Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor

Kaiji, maybe is one of the genius anime that would be rarely be consumed these days. Many reasons for it, like people these days are just loooking for anime which have cute girls (or we can said seeking for MOE). Cant blame on it since anime industry now are using cute girls for their sales and of course for seeking profit. Anyway, there is no cute girls in Kaiji so please step out if you’re looking for it. But honestly you would miss a show that would make hold your breath from the beginning to the end. Kaiji itself have a simple story, Its abouta man named Kaiji who is a thief but then his life changed when he is being visited by a debt collector. The debt collector said Kaiji has an unpaid loan which Kaiji had previously co-signed for a work-mate. But his work-mate had disappeared, the loan then fell on Kaiji. Hopelessly to find a money to pay the loan. Then he find there is one way to solve his loan and that was playing a gamble. There is so many things that makes Kaiji is so attractive, one of them is the gamble or we can said a “game” that Kaiji must play for paying his loan. What they’re playing is just a simple game like Jankenpon but simply its not just a simple Jankenpon, Fukumoto (Kaiji’s creator) makes it into a serious and psychological game that you’ve ever seen. The game is clever and usually depends on psychological to win the game. And if you’re thinking the game is hard to understand then dont worry, since they’re really explained it well and moreover, its just a simple game (like Jankenpon or anything like that) that been modified a bit by Nobuyuki to make the game more interesting. Another fun part about Kaiji is guessing. This series is really know how to keep you on your toes and as you keep guessing as the stakes get higher and the games become more absurd,Like any mystery and detective show, we’re usually trying to guess on whats gonna happen next or probably trying to solve whats the trick between it. Well, Kaiji is not mystery or detective show but at least thats what i felt when i watch this show. The way how Kaiji solving each game is really remarkable and unexpected. And another great things about it was how logical Kaiji solution was. Well, sometimes another series use some illogical and unrealistic tricks but not in Kaiji, They’re all making sense and that part what makes Kaiji is so amazing. Another aspects that really prominent is the art. Kaiji’s art is superbly good, not in the term of realistic nor catchy color but its in term of the compatibility within the story. Sometimes some anime missing the point on what art should be, like an example the themes of an anime is thriller but the art looks so colorful makes the thriller atmosphere being wasted. And Good things Kaiji isnt like that. Their art is probably the most unique one, they using thick lines for the characters to make it like a comical style and the character design is unique, probably you cant find it in anywhere. The originality style that Fukumoto (Creator of Kaij) bring probably hard to watch for someone who’re not used watching something extraordinary like this but the comical style that Kaiji use is bring out the advantage for themselves. Like it can increasing the expressive of each characters so we can feel the emotion within them. Its truly beautiful. There is no other way to make Kaiji more epic than the sound. The background song or the soundtrack within every scenes is really remarkable, they’re fitting well for every scenes that occurs. Like when Kaiji is being despair, there is a sound that you would notice along the series, “ZAWAAA” or it can be translated as agitation. The sound like the one i notice before increasing the despair atmosphere and thrilling the audience. Its like the song forced us to feel the same way as the kaiji does. Well, its not astonishing since the music composer is Hideki Tanuichi, the one who responsible for Aoi Bungaku and Death note music. He did briliantly again in this anime. The opening song in this anime is also amazing, “Mirai wa Bokura no Te no Naka” that being played by Hakuryu is really fits with the anime. This 45 seconds opening song is quite wacky and random but somehow this is quite addicting. After talking about the song, lets talking about the seiyuu voice. There is two name that i should mention for this. Hagiwara Masato and Fumihiko Tachiki, They are the one who responsible for making Kaiji become so epic. Masato voice is really fits with Kaiji, his voice that heavy is really suitable with kaiji that a middle aged man. He succesfully makes Kaiji like himself but in anime version. In other words, Masato is bring the life for Kaiji. For Fumihiko, his roles in this anime is narrator. But dont take this lightly, because his energetic and passionate voice in every narrating the story would stun you up. If there was something that makes me so addicting with this series,it was Kaiji and the other characters. Kaiji is one of the best main characters out there, but he can also the most lamest main characters. There is too many way to describe kaiji, he can be a hero but also a loser. Loser in this term is how Kaiji sometimes following his desires for gambling and ended up to have much of debt but in the other way, when he was in pinch, he could turned into a heroic character. Last, his personality that clever and tricky make this story become more interesting to follow. Not just kaiji, The other characters also one of the aspects what makes Kaiji is so amazing. Every characters that appears in this anime isnt just for a side show,they playing some important roles too andThe other characters acts like what in real life do, like when you are in the pinch with your friends and you have a chance for escape for yourselves, what would you do? I believe if we are in that positions, we are choosing for escape by ourselves and abandon our friends. That question is for describing what the characters in kaiji is. They would do anything for saving themselves, betraying is one of the way that they would do. The realistic things that every characters do make this anime become more interesting to see. Lastly, after all mumbling that i said before i can safely said Kaiji is one the anime that you should watch. Despite its lackness in moe and cute girls on it, Kaiji would bring you an amazing thriller story with just some simple game. From that simple game, prepare for feeling some intense scenes that would make you hold the breath from beginning to the end.

