Kaiji S02E22 Review: Money Tape

Kaiji, Season 2, Episode 22: Power of Money

The episode starts off with Kaiji's second attempt at the Bog, with a fun bit where Ichijou leans in to Kaiji and the two of them engage in a bit of "I know that you know" regarding the double tilt segment of the Bog. And after a bit of posturing, Kaiji ends up doing a fun bit of a show, taping up money in front of the Bog to cover up the three plates. Ichijou ends up ripping them off for a while...

To reveal multiple balls are just spinning around in the first two plates. And Kaiji shows that his secret plan is the observation that neither Kaiji nor Ichijou accounted for -- when Ichijou moved the Bog backwards to counter-act Kaiji tilting the building, they had caused a clog-up in the pipes that 'drain' the first two plates, meaning that any ball that made it into the plates will always stay there until they fall to the next level... provided they bump to each other. Great job on the narrator in describing this, too, and god bless Kaiji for making the reveal so epic with those bills.

Ichijou is absolutely fucked up and he's fallen into utter depression as he realizes that even his remote can't re-tilt the Bog back in time for the drains to unclog, since it moves slowly to not reveal its true nature to the other patrons. We get this hilaious, fun bit of Kaiji and Ichijou's battle represented by a fighter jet bombing an aircraft carrier.

And as one of Kaiji's balls fall into the third plate, and then do the insane swerve upwards that will bypass the bump and Kaiji's end goal in the first place... it swerves left and fails. Is this the observation that Ichijou's minion makes? Poor Ichijou is way too freaked out to remember whatever this is, apparently. Definitely a pretty interesting bit -- halfway around watching this episode and seeing the clogged-up drains, I thought that this was going to be the end of the Bog, and maybe we'll have that Hyodou showdown after all, but no. The Bog seems to be the endgame of this season. Good stuff, in any case.