You’ve got a point about how the lack of a narrator would help Kaiji greatly, although to be honest I just don’t know about how much of its current charm it’d retain sans narrative undercurrent. It’s mildly campy, to be sure, yet there’s something I’m unable to grasp just yet that’s so fitting about how the disembodied voice falls into place with everything, and I’m not sure that Kaiji would work without it.

The only explanation I can give for it is that the outcome isn’t as important as the process here, which is why the narrator adds onto, rather than distracts from the experience We all know Kaiji’s going to weasel himself out of whatever problem he finds himself in, we just don’t know how he’s going to go about it, so I guess that in a show where you already know how something’s going to end (Kaiji dying in a street corner somewhere or losing? Never!) you need something else to drive the process, and the narrator fits this very nicely.

Kaiji sans narrator would be arthouse, if you ask me, but maybe we need P.A. Works to do a remake and put all that budget into wringing out some of the most realistic facial expressions ever seen in anime. It’s a pipe dream, I’m sure, but bishie gar moe Kaiji seems like something the masses, along with that much coveted double-demographic, would lap up immediately.

(Also, stop using up all the Danbooru pictures, dammit, I’m going to have none left for my post later!)

But you’re right, of course, that the more the narrator explains the less there is for the otakusphere to easily grab and run with.