---The review contains spoilers--- 3/10. Explanation: Starts off strange to say the least. A young man is deep in debt and is being given a chance to repay it by boarding a cruise ship to do the 'gambling' (?). At this point I was already a bit wary, because why would a loan company give an opportunity to repay the debt and get rich on top of that to somebody who owns them money? Surely that's not a profitable thing to do. Why not collect the money from them or make them repay somehow, idk. On the ship though, this series becomes amazing, and I meantop-tier material, the plot is well thought out, the mechanics of exploiting the faults of the restricted rock-paper-scissors are very well done, there's betrayal involved, competition is dynamic with worthy opponents, kaiji's brain is being turned inside out from all the stimulation and he really becomes a much much better gambler after that, who is able to think outside the box and quickly adapt to various difficulties he faces on later in the series. However after that this anime completely destroys itself. The so called 'gambling' is no longer gambling but rather a selection of sadistic game for pleasure of the wealthy. By the way I hate this trope, the rich that make poor risk their lives to do crazy stupid things for money, which involves gore and death that supposedly gives them great pleasure somehow. This is completely unnatural, this goes against human common sense of what is pleasurable and what is merely disgusting, and eventhough such twisted people might indeed exist, there would be nothing of such scale of cruelty that is portrayed in the show. The biggest issue I have with the show is not the fact that 2nd half of it is pure garbage from the logical point of view, or that the 'gambling' games are unoriginal and not intellectual in any way, but rather the pacing. It's so fucking slow it's unreal, the 'card-game' arc with Tonegawa lasts forever for no apparent reason, the narrator repeats everything at least THREE times that is obvious to absolutely anybody watching who has at least 1/4 of the mean IQ value. The series was dragged out for so long that I genuinely started to lose the feeling of tension and suspense that you develop when engaged with the series. About 5 episodes before completion I was so annoyed that i wanted to drop the show despite being so close to the finish line. Another thing that annoyed me was how the outside people were brought into the plot. There were a bunch of crippled men (after the disgusting sadistic 'gambling' competition) who were cheering Kaiji on and helping him moraly and providing first-aid. WHY????????????? All those delinquents hated each others guts, treated each other like trash during the 'cruise ship' arc, and then they suddenly developed friendly feelings for kaiji when he won the 20million from Tonegawa. Were they just after the money? Perhaps, but then they had plenty of opportunities to steal the money whilst kaiji was busy, but they didnt. But even if they weren't after the money why was kaiji so willing to trust them after being betrayed so many times in the first part of the series? The show is simply put illogical, everybody acts irrationally, completely against what real-life humans would do in most of the situations. I can't stress that enough. This is a show about gambling after all, psychological interactions needed to be thought out properly, but instead we get this. It rendered the show completely useless.

