Kaiji S02E15 Review: Gratuitous Fingorn

Kaiji, Season 2, Episode 15:  All An Act

This episode has Kaiji and his team basically put up the first stage of their plan, and at no point in the episode did I believe that Kaiji's screwed up. Mind you, the episode title does help to telegraph the whole "it's an act" thing. We first get to see Sakazaki show up in a Buddhist monk regalia (like we saw in the anime opening) and just look desperate as he seemingly sinks his last funds into the Bog, losing horribly and using the prayer figurine to quite literally smash the Bog Pachinko machine apart. but Ichijou quickly sees through the act, even when Sakazaki pulls out a fake dynamite.

Ichijou quickly realizes that something is wrong, and returns back to the staff room to find Kaiji snooping around. And to Ichijou's credit,  at least he realizes that there's something wrong even though he isn't 100% just what is wrong. He thinks Kaiji is looking for the safe of the huge amount of funds the casino has, and then obliges, showing the huge amount of money, and then, to make it clear to the audience that Ichijou is someone we must hate and not just some dude running a casino, he has Sakazaki beaten, and we have this uncomfortably long scene of Kaiji's  fingers being tortured with this "bloody manicure" thing that injects a needle through the flesh between the fingernails. God damn, that's brutal.

Kaiji and Sakazaki are thrown out and they're weeping in defeat,  but it's clear from the way the episode is set up that this is all part of their plan.

And then we have a brief time-skip to the Bog being fixed, and to the final day that Kaiji is free, and Ichijou thinks about how Kaiji's going to try and buy his freedom by playing baccarat or something. After a brief face-off, Kaiji declares that, of course, he's going to challenge the Bog. It is interesting to think just where and how Kaiji's plans are taking place, and how all the foreshadowings to Kaiji's methods to cheat the Bog is going to take place. Overall, not the most exciting episode, but a fun in-between one to show the events happening and to build Ichijou up as a villain.