Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji – 06

Hmm, I’m feeling myself to more and more inclined to agree with Kacpy… Sure, Kaiji is intriguing and exciting. This episode again showed some pretty interesting plot-twists and clever plans. But I’m noticing more and more about how slow this series actually is. I remember watching the first arc of Akagi, which took up just three episodes, which was perfect in length to delve into the character’s minds and not drag on, though Kaiji may be going a bit too far in this. Episode five and six could have easily been combined into one episode, and it would have been quite an interesting roller-coaster ride to watch, though it perhaps would have been rushed a bit. One thing tat I can imagine that would have gone wrong is the transition from manga to anime. I haven’t read the manga myself, but I can imagine how the chapters don’t divide well into anime-episodes. Because of this, the creators of the anime end up repeating the same scenes about teamwork and the narrator’s reports over and over. It’s a common problem with manga-transition, unfortunately. I’ve also finally looked up the name of the director of this series, and indeed, he did the storyboard for Death Note and Claymore. This really shows. Both series had some amazing moments, but were plagued with a few weaknesses, and it seems that Kaiji will be going down the same path: it’s a great series, but the slow pacing prevents it from becoming a classic. It’s strange… usually I don’t mind slow pacing, for example El Cazador. Still, El Cazador made sure that there was enough interesting stuff going on. Kaiji keeps repeating itself, which… isn’t really that interesting. Anyway, regarding the episode, it seems that we’ve got two major antagonists left in the final fifteen minutes of the game: Funai and the guy who seduced the older man, in the beginning of the series. I knew that the latter was going to reappear at some point, because otherwise the creators wouldn’t have spent so much attention on the guy. If I had to guess, then this means that there are at least going to be two more episodes in this arc: one more to take care of Funai, and one (perhaps even two) to conclude the old man’s story. One thing that Kaiji could have done in this episode was to start playing with Funai. The guy actually offered him a star for a bunch of cards. If Kaiji could have gotten the guy to offer another star, then they would have made it out of the ship. If Kaiji indeed has five or six million yet left, al they needed to do next is use this money to buy up another star, and they’d have nine. One thing that also fell to my attention was how Funai reacted when his stars fell off his chest. Well, it’s only natural of course, but something tells me that the creators are going to use that scene later on.]]>