Edit: added more stuff and reworded some things What drew me to Kaiji was the interesting premise, gambling. Considering the manga had over 30+ volumes, there had to be something to this. However, the question pops in my mind “how is one able to make an anime about gambling?” In the end, I found that a more important question is “how can one make a good anime about gambling?” and Kaiji isn’t a very good example. Itoh Kaiji owes 3 million yen to the yakuza and is forced to go into a special cruise ship to gamble his way out of debt. The gamble isbased on rock, paper, scissor, while simple at first there is quite a bit flexibility to mess with the system in your favor. This is what makes the first arc so interesting. My roommate and I discussed the many possibilities after each episode and eagerly waited to see what Kaiji was gonna do next. Near the end of this arc the story really started to drag on, but it wasn’t too bad as I though the story would end on episode 13. If I were to rate Kaiji based purely on the first arc it would have gotten a high 7 or low 8. However, Kaiji didn’t end on the first arc… The next arc consisted of 3 major gambles, human derby, e-card, and umm… “awesome box.” Here Kaiji loses what made the first arc so interesting, the open nature of the gambles. The human derby arc wasn’t really a gamble per say, instead it was a task to complete for money and entertainment of very rich guest. Here Kaiji tires to create human drama and really delve into the minds of the characters. Well there’s only one problem with this, Kaiji never had strong characters. The people participating in the human derby were newly introduced and we don’t know anything about them, they are effectively faceless. So why should the viewer care what happens to them? People die everyday so why don’t we weep for them too? Yes, I’ll admit it’s quite tragic and on some level I do feel sad for the characters. Even for the title character, Kaiji, I felt very little, this is because the first arc only really focuses on the gambles and very little on the Kaiji himself. So there is no big pay off, so to speak when things get dramatic (ie My Hime). Instead it’s more like watching the 10pm news. In this arc they also really delve into philosophy and psychology. The philosophical aspects were too in your face, reminding me of the extremely blatant Ghost in the Shell movies, especially Innocence. This is because of the delivery, long winded speeches from supposed sage. This wise old man steps on to the podium and lectures not only Kaiji but the viewer as well. There is nothing subtle about this nor was it very grey, this is how the world is because he said so. As for the psychological aspects, visuals were often used to convey the inner struggles, its just that they really over did it and kept repeating the same damn thing. This leads to my major complaint overall with Kaiji. The thing that made Kaiji lose the most point is the fact that they dragged things for way too long, far longer than the first arc. The omnipresent narrator didn’t help either; I was ready to scream at the screen “shut up, we get the idea already!” As for the other 2 gambles, they faired a bit better…only a little bit. They were actual gambles, but featured the same things that made the human derby arc bad, too dragged out, shallow drama, and overt philosophical ramblings. However, in the E-card arc it did give me back a little of the “how’s Kaiji gonna get out of this mess” feeling. Although, the nature of the gamble is very closed, thus I remain a passive viewer. Finally the way those gambles ended was way too contrived for my tastes, suffering from the “just as planned” syndrome. Let me add that Kaiji is extremely overt with the way it handles itself, from the emotions to the thoughts of the characters themselves. In some ways it feels a bit caricature but I guess that’s mainly the art that gives that impression. Visual metaphors are used to ram their ideas into the viewers head as well as the omnipresent narrator constantly tells the viewer exactly what is going on. It doesn’t help that the narrator is using an overly dramatic voice, reminiscent of movie guy. Animation was excellent; it was very smooth as well as extremely consistent, as expected by Madhouse. For a very dialogue based story they made use of many visual metaphors, once again it gets old fast. It would have been better if they simply used more dramatic angles and shots as in Death Note. Art is well…ugly, very ugly, which makes me wonder why Fukumoto (the mangaka) was allowed to keep drawing manga. He should have someone else draw and he’ll work on the story. The music is easily the best part of Kaiji, I loved the instrumental pieces and was surprised at how good the music was when I listened to the ost. Not only that the music was especially fitting considering the gritty tone of Kaiji. I just wished they used it more often. Most of the time there isn’t music, instead the narrator sets the tone and the trademark “zawazawa.” Oh let us not forget about the ending… Kaiji ended on an extremely open note, so open that I wondered where the next episode was gonna air. While open endings can work, they only work for character based stories and Kaiji didn’t have the story structure to support such an ending. I’m not going to be that critical on the ending as I’m sure they plan on animating the rest of the Kaiji story. What I am gonna be critical on is the fact that Kaiji seemed to have grown dumber in the end. Ok let me rephrase that he’s grown smarter as a gambler but dumber as a person. There is a sense of irony when Kaiji, minus 4 fingers, an ear, and even more in debt, was talking about how he’s stronger now and will defeat the chairman next time. There is no evidence showing that he stronger as a person, only as a gambler. Even during the interlude between the first and second arc he is shown unable to live in normal society. Now I feel he is even more unable to adapt and live under normal circumstances. I was an active viewer during the first arc and that was what made things interesting and fun. However, when they took that aspect away I was made into a passive viewer. Here, the flaws with the narrative, pacing and characters became apparent. The pacing was horribly dragged out and extremely slow. Perhaps I would rate Kaiji higher if I didn’t watch it weekly and marathoned it, but what’s done is done. In addition, they suffer from the “just as planned” syndrome too much in the 2nd half. Now that think about it I didn’t really mention the characters in my review yet. Well that’s because all the characters are flat. As for Kaiji himself, he is someone with no past and based on the ending, he also has no future.

