So what happened?

I posted numerous times on the show, shoved it to the top of the viewing list over and over, gave it a nine - the highest ranking possible - on the ever-important Scale of Condensing A Complex Anime Into A Single Digit Number (aka MyAnimeList). And yet, it takes until a month later for it to finally push its way out of the review queue, where shows I don’t have much to talk about go to die.

It’s not like I was collecting my thoughts on the show.
It’s not like I was rewatching it.
It just simply passed out of mind for a very long time, and that’s something that worries me, because I really did think I enjoyed this show much more than the average show.

This is because, for the uninitiated, this is nowhere near your average show.

This is a show that goes beyond the forces of moe that some claim poison (or at least, run rampant in) today’s anime. There is no moe to speak of, hell, I could probably count on one hand - probably one finger - how many girls even appeared in the show total.

Rather, what Kaiji is, is a ruthless adrenaline rush, both physical and mental. A show all about a sometimes naive, sometimes genius, sometimes emotional delinquent (named Kaiji) who gets himself in all sorts of shady financial debt, and is forced into a series of increasingly implausible, incredible, and intriguing gambles in order to pay it off.

These gambles are great to watch because most of the time they are at least thrill rides which will leave you guessing as to the outcome - don’t take winning for granted in this show - with incredible moments of raw emotion along every twist and turn. On a good day, they are great introspectives as well, as Kaiji ponders the viciousness of human life while getting whipped in a human-vs-human battle of mind and body.

It’s very much a complete package, one that I think deserves a watch by anyone, just because you’re unlikely to see a show like this often amidst more common show archetypes. It drags a bit at times and the noses are awfully pointy, but Kaiji is an injection straight to the heart, which feeds blood to the brain and the masculine regions of the body.

(Manly spoilers ensue after the jump.)

If you’ve paid attention so far, you probably have noted I’ve already ratcheted up one point on the tsundere-o-meter for first saying that I didn’t really have much to say about Kaiji and then promptly reccomending it to everybody.

This, for me, chalks up mostly to the gut feeling that Kaiji is a mostly action-orientated show, more than it is a profound show.

Yes, ‘action-orientated’ is a bit of a silly thing to call a show which spent an entire 25-minute episode drawing two slips of paper from a box, but the majority of the content tilts towards the ‘manly fluff’ side, the kind of stuff that gets you fired up and ready to go put on your pointy sunglasses and kick people into holes, but wears off a short time later.

That’s not to say that’s entirely bad. A lot of shows are fluffy, but good. Many visual novels are good ‘dramatic fluff’ - Myself;Yourself had a story that got increasingly ridiculous and out-there, but it was still a gripping watch for the time being. ‘Slice-of-life / comedy fluff’ is common too; Lucky Star had some brilliant moments from all walks of life, from the story of Kanata to Tsukasa’s comic clumsiness to Miyuki being Miyuki, but they weren’t legendary earth-shakers in the long term (unless you’re a Malaysian dictator-slash-trap who tries to write longer posts than me).

Fluff is almost kind of natural. The human mind moves on after time, and that applies to anime too. There’s only so much room for really great, legendary moments or shows, and everything else gets condensed into little clips, one-liners, and stored away in a corner somewhere, much like trying to scrounge for hard drive space by burning fansubs onto DVDs. The anime aren’t gone … they’re just harder to access.

And so, I don’t have a huge problem with calling Kaiji ‘manly fluff’, in that there were only a few things I took away from it in the long-term. I think a better simile would be something like a first love - you always look back on it fondly, but more often than not it’s peanuts in the grand scheme of life - or in this case, anime.

Kaiji had one main message to get across, one mantra, and it was a sort of individualist concept. It did this pretty well, hammering it home in many different ways through many of the different gambles.

The way I see it, Kaiji is all about advocating one’s inner strength and relying only on oneself. It’s kind of like what you always hear the rappers going on about; there’s no one else who’s going to really look out for you, so protect your back and invest your faith in yourself.

Granted, Kaiji did have followers, did have ‘friends’ like Ishida, but these weren’t people who really could help him in his time of need, perhaps because Kaiji was the one playing the benefactor most of the time, or perhaps because their interaction mainly took place 25 stories above the ground on a balance beam.

Sahara comes closer, if you remember the somewhat touching, somewhat amusing dialogue of them shouting “I’m here!” at each other during Brave Men Road’s climax, but perhaps this is just a exception to the norm, a bringing of the individualist theory down to reality.

That’d be closer to my personal belief, anyway, that while the most important person is still yourself, and that your strength should come from within and not from relying on others, it’s still silly to try to distance yourself from the everyone else just because you’re afraid of becoming weak (or: less nerdy, more of a sell-out, poor, etc).

But the review isn’t about me (that would make a good joke post somewhere down the line) but rather about the show, and about this social viewpoint with regards to Kaiji, it’s done pretty well. For some reason, it didn’t feel heavyhanded, despite being the pervasive tone underscoring most of the show.

Perhaps it’s because it was demonstrated in many different ways. First Kaiji learns about it the hard way, when he depends too much, is perhaps too naive (or alternatively, gets screwed over) regarding Andou and Furuhata on the Nice Cruise Restricted Rock-Paper-Scissors. He then teaches himself how to control himself and not be so traumatically affected by the plights of others (note difference between ‘affected’ and ‘traumatically affected’) on the Brave Men Road. E-Card is a bit of a different spin, being direct person-to-person combat, and the Tissue Lottery gamble caps it off the most directly, by screwing over Kaiji, not only for getting greedy but for putting faith in God and hoping for Tonegawa to lose, instead of taking action into his own hands and using his sharp senses of observation, like he had done in past gambles.

