Tobaku Datenroku Kaiji: Kazuya-hen

Despite a deliciously devious death-trap being the focus of this entire arc, I can't help but feel that this was the weakest arc in the Kaiji series so far. It is still a good, fairly suspenseful read, but this arc displays some rather uncharacteristic shortcomings which are disappointing to see in a series as excellent as Kaiji. Kazuya, whom you will remember as a spectator in the Minefield Mahjong game, now invites Kaiji as a spectator for a new, three-player death-trap; the Salvation Game. More on the game later. This entire arc is built around a central theme, which is the nature of friendships. Kazuya believesthat even the closest human friendships are all superficial at best, and "best friends" will betray each other if the scenario is right for it. Kaiji, despite being the victim of many betrayals, refutes this viewpoint and plays the optimist. So there are really two 'games' being played out in this arc, the Salvation Game itself and a battle between Kazuya and Kaiji's respective philosophies on the nature of humans. The premise of the Salvation Game is one of the best things about this arc, and thus I will give a vague description as to avoid spoilers. The Salvation Game is the first true "group" game since Human Derby, and we acutely feel the danger posed by the possibility of a betrayal or simple slip-up. The game is a deadly twist on the classic "Prisoners with Hats" puzzle; resulting in a game riddled with confusion and uncertainty, where good communication is absolutely vital. Fukumoto does a fantastic job of making us care about the three unfortunate individuals playing Kazuya's devious game, and he makes it easy for us to relate to their moments of sheer panic and desperation. Despite entering into the game willingly and with consent, the three players really do begin to feel like "prisoners" trapped in Kazuya's deadly snare. The problem with this arc is that the initial thrill of the Salvation Game wears off quite quickly. Once the initial problem with communication is solved, no particularly "smart" strategy is devised by the three players, and the rest of the challenges of the game are mainly 'solved' through luck. These other "challenges" are artificially created by Kazuya's underhanded methods, and there is no real solution to them other than lucking out or overcoming emotions. I really feel like the game needed more fundamental difficulties beyond the lack of communication between players, and there needed to be more challenges that were raised naturally by the mechanics of the game, not through Kazuya's increasingly contrived meddling. The game itself becomes less and less interesting due to the lack of strategy and repetitive contrived methods of creating suspense and difficulties for the trio to deal with, and as a result the moral battle between Kazuya and Kaiji actually becomes more interesting than the game itself. This is obviously not right, because the star of the show SHOULD be the game itself, and the battle of philosophies should be an underpinning theme. I may be coming across as if I hate this arc and the game, but I really don't. It is still a suspenseful and intriguing game, especially if marathoned. It simply does not feel as tightly planned as all the other games devised by Fukumoto, and many twists and turns do not feel like they arise naturally at all. These twists are still unpredictable in nature, but they still lose their effect over the duration of this arc. Fukumoto teases certain developments later on to keep readers reading, but these usually turn out disappointing. We can sense that Kaiji will potentially become more than just a mere spectator to this game, but when this does happen, it is extremely minimal and disappointing. Honestly, Kaiji as a character in this arc is reduced to a screaming, panicking crybaby. Well, Kaiji has always been like that, but we are usually given some moments of genius and badassery to serve as the satisfying antithesis of this. In this arc he contributes no such noteworthy moments. Perhaps his presence was diluted so we could drink in the deliciously evil nature of Kazuya, who is really the man of this arc. Kazuya is simultaneously honest and duplicitous, simultaneously generous and unforgiving, simultaneously fair and unfair. Though his meddling with the game was not always to my liking, Kazuya's paradoxical nature makes him a very interesting character to add to Fukumoto's roster of excellent villains. Despite being a spoiled scumbag, Kazuya is a highly entertaining character, even providing us with some very memorable reaction faces in this arc. So, this is unarguably the worst Kaiji arc by far. Still, this does not mean it is bad; it is just bad by Fukumoto-standards. I recommend marathoning it to get the most out of Fukumoto's suspense building. Luckily, it seems the One Poker Hen is rectifying many of these faults already.

Kaiji part 4 was very disappointing for me. It started out strong with Kaiji again pursuing his grudge against Teiai by setting out to beat the founder's son in a gamble. Kaiji being introduced to his grave stone by said son really cemented him as someone intimidating and to be feared throughout the arc. Throughout the beginning we also continue to learn more about Kazuya and what makes him tick and his whole motivation to engage in his sadistic gambles. However, the characterization comes to a stand-still when we are introduced to the actual gamble of this part. It does not even involve Kaiji but threepeople we've never seen before. We're introduced to their backstories but they all come across as real sappy and melodramatic. It was hard for me to care about the new characters. All Kaiji does throughout this part is just provide commentary on these other people's gamble. I thought this would be a diversion until the main gamble with Kaiji and Kazuya started but it wasn't. This gamble lasts until the end of this part, where it's concluded. The gamble with the new characters started out compelling but afterwards it really felt drawn out and many chapters felt unnecessary. I didn't know anything about Mahjong prior to reading part 3, but seeing Kaiji's struggle against people he once cared about and overcoming the president's tricks was much more engaging for me. Part 4 was a major let-down in being worse than the previous arc about a game I don't even know how to play.

