From the moment I read the premise of Madhouse’s strategy game series, Liar Game, I was hooked: a young woman so honest she will turn in a 100 yen coin she finds on the sidewalk to the police station is embroiled in a mysterious high-stakes game where survival depends on one’s skill for lying. What got me is that I wanted to see whether an anime could actually permit such an honest character to remain so, even under the most intense pressure, or if she would have to be crushed by the plot and forced to compromise her ideals. However fantastical it may be at times, anime provides a mirror onto contemporary society, its values and dreams. Could that mirror truly show honesty winning out in this cynical, “post-truth” day and age? 

Well, spoiler alert, it doesn’t. In episode 9, the “stupidly honest” protagonist, Nao Kanzaki, lies. 

The End. Thank you for reading my post. 

Just kidding! Although on one level I was disappointed that Nao resorts to deception during the Losers’ Revival round of the Liar Game Tournament (LGT), the way it comes about and what it represents completely defies my simplistic litmus test and instead begs a more nuanced exploration of the moral dynamics at play here. You see, Nao’s actions give us a picture of what it looks like to be shrewd, to be wise as a serpent, and yet to be so in precisely the way that Jesus exhorts us: that is, while remaining innocent as a dove.  

Nao is the very embodiment of innocence. She is honest and sweet and always believes the best in people. But she’s also very naive, to the point of gullibility, making her easy to manipulate. That’s how she ends up trapped in the LGT, where, during those first couple of rounds, she is pretty much helpless, surviving thanks solely to the benevolence of the savior-like Akiyama. 

In the revival round, though, Nao is on her own and pretty soon, her naiveté sets her up to be the sole loser in a game that was supposed to be a guaranteed win for her. Nao hits rock bottom as she is crushed by the betrayal and the anticipated weight of debt that will soon settle on her shoulders, unless she can somehow turn things around. No wonder honest Nao finally lies, right? It’s called the Liar Game for a reason, after all, and a girl’s gotta survive. And wouldn’t you know it, lying works! Nao ends up winning the round and enough prize money to buy her way out of the tournament and still enjoy a little profit!

It reminds me of Jesus’s parable of the shrewd manager in Luke 16. In it, a dishonest manager who is about to be fired schemes up a way to provide himself with a cushy retirement by being crafty with his employer’s resources while he still has access to them. (Read the whole thing here.) In the grand finale (16:8a), Jesus says that, “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly…” Wait, what?! This is definitely the most mystifying of Jesus’s parables, right?

Then Jesus does something he never does: He steps out of the story and begins to explain it to the crowd. Now, Jesus was wont to do this for his disciples, but only for them, in private after the crowds had gone home. But this time, he offers up a long commentary interpreting the parable. Well, sort of. By which I mean, it is no straightforward explanation that Jesus offers, but rather a series of insights that are themselves open to interpretation, particularly in how to connect the dots with the parable. (Which, as challenging as it may be, is in keeping with how Jesus spoke to the crowds, after all! So that “Seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand…”) 

Jesus’s commentary begins in the most unexpected way, as he effectively doubles down and joins the master of the story in commending the dishonest manager! “For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.” (16:8b) The implication here is that believers should take a page from the manager’s book and learn to be shrewd. He then tells us the reason for so shocking a commission: “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” (16:9)

Now, this verse is open to interpretation, but I think what Jesus is getting at here—and I’ve written about this before—is that we are to use the riches of this lifetime to win people who will become friends for, and in, eternity; that is, winning them to the Kingdom. Jesus is charging us to be shrewd for the sake of eternal considerations! 

The next few verses underline this emphasis: “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?” (16:10-12) Here, Jesus presents worldly wealth as something “very little”, that is actually “someone else’s property” (namely, God’s). But it is also an important tool to test our character, and indeed, to forge and refine it.

