Kaiji - Ultimate Survivor, Episode 14: Dying Spirit; Episode 15: Heavens
We continue with the death-walk across the plank, and it's basically a huge, huge clusterfuck as everyone panics and wants to return back and forfeit the match. Tonegawa unleashes this gigantic tirade of how he doesn't give two shits about what they think, and he delivers this extremely sobering speech about how those involved don't care about anything, thinking that the system or someone else will come to bail them out, how you only have one life, and how everyone basically squanders their life even though they're given a very real and concrete opportunity to rise above their shitty lives. Of course, Tonegawa's whole speech is sort of rendered moot by the fact that he's essentially playing a psychotic game with other people's lives, but still, it's another great moment of developing our main villain as well as showing just how deranged the man is.
One of the dudes we relate with in the first 3-4 minutes of episode 14, Nakayama, falls and dies, even after Kaiji's numerous attempts to calm him down. And in quick succession, everyone else other than Kaiji, Ishida and Sahara falls to their death.
And, well, episode 14 is basically a huge, huge showcase of how Ishida and Sahara dies. Because the two of them does. Ishida certainly doesn't deserve all of this shit happening to him, but if he survives this particularly stressful ordeal it would honestly be a bit too hard to believe. And his death is certainly one that really feels pretty fucking sad due to the buildup that he's gotten. Ishida essentially gives up, giving his coupon/token to Kaiji so that he can get some money to send to Ishida's family, because he's essentially accepting the fact that no, he can't do this at all. And as Kaiji turns to face the front, and back again, Ishida's fallen to his death, covering his mouth to stop him from screaming and unnerving Kaiji. It's monumentally well-done.
Less well-done is Sahara's death. I don't mind the suddenness of it, or the cruelty of ripping the hope after Sahara does a fast dash towards the end line. It's the weird sequence of events that has Sahara see a ghost, go through this huge deal of how he's feeling the wind and how Kaiji and Sahara have some weird communication between all the people in the world or some shit like that... in the past I've praised Kaiji's usage of flowery descriptors to explain the motivations and feelings that are happening within our characters' minds, but this is one that fell flat for me.
Oh, and Sahara gets pushed back by a huge amount of wind pressure from inside the building and falls to his death.
Episode 15 reveals that, after Kaiji tore his eyes away from the spectacle of Sahara's death... there's a random pair of invisible glass staircases that leads to the real entrance to redeem the coupon and it's... it's honestly dumb. The invisible staircases came literally out of nowhere, there's no sort of clever foreshadowing like many of the other plot twists in the Espoir arc (oh, some dude flushing his cards turns out to be important!). It just feels lazy and compared to the standards of this anime, kind of an ass pull.
There's this whole attempt to make the thing sound poetic by having the whole 'those who have lost hope can be saved' but it doesn't really clean this sour taste the ending of this cross-the-bridge arc has left in my mouth.
Oh, and Tonegawa (who teleports between buildings offscreen) then acts like an extra dick and goes all 'didn't you say you wanted to forfeit the match? Well, we did forfeit it, so you don't get any money!' just to be an extra dick... but Tonegawa's superior, some old dude, shows up and gives Kaiji his reward... and also asks him to play in another game called the E-Card.
And... apparently all the random broken-boned dudes from the first stage of the hotel storyline... are just told to lie down and groan in pain in a corridor? For the old dude to step on, with the knowledge that they'll subject themselves to degradation for money? It seems oddly petty and unrealistic, to be honest, as much as the old dude speaks about how money puts kings in power and all that. The fact that none of these broken people are, y'know, characters we know of -- even as one-note ones -- meant that this huge display ended up feeling hollow and more of a clunky way to set up the E-Card game and to set up Tonegawa and his old boss as the main villains of the final leg of the season.
Overall, while Tonegawa's speech, Ishida's death and Kaiji's despair are all very strong moments, it's kind of a disappointing end to the bridges arc.
"It's the weird sequence of events that has Sahara see a ghost, go through this huge deal of how he's feeling the wind and how Kaiji and Sahara have some weird communication between all the people in the world or some shit like that... in the past I've praised Kaiji's usage of flowery descriptors to explain the motivations and feelings that are happening within our characters' minds, but this is one that fell flat for me."
ReplyDeleteReally? Aside from the guilt ghost, I thought this was one of the strongest philosophical messages of the show. The "6.6 billion lonely path" is all about how a person only truly feel/ know what happens with himself and thus why he's on his own and why it's easy and understandable to be selfish... and yet, people yearn for connection, to understand themselves, fight against this loneliness and to support each other in hardships.
It's such an over-the-top yet accurate metaphor about a matter that I reflected before that It had such a strong impact on me.
That's my favorite Kaiji game, although not an intellectual one, it was really thrilling (I feel dizzy just by thinking myself in that situation).
Part of why the description perhaps felt flatter to me is because so much of the first 'cross the bridge' game is such a neatly done character analysis on Kaiji, while at the same time giving a commentary about the savagery of society -- push other people if you want to succeed. But ultimately it's still rooted in what our main character, Kaiji, as well as other characters in that position, is feeling at the moment. And yes, the same thing could be argued with the whole 'all the people in the world is connected' thing... but I dunno.
DeleteIt's definitely a great, well-written description, but it kind of didn't connect with me as much as it did you, perhaps.
Continuing from my past post:
ReplyDeleteThat crazy old man further pointed about the message of the "loneliness of self" in a negative way: he finds it amusing that people can suffer around him and he won't feel a thing.
"there's a random pair of invisible glass staircases that leads to the real entrance to redeem the coupon and it's... it's honestly dumb. The invisible staircases came literally out of nowhere, there's no sort of clever foreshadowing like many of the other plot twists in the Espoir arc (oh, some dude flushing his cards turns out to be important!). It just feels lazy and compared to the standards of this anime, kind of an ass pull."
Although it's undeniably a deus ex machina, I oddly liked it and consider it debatable if it even required a foreshadowing. Why? Because following Kaiji's line of thought from the perspective of someone who's unaware of possible alternatives seemed the point of the scene. In other words, to put such an obvious solution that close to desperate and psychologically exhausted players emphasizes just how unfair and cruel it is.
Also, from the psychoctic rich people's perspective, watching people die in such an ironic way must have been sadistically hilarious.
TL;DR: The author cheaply tricked us just like they tricked Kaiji.
But yeah, I wouldn't mind if it was added a line of dialogue about how "Sahara swore he saw some shine floating in the air", and then thought it was another of his ilusions or ignored it anyway since he already was by the door.
I dunno. I still think that the glass staircase is a bit of an asspull, for the simple reason that every other plot twist in this series -- the 'X' player in the boat game being the most memorable example, but also the existence of the naked room being a location you can cheat from, as well as skipping a couple episodes ahead, the revelation about Tonegawa's trick in the E-Cards game -- tend to be some innocuous detail that they slipped by and you slap your head going 'oh, right, THAT is what that scene is all about'.
DeleteYes, I do agree that from Kaiji's perspective, there's no way he can really see the glass staircase (as stupid as the concept of a completely-invisible glass staircase is... eh) but the tunnel-vision thing is definitely a pretty cool description.
But really, between the rules and nothing in Tonegawa's dialogue (which you'd think would be the easiest way to stealthily pepper it in) even hints at the existence of the glass staircase. Even your proposed line about Sahara seeing something shining in the air would've worked fine. I dunno -- I really liked the description of the fear of death, panic and acrophobia in general in this arc, but at the same time it's one that I feel also had the most problems from a storytelling perspective.