Kakegurui- 05[The Woman Who Became Human]

When gambling in this show:
Rule number one: Always cheat.
Rule number two: If using another person for your cheating then don’t use someone with a clear grudge against you or treat them like dirt.
Rule number three: Never ever bet against Yumeko Jabami.
There is a certain satisfaction in seeing someone like this thug get so brutally destroyed by our main duo even though he’s a relatively one dimensional nobody. I tend to favor villains with a bit more moral nuance and more well written but nonetheless cannot deny a certain level of glee in seeing someone so utterly morally bankrupt get his life ruined. Sure you could argue that his crimes were no huge enough to have the remainder of his life detected by a notebook and be treated as trash for the rest of his days but considering the arrogant mentality of this guy there is no better medicine than a good reality check and a ass kicking. But again this does not mean that he’s well written as it’s not a difficult task to make someone hateable, All you really need to do is have them in a position of power and have them do clearly evil deeds while convinced that it’s totally alright for them to do these things because they are special in some way. If you want a well written villain then work on making a character with a unique worldview, sympathetic or logical motivations, a personality and a backstory to accommodate these aspects.

If you want to make a hateable villain them just have them do something clearly morally repugnant and then refuse they did anything wrong. “Oh it’s perfectly ok for me to bully this kid because I am better than him and he should just go die.” “Oh I killed that bitch but she was clearly in the wrong when she tried to pretend she wasn’t my woman.” “Oh I burned down that orphanage but it was full of gutter trash that wouldn’t be of any use anyway, society should thank me honestly.” It’s funny in that it’s not so much the act itself that makes it so despicable but rather the contradiction and flawed reasoning these characters use to justify their actions as not wrong. Indeed there is no better way to rile up the internet into a fury than to have someone do something wrong and them do everything in their power to refuse to admit it. So to see a character get a shift kick in the nuts is a rather cathartic experience and I fully admit that I fully read the source of the upcoming “Rising of the Shield Hero” anime adaption purely for the satisfaction of seeing the villain get taken down a peg.

I couldn’t quite follow how exactly Mary and Yumeko managed to trick the delinquent but I believe it had something to do with Mary and Yumeko lying about the amount they owed before the game and then switching her board with Yumeko to confuse the delinquent into miscalculating the end game totals. So these two had the game in the bag right from the start as the delinquent didn’t have the scoreboard right from the beginning. Though the thing this episode is named after is Yumeko’s last little gambit to encourage the pet girl to go against the delinquents orders. Throughout the game she had been helping the delinquent cheat out of fear and her own institutionalisation to her status of pet. I rather like the metaphor that Yumeko puts to it, being a pig in a open cage. This girl could fight back, could rebel but instead settles for small freedoms granted to her within the cage. In truth the very name of pet is apt for that is what these people are conditioned to become.

Thus Yumeko managed to break her out of that mentality through her provocation. Though um…why was it…so suggestive? I generally don’t tend to look too far into these kinds of things but when you have two girls with faces intimately close to kissing distance while reserved girl has a heavy blush that really does seem to be fuel for hime-danshi(This appears to be the opposite of the Fujoshi term being for males(Hime-joshi for females) who ship lesbian couples though doesn’t quite hold the same level of infamy as the fujoshi term) Yuri baiting did come up in the manga but it really is much more pandering when seen in animated format. Look if you are going to start insinuating lesbinism or bisexualism then go all in, don’t just shove it in halfheartedly for Blu-ray sales. Still while i have neglected to mention her before but next episode appears to feature a girl who is going to really amp up these Yuri undertones so I at least hope we keep things somewhat classy.