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The gambling in Kakegurui is incidental, it's entirely about lewd class struggle and the complete breakdown in morality among the upper class and those who wish to join it
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 03:44 |
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# ? May 23, 2024 17:53 |
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Smoking Crow posted:The gambling in Kakegurui is incidental, it's entirely about lewd class struggle and the complete breakdown in morality among the upper class and those who wish to join it Especially with regards to all of the cheating so far. It's all about how those at the top use their assets against those underneath them and how the system is designed to keep those who get put in the hole, in the hole.
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 04:11 |
Smoking Crow posted:The gambling in Kakegurui is incidental, it's entirely about lewd class struggle and the complete breakdown in morality among the upper class and those who wish to join it Brought To You By posted:Especially with regards to all of the cheating so far. It's all about how those at the top use their assets against those underneath them and how the system is designed to keep those who get put in the hole, in the hole. Seriously. They've got a collection of poor people they literally refer to as livestock, who the rich manipulate and force "life plans" onto. It's barely even subtext at this point.
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 04:32 |
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Goddam it, this really is super-camp/filthy Kaiji...
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 05:21 |
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Smoking Crow posted:The gambling in Kakegurui is incidental, it's entirely about lewd class struggle and the complete breakdown in morality among the upper class and those who wish to join it Naaah, Yumeko is just a magical gambling fairy who is here to teach these uptight kids to stop taking their silly little games seriously and have some goddamned ''fun'' for once. Kind of like Ash teaching people to be friends with their Pokémon or Yugi lecturing his opponents about 'the heart of the cards', only with more tits and psychosis. It's why the show feels so safe - of course Yumeko isn't going to have her nails ripped off, of course Mary isn't going to get sold as a trophy wife, of course Midari (much to her disappointment) isn't going to have her head blown off. That wouldn't be sexy or fun - the nastiness is surface-level, there to accentuate the fantasy and add a little spice, nothing more. Likewise, while there's a clear anticapitalist vibe, it's simply to fill out the background, creating a suitably evil-but-glamorous setting for Yumeko to go to town on. Teaching the wealthy elite to run Japan through rock-paper-scissors is goddamned ridiculous, and Yumeko is here to laugh at it and have fun with it along with us. This is also why Ryouta keeps getting dunked on - he's a wet blanket who keeps trying to prevent the girls from having fun, and his development is based around learning to loosen up, just as Mary re-learned how to chill out and enjoy herself in that four-way match. I don't think it's a coincidence that his big win in in the latest episode happened because he just went 'gently caress it' and left the outcome up to chance.
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 10:12 |
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^^^ ^^^ Yumeko has a lot of fun to have, then. And I can't wait to see it.
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 12:03 |
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AnoHito posted:Goddam it, this really is super-camp/filthy Kaiji... The protagonist is naive, hopeless, and stupid, and then at the drop of a hat a brilliant strategist and leader, then right back to inept moron by the time the hat falls. On top of that, every single plot beat is explained and re-explained at least twice to fill airtime for the plot-anemic episodes, and it has the effect of making many characters sound robotic and bafflingly irrational, and especially annoying with their constant inconsolable begging. Say what you will about the merits of the gambling within, but I'm finding Psychopath Superhero Gambler Yumeko far more entertaining.
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 15:57 |
This is more like Code Geass, only with less mind control and robots and more gambling and cheating. (Amounts of bat-poo poo crazy and tits remains approximately par).
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 16:14 |
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I'm beginning to think that a lot of people went in with wildly varying expectations for what this anime / manga was going / supposed to be about.
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 16:15 |
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Poulpe posted:Hate to derail, but I tried watching Kaiji after reading about it in this thread, and hated it. If that's how you feel about Kaiji, you might prefer Akagi.
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 16:26 |
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jng2058 posted:Seriously. They've got a collection of poor people they literally refer to as livestock, who the rich manipulate and force "life plans" onto. It's barely even subtext at this point. Yeah, but the games themselves could be more interesting. I had only read up until the Debt adjustment games in the manga, but out of the four gambles so far that the debt game was the most interesting. And It's for the reason that it's not a game rigged in one sides favor that needs to be overcome. Unlike having games stacked in the houses favor that game was a straight 2v2 mind game and I loved it. No rigged decks, no magnets, just people playing cards and trying to out bluff each other. This series doesn't need subtext, it's an entertaining show but man would I like to see more games where people can have fun. I really agreed with Yumiko's reactions from the most recent episode.
