Kaiji S02E24 Review: Jet Stream Attack

Kaiji, Season 2, Episode 24: Meandering Silver Balls

Apparently, it's an air vent that surrounds the final hole, which is... interesting, for sure! I'm not sure just why Ichijou is just such a moron to misplace the remote, but I guess they've truly gone complacent. And no matter how many balls Kaiji's shot into the third plate, the jet streams keep knocking them away and the only hope is to hope that the balls bounce onto each other with enough force to knock them over the jet stream... and even when that happens, it doesn't actually get the ball in.

Teiai enforcers show up and basically get ready to arrest not only Kaiji, but Endou as well... and Kaiji panics. After some obviously brusque comments, he utterly breaks down, wanting to just call it a draw, buy back the remaining balls that he hasn't used, and buy at least him and Endou out of debt from the Teiai companies. Kaiji is utterly desperate, defeated by the jet stream, but Ichijou refuses to entertain the thought, and Kaiji just... just breaks.

And it's clearly Kaiji's lowest point, as he's just so utterly defeated, with no real way to come back, no final observation, and most importantly -- no more money. It's a great showing from him. He's dead broke, and this series have shown that it's very much willing to punish Kaiji even when he does well, since this is a gambling show after all. After all, the first season did end in a downer ending of sorts. And this could lead to a final set of two episodes of either a final gamble against Hyodou, or simply a downer ending and Kaiji has to claw his way back out... maybe? It's definitely not a good look for Kaiji. Endou is desperate for Kaiji to find some ridiculous way to get out, but he can't even do so, at least not at this time. And to see the gambler absolutely broken and disheartened, after his utter confidence these past few episodes... it's certainly a great cliffhanger. 

Kaiji S02E23 Review: Blockage

Kaiji, Season 2, Episode 23: On Thin Ice

Kaiji gets utterly freaked out, as the Bog's personification get into a huge 'fight' with Kaiji in his imaginary mind. Kaiji realizes that all of the balls that he's sending on that trajectory upwards by tilting the building backwards isn't actually a perfect shot. They stacked the water piles on one room, meaning that the building isn't just tilted south -- it's tilted southwest, and in this high-stakes, high-precision game, it means that the balls that Kaiji are sending from the bottom ends up swerving to the left and falling into a hole.

There is an alternate way, as Kaiji tells Endou, by moving the ball between "holes 2 and 3" instead of "3 and 4", which makes sense only with visuals. But Ichijou's tilt is starting to take hold, and the balls are starting to drain out of the chute and will soon restore the first two plates... and we get a huge "GO GO GO" "STOP STOP STOP" montage which ran for a bit too long...  and apparently, the building leaning forwards sort of retains the goddamn balls anyway. Ah, physics, you truly are a cruel mistress. Interesting, huh, how a Pachinko game ends up being a fight over leaning the building forwards and backwards?

But Kaiji's final plan hinges on having balls hit each other while in the third plate... and everything seems to go Kaiji's way, as the balls are clogging up the third plate's holes due to some insane coincidence (that the narrator lampshades),  and Kaiji has two balls left. Is this the episode where he beats the Bog? I mean, he's gotten such an insane streak of luck, so it might be, right? Unfortunately, as the two balls shoot towards the jackpot hole... they get repelled.

Ah, Ichijou's secret weapon, then, I guess? I've been waiting for it to make an appearance. Repelling magnets, perhaps, lining the final jackpot hole? It is a clever thing to do, honestly, for a rigged machine -- to have the final hole be rigged so that even if by some miracle all of the unfair stuff ends up not panning out, there's a surefire way to prevent the customer from winning. What this is, though, is going to be interesting, and we'll see if Kaiji is actually prepared for it next time.

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.

