Kaiji, Ultimate Survivor, Episode 2: Open Fire; Episode 3: Game
Okay, I think the anime sold me. The first chunk of the second episode is a huge chunk of introdump as they tell us the rules of the mysterious Restricted Jan-Ken-Pon game, with each players getting an amount of cards, and have to play it against each other to gain star chips (Yu-Gi-Oh much?) which are ante'd in the games. I think you need to use up all your cards to win, and you need... three or more chips? Oh, and the loaned money is 'war funds' and not part of the actual gamble, which is one of the most interesting things. This business-suited dude Tonegawa shows up and gives a long speech about how things are, and has a moment of mental breakdown as he calls these dudes all trash of society and the like, before composing himself.
We then get Kaiji get approached by yellow-jacketed obviously-seedy dude, Funai, the other dude who took 10 million alongside Kaiji. We get more confirmation that, yes, mysterious-but-eeeeevil things happen to the people who lose. I don't think we really need that much specifics beyond the whys and whats, and both the writer of the manga and the organizers of the tournament aren't willing to tell us, at least not just yet. Just that this card game's basically super-high-stakes. Funai gives this long, very convincing spiel about how they can win 100% of the time, and the rest of episode 2 is just Kaiji getting swindled... but it's a pretty great sequence, too.
It's basically a bit of a set-up to the whole cutthroat room of swindlers and gamblers that the show is going for, and showcases just how quickly people give in to despair, and Kaiji basically refuses to be stuck in the room of regret with the rest of the losers. One of these losers is Furuhata, the little pushover dude whose debt to the loan sharks Kaiji has to pay off. Furuhata and Kaiji are left at one star each, plus a bunch of cards, and they decide to work together after a bit of bonding over their shared fate.
While I'll buy that Furuhata is a known element to Kaiji, because betrayal or not he's still his friend... It's a bit curious how fast Kaiji and Furuhata pull in this chubby dude Ando into their circle after Kaiji was just swindled by Funai. Eh. Basically Ando's a dude with two stars but no cards, and they form an alliance of the weak -- they have a lot of money, five cards (a majority of which is scissors) and four stars.
...and, of course, because Ando's kind of a shithead, he goes and loses a card and a star within two minutes into the third episode. What did you expect, Kaiji? As Furuhata points out, Ando's in a prime position to betray them if he wins. Kaiji can't cut Ando off for the reason that 'Furuhata will be suspicious if I cut Ando off, and we need to build trust'... which... okay, isn't completely dumb.
Then what follows is a neat bit of strategizing that, I think, really sold me the show. Kaiji tells Ando and Furuhata (which are just going to be his minions, it seems) to look for a specific dude with 7 cards and has played rock and scissors in his previous games or some such. Due to their very limited cardpool of scissors, Kaiji needs to mind-game his way against opponents, and it's definitely a pretty cool sequence that shows that this isn't actually as dumb-luck as actual Jan-Ken-Pon is.
So I'm not going to describe every game in the show, but Kaiji basically manages to get a star by psyching out the dude, first by anticipating what he's going to play. Kaiji read the opponent as someone who keeps a 'balanced' deck to win against whoever he comes up against, and then basically mind-games him with essentially seemingly playing two of the same cards in a row, so he wouldn't play a third, same card, because someone with this mindset will kind of be attuned to thinking everyone's going to play similarly to him. It's pretty intense, and definitely pretty cool to show some foresight beyond just cheating and swindling (although with Funai around, I bet there's going to be some moments of cheating and swindling). Overall, definitely a great two series of chapters. It's definitely more than a little introdump-y, thanks to the nature of the concept, but I feel it's definitely pretty well-done since some aspects of the game, are doled out slowly over the course of the anime itself. Which is definitely well-done. Looking forward to more.
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