Many say that slow Anime series are always the boring ones, and they might be right in what they say, because who has the nerve and patience to sit through a twenty minute length of an episode with barely any action and dialogue that keeps being shoved into their faces? This is what people usually think of when they think of slow paced Anime series: No excitement, no intriguing arcs and no endearing characters. All in all, most people think that slow paced Anime series are not enjoyable, until they watch Kaiji Ultimate Survivor. Kaiji Ultimate Survivor proves that a series that relies heavily ondialogue and moves at a snail pace can still be entertaining, amusing and even addictive to watch all the way through. This is an Anime series that is meant to be binged, so much so that one could finish it’s entire twenty six episodes in one to two days only. The plot is not the strongest out there, it starts off with our main character Kaiji being in debt, and then magically getting caught and transported into a cruise ship that holds gambling tournaments for the poor to become rich. Now why would a company do that, rather than getting the money they want? The premise does not make sense, and is weak overall. The series starts off weak, in both premise and first half. The first half is boring gambling games that are slow, and have no merit to them whatsoever. After the first half is concluded, the series moves into what is possibly some of the most enthralling and exciting episodes one will ever get from this medium. Do you like the feel of suspense upon seeing people die and never coming back? Do you like the feel of suspense upon seeing sadistic rich people toy with poor people and playing with their lives as if they meant nothing? Do you like the feel of suspense in your Anime? If so, then this second half is made just for you. It is an arc where realism is taken to peak, and no plot armor or conveniences are present whatsoever. It is enthralling to watch, as Kaiji and his companions face life threatening situations, and it feels all the more suspenseful when the Anime takes it’s sweet time to explore each character and their fears. You would think that the slow pacing would hurt it, but you are wrong, as that slow pacing managed to turn the Anime into a much more enthralling ride, since you get to experience what each character is feeling all the way though. Now, onto the third and final arc of the story. One would think that this arc would lose quality since the previous arc had been established as some of the most suspenseful life or death situations there is, but you would be wrong to assume that. This Anime excelled in suspense during the final arc, as the enthralling experience was even larger than that of the second arc, and that is genuinely saying something. The audience clings onto a wounded Kaiji, as the man tries to win his way through the devious acts of the hierarchy. He tries to weasel his way into a definite win against two people who are much more experienced and dubious than him, and this makes up for a very adrenaline pumping ride. He injures himself and his body parts are held at ransom if he loses! The subversion of expectations is immense here as well, since the audience cannot predict the outcome of the situations that are about to occur. The finale to this show is one of the best and most shocking endings one could find in an Anime, and without spoiling anything, it definitely makes the whole ride worth watching in the end. Kaiji also has a very unique and polished artsyle, so if you are one of those people who love wacky and unorthodox artstyles being present in your Anime series, then this one is made just for you. The style is both creative and does not feel like it was made for the sole purpose of standing out amidst the audience. The way the characters are designed adds more punch to their hilarious and over the top facial expressions when they are losing, and adds more catharsis when they are on the brink of losing all hope as well. This is an artstyle that was essential to making Kaiji stand out as an Anime that is both hilarious and heart wrenching at times, and it truly shows during the most important scenes. It was also a breath of fresh air from all of the redundant Anime artsyles you would see everywhere else. Kaiji is not an Anime about gambling at the end of the day. As many of you would like to believe, this one stands out because it is an Anime that subtly touches on many themes that would go over some viewers’ heads. Kaiji is not an Anime about gambling, it is an Anime about life and the consequences of not following your own dreams. It is an Anime about the poor and the rich, and that is why a major arc from the series focuses on life and death situations, not gambling games. That is because this Anime never wanted to be about gambling, more so than it wanted to convey serious messages to the audience. What is truly brilliant about this series, is that while it never wanted to be about gambling, it’s games are still brilliant and well thought out, even when some have nothing to do with gambling and are more focused on being mind games. The soundtrack in Kaiji is both immense and visceral to the whole experience of the Anime. The ending song is one of the best ending songs one would get from an Anime and the soundtrack is very enjoyable to say the least. Why should it be a surprise to anyone though? This series was made by Madhouse, the same people who have made the Death Note, Hunter x Hunter soundtracks, and many more soundtracks which are very enjoyable to listen to and memorable in their own right. The tracks “Chest” and “Chorus” have a certain feel to them that is similar to that of Death Note’s, and are immense for conveying a tone of seriousness in the show, though the show does not shy away from giving the audience tracks which are less serious and are still a great listen, such as “Wish”. Overall, Kaiji is an Anime that is immense and deserves every bit of hype that it receives, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for those who want nothing but sophisticated, enticing mind games that leave you wanting more and more of, then this is the right Anime for you. It is something that truly deserves the hype.