Kaiji S02E19-20 Review: To Move the Earth

Kaiji, Season 2, Episode 19: Road to a Miracle; Episode 20: Destiny's Gap

We start off this episode with Kaiji finally getting into the final obstacle of the pachinko machine, the three plates. Kaiji notes that statistically, he has around six shots at the third plate, after calculating how he's cheated the first two obstacles, and now only has the three plates to contend with. We get a fun little imaginary J-RPG fight between Kaiji and the Bog, which is funny.

Meanwhile, Ichijou himself has a couple of failsafes built into the Bog's final plates. In addition to the positioning of the holes (the two holes in the top two plates are in the front, and the one in the final one is in the back), Ichijou's put a small bump at the back of the final hole. Thanks to how Physics work and how the ball will enter the third plate, it has to enter the final hole from behind... and the bump will send it careening away into one of the failure holes. And in addition to that, Ichijou's made sure that the balls will always tilt forwards, making it even more impossible to reach the final hole -- there are three tilts, the floor, the machine and the plate.

And Kaiji? Kaiji's figured it out, first by observing Sakazaki play (so there is a point in having him suffer beyond making him sympathetic for the audience to root for) and then when Sakazaki drops his balls on the floor and Ichijou picks them up, Kaiji notes how the balls on the floor around the Bog roll to one side, but not the balls scattered elsewhere.

So Kaiji decides that the only way he can do that is... well, by tilting the entire goddamn building, which is just so absurdly insane, but it's this insanity that kind of makes sense. We do have scenes of Kaiji investigating the places around the casino around the episodes building up to this, and Kaiji only makes it clear that he is confident that he can beat the Bog when he has a solution for everything. It's actually not that much of an ass-pull like the silly "glass stairs" from the first season, as everything's sort of foreshadowed, and the information is only really revealed when it's relevant, but the buildup, and Kaiji's initial reluctance, is shown early in the beginning of the Bog arc.

And Kaiji has apparently found a pretty fun way to tilt the entire building, making use of the information that the dirt around the building is pretty soft from a bunch of construction workers. With the aid of a couple of collapsible water containers, Kaiji just fills them up, making a couple of tonnes of weight on the opposite end of the building to make the building shift ever so slightly. It's insane, and I'm not sure my rusty physics skills are good enough to confirm if this is an unworkable idea or if it actually works providing the conditions are met... but I don't care. It's entertaining.

Ichijou figures this out and panics throughout the final part of the 19th episode, and the beginning of the 20th. He has one "final weapon" which we don't see in episode 20, but, again, really makes it clear that the Bog isn't just going to be beaten in this episode or the next, making it clear that Kaiji and Hyodou isn't going to have one last game like the first season... which is fine, I suppose. The manga apparently has three more parts for the anime to follow up on, so it's not like this season is the final outing.

Ichijou's desperation is pretty well-displayed, as he uses his remote to tilt everything backwards in a futile attempt to prevent Kaiji from getting his balls down -- at least he won't be able to get the balls through the first two plates, but that would have the effect of making the third plate even more susceptible.

Ichijou also gets this huge, huge motive rant, which I felt was shoehorned a little, but not by that much. Hyodou apparently is building this huge, underground kingdom, because power isn't just money -- it's the power to dictate who survives in case of a nuclear war. It's crazy and paranoid, but Hyodou is the example of being utterly batshit crazy. Ichijou's motive rant is a bit more mundane. In addition to wanting to inherit a lot of money, he apparently also wants to show up his old friends, who mock him for running a casino? And he eavesdrops on his friends talking on him behind his back in the cafe? Weird, but okay.

But it's not just Ichijou that's breaking down, but Kaiji too, as he's approaching the final 10 million funds that he has, and all of his gambles aren't even paying off as despite getting past the first two hurdles, his balls aren't making it to the third plate. It's definitely tense as Kaiji has been nothing but confident since he started challenging the bog, and to see him starting to lose it is actually jarring and well done as a huge moment to end the episode on.