Yup, like expected: the entire success of this arc will depend on whether the final episode will deliver or not. Unfortunately, I’ve also been spoiled about it, so it’ll all depend on the execution. What I’m most curious about is the chairman himself. We know Kaiji by now and his fear is nothing new by now. But what I really want to see is the tricks up on the sleeve of this old master. He says that he’s a king and he can draw whatever he wants on a second turn, but it this just a bluff?
My guess is that he very well knew that Kaiji was cheating. I mean, what other idiot would just throw away his fingers? The guy checked out all possibilities, and probably found the second winning lot when he was checking every corner inside the box. He didn’t draw it, and instead mixed it with the other lots in order to make the gamble more “fun”, and make it last longer.
I admit that the choice to blog this series was a wrong one. During the past fall-season, I ended up blogging a lot of “wrong” shows. Shugo Chara, Suteki Tantei Labyrinth and Gundam 00 were also nice series and all, but I didn’t feel like blogging them was really interesting, especially with Shugo Chara. During the past Autumn-season, I really found out that I have the most fun in blogging a series that I can sing praises over and over about. Of course, making fun of bad series is fun as well once in a while, but you don’t want to do this for every episode. This is why the final episodes of Claymore and .Hack//Roots also felt such a chore for me to blog.
It’s the same as with Kaiji, although I don’t mean to say that this series isn’t good. This isn’t a show like Jigoku Shoujo that’s different with each single episode, so that I can have something to say for each single one of them. This is a series that is intended to be marathoned for entire arcs, just to beef you up with adrenaline for some kind of major sporting event or something.
I don’t know why, but I didn’t really enjoy this episode. I guess it just felt boring to me (the first half anyway) and had way too much repetitive adrenline than usual.
At the moment I’m watching Ep 18 of Ghost Hound (enjoying it a lot more than Kaiji Ep 25), and I can understand why it (and Shion) were the standout shows to enjoy and to blog. Like you said earlier, they both constantly build-up and advance the plot at the same time during each episode. There is always something to write about; pretty much none of the episodes were pure build-up episodes when nothing happened.