The way things are going, when Sakazaki told Kaiji that he peaked during the pachinko arc and that he should stop gambling, that was a metacommentary, since the two arcs that have followed have both been worse than the last. Still, it’s not bad, it’s still packed to the brim with the old Kaiji flavour that’s always been there, but you don’t need to be a very harsh critic to come to the same conclusion as I did, he’s not even doing anything this time around, why would they honestly have thought I’d respond positively to that? Overall, I’d argue the biggest issue with Kazuya-Hen isthe way in which the story was orchestrated and paced - if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There was nothing wrong with the old cyclical formula of Kaiji needs money, gambles for it, but goes too far and loses it, and so he needs money, and gambles for it, and so on. Instead, this time around, he’s just talking to Kazuya (son of Hyoudo) at what is essentially a bookie. He has gone from Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor to Kaiji: Ultimate Spectator, but the essence of the game is the prisoner’s dilemma: 3 people are sat in a chair and one person is tasked with getting up and pressing a button after 30 seconds, but no more than 60, and they also can’t talk to each other during the process. One thing I will say though is that the characterisation early on, the first five volumes in particular, are of exceptional quality, and Kazuya as a character is definitely the most unique, compelling, and overall human of Kaiji’s main opponents thus far. Not only that, but we’re given flashbacks of the backstories of the newly introduced characters, and by some miracle, these hastily introduced flashbacks of people we’ve just met are actually good, it might be a bit of a change of pace to talk about the post-Showa economic bubble and Filipino garbage collectors and the like, but it works well, and if I’m praising flashback sequences, you know they’re fucking good. The characterisation in this manga are as good as they get, it’s just a shame that once the game gets going, it largely ceases, and Kazuya in particular starts to take after his father and just starts to engage in pure sadism, but while Hyoudo liked seeing people in pain and not much else, Kazuya’s also got pure contempt for any sort of feelings of friendship, happiness, trust, and just about anything else remotely nice. That contempt is absolute, even Emil Cioran seemed to at least acknowledge the existence of happiness, but not this chap. And, naturally, Kaiji is his binary opposite, which makes enough sense for narrative purposes, but such clear absolutes seem a bit at odds with the nature of things in the series usually, consider for instance that one speech by Tonegawa that mentioned how the rich and poor aren’t really any different upon examination, the word for that is ambiguity, which there is a profound absence of this time around, and it seems a little unusual, to say the least. Certainly, Kaiji is naive, and trusts people when he shouldn’t, but him trusting people so strongly seems a bit odd to me, and for someone who mentioned at one point how he’s an outcast but that’s how he prefers it (paraphrase), such an unwaveringly positive view of people is a bit strange. And really, I haven’t got much else to say, the game isn’t bad per se, just a whole lot of blokes sitting in a chair and then getting up to press a button as Kazuya tries to subtly sabotage their efforts and produce feelings of mistrust, which never goes very far, until the last 3 (of 16) rounds at which point he just says fuck it and turns it up to 10, but really, what need was there for 16 rounds? The intensity of the games is Kaiji’s schwerpunkt, wouldn’t it have been a better move to instead just make it 10 rounds, or 5, but have the mindgames and moral dilemmas and everything else be at their limit throughout their entirety, or at least the majority? The early rounds aren’t boring, they’re just not up to the usual standard of the rest of them, it’s just a lot of filler and I am starting to sense a pattern here, a rather bland game for more or less the entirety of the manga, and then suddenly near the end it all becomes a mental battlefield, when it’d be more effective to just have that for longer - increase the good parts, decrease the filler, write more good characters, bish, bash, bosh.

This part totally surpassed all of my expectations its probably better than the first three parts. Kaiji has always been a good gambling Anime/Manga the reason its gambling scenes was so dense was the tension; characters and the risks they took, their motivations and philosophies but this time it crushes its genre, the first three part was focusing on gambling I have no issues with that since its beautifully done but it was focusing on the gambling side of the story sure there was character motivations and philosophies but it was just a device to make the gambling even more thrilling thistime it combines gamble with the philosophical side of the story they literally discuss about the human nature with an experiment how a selfless caring person can turn into a selfish bastard under the right circumstances because their instincts to live tell them so. This time it combines the 2 sides of the story perfectly Gamble and Philosophy. About art its the classic "Fukumoto Aesthedic" the characters are extremely ugly but its done in a matter it really helps you to understand the feelings of the characters just by looking their faces Nothing special to say about it i am not an artist I can't review it on a technical level And thats all I can say about it