Come to think of it, that’s probably a secondary if not a supporting moral to the story, in that Kaiji learns to push forward, to never lose hope, and to perservere with a calm head. This is one surprisingly common in a lot of anime - perhaps because of my genre of choice, the dramatic / romantic, where it’s quite easy to see how waiting to act, or getting drowned in melodramatic emotion can really be detrimental.

Perhaps the reason that I’m not as bowled over by Kaiji’s didactic, intellectual side is that what it tries to get across lines up a bit with what I believe, and it’s not quite as heavy-handed as other shows, going for a more subtle mix-in among the adrenaline. The end result is that it’s not as world-shaking or soul-rocking (H2O not withstanding) as other shows like ef or Byousoku 5cm can manage, but is more of an added bonus to the rest of the show, for those who dig a bit deeper.

Maybe this means that Kaiji will be remembered more for his manly moments, the powerful tears cried after watching nine men fall to their doom, the dramatic speeches and reveals of E-Card (”this is the last of their voices from behind the grave!”), but that’s not so bad either. On a lighter analytical level the gambles were quite enjoyable to watch as well.

Restricted Rock-Paper-Scissors was one of the most wild ones, definitely fitting of the first arc. Both Kaiji and the viewer are relatively green. While we may have been smart enough to see through traps such as the one Kaiji set for himself by giving his stars to Andou and Furuhata, some of Funai’s more clever traps were harder to figure out. Likewise, Kaiji’s excellent back-to-the-wall strategies were a kick to decipher. It also laid out the tone of the show, where Kaiji digs himself a huge hole and promptly climbs out of it (barely) - although this was cleverly subverted in the end.

Brave Men Road was definitely the challenge that epitomized the mental side of Kaiji; there’s not a lot of skill or strategy in “don’t fall off” involved, but certainly a lot of will. Both the first and second stages of Brave Men Road have different discussions about human nature, one focusing more on the interpersonal and one on the intrapersonal, combined with a fair amount of sheer unpredictability that makes Kaiji great to watch - while obviously some of the guys were destined to die, actual named characters like Sahara and ISHIDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA had a reasonable chance of surviving … they just didn’t.

E-Card kicked us back to strategy heaven, a duel between two wits who continually pile strategy on top of strategy in an attempt to out-think the other. Of course, it got a bit ridiculous and a bit messy at times, but it was still a thrill to watch when it was moving a full speed. It really was one of the crowning moments for Kaiji as a character, showing his ability to go beyond the normal and defy the bounds of a regular human, both in logic and in action.

Tissue Box Raffle, as the falling action of sorts, then totally reversed Kaiji, bringing his story back down to human levels. It was pretty clear that Kaiji was destined to fail at the start, given all his (even more than usual) ridiculous planning and cockiness, and seeing his ability to look back and realize after the fact (and minus a few fingers) really clinched the development of his character.

Even though he lost at the end and came out from what was apparently a very stretched-out night in the red (i.e. losing lots of it), technically Kaiji came out a stronger character. It’s one of those good endings that people hate to call good endings, but it’s clear that the fight isn’t over for Kaiji and he’s more determined and more badass than ever.

It’s probably a better ending than what could have been - having him win Tissue Box Raffle through cheating and deceit, and walking out a millionaire, would be tough to spin the right way to feel redeeming. Maybe he deserved it from the past games he won, but 100 million feels like too much, way beyond what he just wants to ’start life over’, for him to achieve. Rather, he seems the type that would win on a deeper level than monetary.

So I’m satisfied with the ending. Yeah, it feels incomplete. Yeah, it sucks for Kaiji to come out with nothing. But it really fits with the tone of the show, its morals, its characters, and I can’t think of another way to get it to work right. And hey, there’s promises of a second season, and for that I’m willing for forgive far too much. At least this way we don’t have to retcon everything and have Kaiji suddenly ‘forget’ what Hyoudou said, and then introduce a random green-haired loli who … wait, wrong show.

On that light-hearted note, let’s gloss over the other more ‘review-like’ stuff that I tend to not go as in-depth on in these reviews.

Yes, the art is ugly, and I’m sure people have to constantly go to the hospital because they get their eyes stabbed out by pointy noses, but it’s a distinct art style, and the dramatic flair (see: zawazawa, facial contortions distortions) is well done. I think it works to drum up the ‘look ma, no moe!’ concept.

The music isn’t exactly something you’d listen to in the car but it is great music to put people in the mood (nice try - I mean for tension), especially when you’re panicked about a test tommorow. It’s background music, in that sense - more focusing than intrusive.

And, uh, no women, except for the one that works at the gas station. Felt like that needed mentioning twice.

So, you can probably guess the conclusion from here. Kaiji. It’s a unique show without a doubt. Definitely at least try it, if you’re disillusioned with the usual fare, and even if you’re not. Hey, if the resident harem guy can enjoy a show about a bunch of guys playing card games … (and walking on balance beams, etc.)

-CCY

(Try to spot the point where I got derailed by #animeblogger.)

This post is tagged Kaiji, Series Review