How we handle wealth reveals the condition of our heart and therefore our trustworthiness to receive true riches. After all, wealth has a way of enslaving us, even when we think we’re in control. That’s what happens for every player in the Liar Game Tournament, including, initially, our sweet, innocent Nao, who spends those first couple of rounds concentrating on her own bank balance. It’s what Jesus warns about at the close of this passage, too: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” (16:13)

I think what’s going on here is that Jesus is calling us to be shrewd like the manager, but also to be better than him. More specifically, we are to be shrewd—not with a self-centered mindset that is only concerned with the here and now and our own personal outcome, but for the sake of the kingdom, with eternity in mind. In other words, we are to be shrewd with the mind of Christ—which we receive as we are transformed by the renewing of our minds—to the purpose of anticipating eternity and acting accordingly. We see this same emphasis when we consider the other occasions in which Jesus discusses shrewdness. 

But before we look at these, what exactly is shrewdness? To be literal about it, in the New Testament, it’s the Greek word phronimos, which the NIV (quoted earlier) translates as ”shrewd,” but which other translations render as “wise.” It’s a specific type of wisdom, though; one that, according to Strong’s biblical dictionary, carries the sense of being prudent, or wise to one’s own interests. The equivalent Hebrew term in the Old Testament, arum—which likewise is translated as both “wise” and “shrewd” and has a sense of prudence and cunning—is used most frequently in the book of Proverbs, including:

“A naive person will believe anything, but the shrewd person discerns his steps.” (14:15)

“A shrewd person saw danger and hid himself, but the naive passed on by and paid for it.” (22:3 & 27:12)

The shrewdly wise person is able to look ahead, recognize potential pitfalls, plan, and take action accordingly to safeguard their own life. In other words, shrewdness is a pretty self-centered form of wisdom, right? (In fact, arum is also used to describe the serpent in the Garden (Genesis 3:1).) This kind of shrewdness certainly applies to the manager in Luke 16! So is that what Jesus is telling us to be like?! 

Perish the thought! Instead, when we look at how Jesus discusses shrewd wisdom—phronimos—elsewhere, we find a crucial nuance that completely sets it apart from both the OT precursor and the dictionary definition. The shrewdly wise, phronimos person in Jesus’s teaching sees the big picture and plays the long game; they are prepared to fight the good fight until the end, and welcome the returning Jesus, judgment and all. These phronimos people are the five wise virgins who are prepared for the bridegroom’s arrival and the faithful slave who works and leads others diligently and whom his master rewards upon his return; they are the ones who heed every word of Jesus’s in the Sermon on the Mount, and whom he likens to the man that builds his house on the rock so that it may never be shaken. The shrewdly wise person is the one who looks ahead toward eternity, and who sets their heart to living out the here and now with that glorious Kingdom in mind.  

There’s one more instance of phronimos in Jesus’s teachings, and it’s the one that pulls everything together, as Jesus commissions his disciples to go out into the world, preaching the gospel and doing the things that he does: “Therefore be wise [phronimos] as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16b) Jesus brings together what seem like two opposite modes of being—innocence and shrewdness—and commissions us to embody both. I think this is also what he’s doing in the parable—plus commentary!—about the shrewd manager. But how on earth are we supposed to achieve this?

This is where Nao comes in, because this is exactly what she is doing. She is an innocent dove who becomes wise as a serpent—the very picture of innocent shrewdness. 

Now, my earlier plot summary of Nao during the revival round of the LGT was a little misleading. That’s because something crucial happens between the point where Nao hits rock bottom and when she first deceives her opponents. Far from lying out of desperation to save her own skin, or bitter revenge against those who exploited her, Nao lies…to save them all! Let’s take a look!

At her lowest point, Nao has an epiphany. I’ve written elsewhere about how Akiyama breaks into the game site, like the Holy Spirit, comforting her but also bolstering her to persevere. We don’t get to see their subsequent discussion, but it’s clear through what happens in the rest of that round that Nao is able to think clearly in Akiyama’s presence, and as she does so, she sees something about the world she is trapped in that no one else has seen, a deep truth hidden in the foundations of the world, as it were, of the Liar Game Tournament. There is a way—a narrow and difficult way, it’s true, but a way nonetheless—to play the game so that every slate may be wiped clean and every debt ransomed.

