Kaiji S02E09 Review: Man-Eating Machine

Kaiji, Season 2, Episode 9: Retribution; Episode 10: Applause, and then...

Episode 9 is just a little tie-up of Otsuki's fall and utter despair as he is completely cleaned out of all the money he's made from cheating people in the gambling nights. Tonegawa's replacement, Yoshishiro, who we briefly saw earlier this season, shows up to enforce the rules and noting that, yes, Kaiji is the one in the right. We also get the explanation as to where Kaiji got that die -- he carved them out of the remnants of the T-Bone steaks that Otsuki eats, and painted the dots with his own blood. Otsuki is forced to roll, with the pretty cruel talk about how if he uses normal dice, at least  he gets the chance of drawing the triple snake-eyes. And we get a pretty satisfying montage of the Forty-Fivers rolling the snake eyes and absolutely win.

We get a scene of Kaiji talking to Yoshishiro, basically being upfront with asking if he's going to nullify all their blood and sweat by annulling the pass. Yoshishiro finds it kinda funny and makes an exception for 'leaving in the first year' for Kaiji. Interestingly, the Forty-fivers decide to pool all their winnings with Kaiji because they recognize Kaiji as a good man for refusing to take a bigger cut, and knows that he's going to find a way to get them their money back.

And then Kaiji's back in the real world for a while, although apparently the Teiai Group has enough resources to have men in black shadow these debtors. Man, the Teiai Group are really sadists, huh? I wouldn't think that it's particularly cost-effective for them to actually spend so much resources to keep track of manual labourers. We get a scene where Kaiji scares a bunch of thieves with his rejoined fingers... and that's a bit of a "what" moment from me. The scars aren't even that visible! Is this censored in some way from the manga that Kaiji is adapted from? Did Kaiji actually have finger stumps or something?

Whatever the case, though, after realizing that none of the casinos around are going to have the big jackpot payout he wants, Kaiji ends up meeting a random old man, Sakazaki Koutarou (a.k.a. the monk dude from the opening), who brings him into an illegal gambling den. A bit too convenient, but hey, video game logic! And episode 9 ends with a huge shot of the "Man-Eating Bog", the ultimate pachinko machine.