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger S01E10 Review: Underwhelming

Marvel's Cloak and Dagger, Season 1, Episode 10: Colony Collapse

I don't think I've ever been quite as underwhelmed by a Marvel TV series' season finale as much as I was with this one. Well, I mean, Inhumans exists, I suppose. But other than that... this finale accomplishes the rather impressive job of feeling like it rushes through plot points without giving them time to breathe while at the same time also feeling like nothing significant is happening. Perhaps Cloak and Dagger's biggest problem is that it wants to bring together several major plot points into one cohesive whole -- the ongoing struggle against Officer Connors; the whole Roxxon/Terrors conspiracy and the whole vague voodoo "Divine Pairing" backstory.

The problem is, nothing about the Divine Pairing stuff even really feels relevant at all to Tandy Bowen and Tyrone Johnson as characters. Evita has been vaguely learning about this mysterious reincarnated pair throughout the history of New Orleans, but it's all given in such bland, tepid vagueness throughout the past nine episodes, and its attempt to suddenly introduce a huge backstory with random cutaways to how the Divine Pairing had saved New Orleans in the past is honestly laughable. And other than giving Tandy and Tyrone an injection of tired "if one of us must die, it should be me" drama. Hell, Evita just quite literally shows up with no explanation, delivers some exposition, and walks of. Tandy makes a crack about how great Tyrone and Evita are together... but honestly, Evita's more of an exposition tool than an actual character. And not even good exposition either.

Likewise, the resolution of Connors really feels abrupt and sudden, with the buildup in this episode to a confrontation with Connors... and then nothing. Makes me really wish Connors was just out of the story in that Scooby Dooby Doo episode, because all he is in this episode is just a distraction, and then he shoots O'Reilly in a scene that genuinely feels like it's added last-minute with minimal effort due to how abrupt it is, and then Tyrone scares him a little... and then his Cloak powers eats Connors. What? Tyrone's speech to the one good cop (a great scene that has absolutely no payoff beyond establishing what a nice guy Tyrone is) feels more of an epic climax-worthy moment than this genuinely bland one. 

Tandy's confrontation with her own big bad, Scarborough, feels a bit more satisfying. After saving her mother from the assassin and recruiting Mina Hess (where's Ivan?) to go to Roxxon, she ends up in a face-to-face with Scarborough, gets to deck him in the face, and apparently trap him in the same nightmare Ivan was trapped in. Hopefully she goes back and fixes all of the dreams of the people  she 'stole' them from, though.

Still, the vague and utterly unexplained "I want to control power" conspiracy from Scarborough is also as under-developed as the voodoo reincarnation storyline, and I'm genuinely not sure why they felt like the need to have a zombie outbreak with the Terrors when it genuinely doesn't tie in any sort of  meaningful way to the whole Divine Pairing stuff. I had let it slide in the past because I thought that these ominous foreshadowing of vagueness throughout the season will maybe build up into something more, but nope -- the Terror-zombies are just a random magical threat. Or if they're supposed to be connected to the reincarnation of the Pairing or to the source of the Cloak'n'Dagger powers, the show doesn't really explain it much. 

Oh, and we get scant little explanation to what the Terrors turned people into, yeah? I mean, some of them get killed, and we know O'Reilly goes all Solomon Grundy when she falls into the swamp presumably to be a cheap Winter Soldier knockoff villain in the next season, but what about Mina? 

The only real things that save this episode from utterly bombing is the genuinely great scenes that Tyrone and Tandy takes place in. Tyrone's speech to the policeman, his talk with O'Reilly about being the one good cop, Tandy's brief moment with her mom in the beginning, Tandy shaking Tyrone out of his flunk, the jacket moment and the two refusing to abandon each other to save the day... the chemistry between the two actors are strong enough that I'm genuinely entertained anytime they show up, even if quite literally the rest of the story told in this season is a gigantic mess. 

The way the episode ends feels more like checking off a box of things they have to do. Show a zombie apocalypse, yep, show a vague mystical origin, yep, Scarborough encounter, yep, Connors encounter, yep, set up a tragic villain, yep, vague threat of one of them dying, yep, hold hands and have vague all yours powers combined moment, yep. 