This epiphany transforms Nao so fundamentally that it is like she is reborn, a new creation! No more is she timid and easily rattled, concerned only with her own survival and escape from the game; now she is fired up to take on the entire exploitative system and see the zero-sum game of selfish winners and desperate losers turned upside down, the valleys and hills levelled into an even playing field, where all those caught in its grasp may be saved. Just like at the foot of the cross.

It is in this context, and to these selfless aims, that she deceives her competitors for the first time. Rather than a mark of self-interest or spite like the shrewd manager, Nao’s lie is born of her newfound clarity—her ability to see the LGT for what it truly is, and the hidden truth that will upend the whole rotten structure—and her determination to lead others into the freedom she now lives in, as a result of her epiphany.  

To do this, Nao must win the revival round so that she may use the authority of the victor to win other players over to her way of seeing and playing the game. This is why she lies. She does it to save everyone. 

And she tells them so, sharing the good news of what she’s understood, promising to rescue all who join her, and putting her promise into action right away. In the revival round, Nao begins by saving the one player who had been kind to her, using her winnings to pay off his debt so that he is restored. She also keeps the damage to the others at a minimum, pledging to ransom them too, if they play like her in the next round. Finally, rather than using her winnings to escape the game, Nao remains in it—over and over again as the tournament proceeds, each time ransoming many. 

With each subsequent round, Nao continues to grow in shrewd wisdom, winning each time. In the next round, she becomes the inspiration for her team and a valuable partner to Akiyama, even stepping in for him at the last moment when he freezes after losing his confidence. And in the round after that, she actually takes the lead for the team, determining their strategy. All the while, Nao continues to share the good news that has set her free, the truth that there is another way to play the game. She tells anyone and everyone, extending the offer even to those who previously revelled in exploiting her innocence, and those who set themselves up as enemies against her and Akiyama. When they join her, she celebrates! But when they reject her and the good news she brings, she shakes the dust off her feet, as it were (like Jesus instructed the disciples!), and presses on, playing the game to win so that many may be saved. 

Nao shows us how to be better than the shrewd manager. She shows us what it looks like to be shrewd like the serpent, and yet innocent like the dove. She shows us how to use the worldly riches entrusted to us for a time, here on earth, to further the good news, making friends for eternity, and avoiding enslavement to the god of this world, money.

But we can also be better than Nao. Because, at the end of the day, she still lies. Yes, lying is permitted—even encouraged—within the Liar Game. And yes, Nao lies for the sake of a greater truth, to destroy the entire Liar Game enterprise and all it represents. But part of her is still trapped in that game, playing by its rules, lying. In contrast, Jesus died to destroy the “rules of the game” that were set by the enemy, the rules of sin and death. He died to reveal the lie that sin is not a big deal since we all do it anyway; and he rose again to forge a way for us to live differently. So now he invites us to walk a path even more radical than Nao’s. It’s the path that follows Jesus’s perfect footsteps and leads us by his side. It is the path that does not deviate into deception even in the worst of circumstances, not even for the sake of the gospel. For our God makes a way when otherwise it is impossible; and so he calls us to be perfect as he, our heavenly Father, is perfect.

We need to be shrewd like Nao. We need that higher form of shrewdness that Jesus commends to us—a more selfless iteration than what we see in Proverbs or the dictionary, where our shrewdness doesn’t just save us some trouble along the way, but actually saves others so that they may join the Way! We need shrewdness because we are playing with eternity; that is, the stakes are high—higher even than the Liar Game Tournament! Eternity is not just about our own personal outcome; it is about the fate of humanity—a burden that Jesus alone carries, to be sure, but the good news of which we get to carry with him. After all, how else will they hear if we do not tell them? And how else will they believe if they do not see us living it out? 

So let us remain innocent as doves, washed clean and pure of heart by the blood and word of Jesus; and let us also become shrewdly wise as serpents, yet with the mind of Christ and for the sake of his gospel, using all the “little things,” the resources at our disposal, to ensure we have friends in eternity when the game of this life is over. 

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing…” (1 Cor 1:18) Come on, Yokoya, there’s still time to see the light, the season isn’t over yet! Listen to Nao…