Kaiji - Ultimate Survivor, Episode 16: Fury; Episode 17: Adversity
So episode 16 begins our E-Card game, and a good chunk of the 16th episode is just an explanation of the card game. There are three cards -- Emperor, Citizen and Slave. The Emperor beats the Citizen, the Citizen beats the Slave and the Slave beats the emperor. Each deck has either one Emperor or one Slave, and four Citizen cards, and they swap decks each game. It's some cool mind-games shit going on, and the setup is definitely done well. It's like the Emperor is the win condition in TCG games, and the Slave is the counter.
There's also the huge explanation about the gamble, which apparently has Kaiji betting his eye or ear. Like any sane person, he decides to choose to sacrifice his ear. A weird drilling apparatus is attached, and Kaiji has to bet distances. Oh, and betting while he's playing as a slave gets higher rewards.
I definitely like the setup. It gives a far more mind-games feel to the whole thing, and it feels more like a traditional gamble the way Restricted Jan-Ken-Pon was in the first arc. The bridge crossing arc wasn't done poorly at all, and it was exciting, but I definitely like these proper gambling games far more. Kaiji's going to face Tonegawa, meaning that he's likely to be the big enemy at the end of the season, which is cool. Kaiji immediately picks up the highest allowed bet, betting 10 mm -- which means he'll lose in 3 rounds, and wins the first two matches pretty quickly.
Of course, it's obvious that Kaiji's being strung along by Tonegawa, and at least he seems aware of it. And like Tonegawa points out, Kaiji's playing on the Emperor side of the board, which means he inherently has advantage.
In episode 17, we get an absolutely well-acted and well-scripted bit with Tonegawa trying to unnerve Kaiji. Talking about he's great at reading people, reading heart vibrations, and all that stuff... Kaiji tens up being slightly unnerved and thinking that Tonegawa is psychic, but really it just seems that Tonegawa has a really great grasp at reading people's body language or whatever. Tonegawa did say straight-up that he's skilled in reading poker faces, which Kaiji... for some reason doesn't believe?
Kaiji bets 2 mm while on the Slave side, and there's this huge deal that on the disadvantaged slave side, he really should bet the absolute minimum of 1 mm, and both Tonegawa and his unnamed boss note how this is bullshit pride that won't serve Kaiji well in the future. And, well, a combination of being shaken up by Tonegawa's speeches and mind-games, Kaiji loses his first game as the Slave side.
Overall, it's definitely a great set of episodes that combines the multi-layered game aspect of the Jan-Ken-Pon arc with the tense and more visceral feel of risking his life that the bridge arc has. Definitely a big fan of the E-Card game, for sure.
No comments:
Post a Comment