Yeah, this is a pretty weak season, honestly. I'm at least a fan of the pretty strong performances delivered by the actors, but the utterly confused storytelling and pretty horrid pacing in the first half of the season honestly makes me feel like this is easily one of my least favourite entries in Marvel TV. 

One Piece 917 Review: Beating Up A Child Abuser

One Piece, Chapter 917: The Treasure Ship of Provisions

Still another part of the sequence of the Luffy-and-Zoro-wreck-Wano storyline, and it's honestly still pretty chill, with Luffy once more dominating one of the lesser officers with a single punch. This time, it's Red Hawk straight onto Holdem's face, and that's after a quick, swift Flash-style rescue of Tama from Holdem's tummy-lion. A pretty fun chapter, if, again, it's still pretty mellowly-paced without much exciting content to me. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's still well-told and cool to see Luffy and Zoro just beat up mooks -- it's never not entertaining, but I just don't quite feel the tension or hype that an arc that's been foreshadowed as long as Wano should have, you know?

There's a sequence at the beginning of the episode with this horse-centaur lady, Speed, basically gathering all the expensive food and leaving the rest of the poor of Wano to starve. Not the most original plot, honestly -- the rich depriving the poor is sort of one of the biggest running themes in One Piece as a whole. I also kind of think that considering how the random boy at the beginning of the chapter was scolded for crying, and one of Tama's more consistent character traits is how she would rather endure and say everything's fine as a show of strength... is this the running theme for the Wano arc? That it's okay to express yourself, all Nico Robin style? Not a bad one, I say, and maybe even an appropriate one for an arc based on traditional Japanese tropes? I'll give the story points for that, for sure. 

What else? We get more hints about the thief lord Shutenmaru, as well as the revelation that Jack the Drought is in Wano, and is Holdem's backer. So we'll get a rematch with Jack? That's cool. Also interesting is the brief scene where Hawkins is stopped by Trafalgar Law wearing a traditional monk basket-helmet, which is far more exciting than Luffy beating up mooks, for sure. 

Kaiji S02E21 Review: Negotiations

Kaiji, Season 2, Episode 21: Victory Secured

It's a bit of an interesting episode, where Kaiji is on a losing streak, if such a term is applicable in a game like pachinko. He's got everything figured out, sabotaged all three 'hurdles', but in the final stage it's still a gamble, and none of the balls he's sending through ends up even making it into the jackpot. And in Kaiji's utter desperation, he ends up running out of balls right at the moment that he sees one final glimpse of light.

It's interesting, as Kaiji walks into the bathroom and tries to negotiate -- albeit a bit too desperately -- with Endou. Kaiji knows that Endou and his nameless bodyguard is carrying some extra emergency funds for him to quickly escape should the need arise, and a good chunk of the episode is just Kaiji trying his best to convince Endou that he sees one final 'light' that is going to allow him to beat the odds one more time, and that even if Endou runs away right now, he's going to spend the rest of his life running away from debt collectors.

And the episode does take its time in trying to get Kaiji and Endou to convince each other, and Endou... actually prepared a contract for Kaiji to sign, showing that, yeah, Endou was fully prepared for Kaiji to actually need an extra boost of money. Faith, or just good business practices? A little of both? A wee bit too convenient, perhaps, but it's not like we haven't seen Endou be paranoid and duplicitous before.

And as Kaiji returns with a whole ton of money, Ichijou actually goes and tries and buy some time and starts actually counting the bills one by one, trying to buy time for whoever it is to find his "secret weapon",  a switch... but Kaiji (who's on the clock too) ends up demanding that he be allowed to play now. But then, one of Ichijou's nameless goons notes an observation that Ichijou picks up as another final weapon. It's neat that it's Kaiji's secret, undetermined weapon against Ichijou's own. Who knew a game of fucking Pachinko could be so complex?

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.