Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji – 02

For me, Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji has turned out into the best series of the season so far. There are other good series this season, but they all have their weakness: Mokke could have had better writing, the characters in Blue Drop are a tad too adolescent, Shugo Chara is too cheesy at times and Labyrinth has a few too many maids and strangely clothed females for its setting. Kaiji, however, is perfect so far, and it’s looking really interesting. I’m seriously going to check out Akagi as soon as the series is over. I may have said it before, but I really like anime where the main characters aren’t the only ones who are special, and this is really emphasized here in this series: every single person in the game is in a worst situation possible. Everyone is a loser who somehow ended up with debt. This really is a survival of the fittest. And the thing I love about Kaiji is how he learns of his mistakes. There are indeed a few people who look at the game in a smart way, and try to trick others into believing them, and Kaiji is one of these victims. The plan is quite simple: – Find someone who is stupid enough to be tricked, and Kaiji fitted that role perfectly. After all, after everyone requested one million, and he was the first one to request the maximum of ten million, Kaiji was the first one to follow him. That shows that he quickly goes along with others, and that incidentally fits Kaiji’s personality perfectly. It also helps if you make this guy think that he’s smart. – Then you just need to explain how the plan works: just keep cancelling each other out, and nobody loses any of the stars you need to win. – Go along with the plan for nine rounds, until both parties have just three cards left out of the original twelve. Then claim your victory when the victim thinks that everything is going according to plan by placing down the paper-card instead of the rock-one. Repeat this, and you’ve got five stars, while the other has just one. The beautiful thing is that if Kaiji used his brains, he wouldn’t have fallen for it, and it really seems like he’s got a plan to get out of everything: working actually together. The nasty thing about the rock-paper-scissors game is that it’s easy to win, but it’s just as easy to lose, and because of this, people will underestimate the potential of it. Because of this, the yakuza ends up with quite a few stupid slaves who won’t be smart enough to betray them. I really wonder how he’s going to pull it off, though. Basically, he has three people, one with relatively many stars, one with relatively many cards, and one with relatively much money. Together, there are four stars, five cards and 14 million yen. How the heck is he going to get to nine stars, 0 cards and 19,6 million yen?]]>