Who really wrote the last code?
