Kaiji S02E05 Review: Preparations

Kaiji, Season 2, Episode 5: Abuse & Perseverance

I accidentally uploaded the review for episode 22 (which I completed individually) before episode 5! Whoops, working while sleep deprived -- not a good thing!

So a good chunk of this episode is just Kaiji and the Forty-Fivers sort of just forming a group together and preparing for their eventual reprisal against Otsuki, which includes them fasting, and rationing the meager peanuts that they have. I guess it's a lot easier to fast and ignore all the tempting yakitori and beer when you have friends that suffer alongside you? It's not actually stated by the narration, but I feel that this time around it's conveyed nicely by them going "hmm!" with each other.

There's a brief subplot in the first half of the story where Kaiji meets Ishida's son -- which you might remember from the first season as the old man from the Espoir who died in the building game, and we get a brief recap. Also, Ishida Junior is a pampered little shit who was the cause of Ishida Senior going into the building game in the first place, and he totally deserves to be punched in the face by Kaiji! Kaiji tells Ishida Jr. that he's the exact polar opposite of his father. His father knew he was a loser, but tried his best anyway, whereas Ishida Jr blames everyone except for himself. And he apparently fakes being sick to spend as much time in the infirmary and skip out on work. He ends up spending the rest of this episode sort of being the doubter, observing Kaiji's team from a distance and going "the fools!" all the time.

Otsuki, meanwhile, begins to bully around the Forty Fivers, giving them extra chores, and at one point trying to goad Kaiji into eating the fancy food that he and his cronies are eating in the guise of apologizing, when it's actually to tempt them into failing. Kaiji splashes Otsuki in the face with beer, which is hilarious -- and then we get the ABUSE montage where the Forty Fivers' life are turned into extra hell. Nothing physical other than that near-accident with the construction equipment, but their already shitty life being even more contemptible is actually pretty well-shown.

We also briefly see a short scene with one Kurosaki Yoshihiro, who's apparently Tonegawa's replacement in the Teiai group, and he's watching Kaiji intently, presumably to set up the next game.

We then flash-forwards to three months later, where Ishida Junior and Otsuki are all surprised that the Forty-Fivers manage to make their meager funds last until they've paid their debts to Otsuki, and have achieved their full salary -- with a hilarious bit of all of them counting the money in front of Otsuki's face. And with these funds, Kaiji basically plans to strike now, where there are more spectators than usual (necessary for his eventual plan to expose Otsuki's cheating), as well as eventually goading Otsuki to lift the gambling limit. We don't actually see the gambling just yet, but it's definitely a well-done buildup episode.