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 17:45 |
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Darth Walrus posted:Naaah, Yumeko is just a magical gambling fairy who is here to teach these uptight kids to stop taking their silly little games seriously and have some goddamned ''fun'' for once. Kind of like Ash teaching people to be friends with their Pokémon or Yugi lecturing his opponents about 'the heart of the cards', only with more tits and psychosis. Yumeko doesn't do it because it's fun, she's a gambling addict. I don't know if you've been around many addicts before, but they stopped doing it for fun after the first week. She doesn't enjoy herself so much as she feels...something. Anything at all. It's pretty obvious that she's putting up a facade for respectability. The sexiness isn't meant to be fun. I feel a mixture of disgust and allure when I watch or read Kakegurui, and I'm pretty sure that's what the author is intending. It looks cheap and dirty. The art looks like it could be out of the next Fakku book. The dirt and sex are soaked in, but it's as sexy as a David Lynch film. The show isn't safe, it's just that everyone else is a pretender. Mary is an interloper. She is the bourgeoisie. She is the person who buys a McMansion and votes for fiscal conservatives. She has no business standing up to someone like Yumeko, who has all the talent and luck to upend the entire system. That's why she becomes the high school version of a partisan once she loses. She isn't having fun gambling, she's enjoying balancing the social order towards the bottom, where she is. Revolution feels good, comrade. I don't know about you, but I was certain that Midari was going to shoot herself in the face. Yumeko didn't allow her to shoot herself because she, while she doesn't pity her, thinks she is pitiful. Yumeko takes no pleasure in gambling with people beneath her. The student council's hegemonic reign over the school is such that she bends over for the upper class even when she's penniless. Ryouta is getting dunked because a) he's really dumb and b) he's the lowest of the low class. Kakegurui is good, i like it when the girls make funny faces and sex noises Smoking Crow fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Aug 22, 2017 |
# ? Aug 22, 2017 18:35 |
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:If that's how you feel about Kaiji, you might prefer Akagi. There's also the Gamble Fish manga, but that's very read at your own risk. Also they're middle schoolers. But also
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 21:15 |
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gamble fish is real bad
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 21:25 |
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what confuses me about this anime is why arent the parents getting worried when all the students who graduate end up having giant depts from gambling.
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 21:45 |
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Iretep posted:what confuses me about this anime is why arent the parents getting worried when all the students who graduate end up having giant depts from gambling. Because they're so rich those debts are nothing, and because of their wealth they are disconnected from and disinterested in even their own families. Down with capitalism, destroy the new aristocrats.
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 21:49 |
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chumbler posted:Because they're so rich those debts are nothing, and because of their wealth they are disconnected from and disinterested in even their own families. if the depts are nothing then the whole life plan thing wouldnt be an issue.
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 21:58 |
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Iretep posted:what confuses me about this anime is why arent the parents getting worried when all the students who graduate end up having giant depts from gambling. If you've graduated, it's because you've actually made a poo poo-ton of money from gambling. That, or you've found... other ways... to become a financial asset to your family. That said, I also think that the cartoonishly huge debts are part of the show's deliberately-crafted atmosphere of unreality. The consequences of that kind of debt (beyond cheerfully fetishistic bullying) are not especially dwelt upon, the numbers are big enough to be meaningless, and all that remains is the simple pleasures of a rich rear end in a top hat being made poor, or a hero being given an impossible challenge to overcome with style, or just someone obsessing way too much over largely meaningless numbers and getting clowned for it (the same joke behind DBZ's power levels). If they actually dug deep into what this poo poo actually meant, or followed through with more obviously, immediately meaningful threats to the characters' safety (like someone actually getting a bullet in their brain) it wouldn't be fun any more. This, I think, is also why Midari got more harshly condemned than any other character so far. Pain and suffering aren't sexy - what's sexy is the threat of pain and suffering to make a situation more exciting. There's a reason the watchwords for BDSM are 'safe, sane and consensual' - you're supposed to create a fantasy, not a reality. Midari missed the point of both the game and the show, and ended up as a disgusting, pathetic joke whose injuries were more funny than serious. Darth Walrus fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Aug 22, 2017 |
# ? Aug 22, 2017 22:23 |
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Poulpe posted:Jesus Christ you weren't kidding They showed her crying earlier and after they showed the tears streaming from her face in the immediate shot after. Edit: It's been a few days so I may be misremembering.
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 22:30 |
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Brought To You By posted:Yeah, but the games themselves could be more interesting. I had only read up until the Debt adjustment games in the manga, but out of the four gambles so far that the debt game was the most interesting. And It's for the reason that it's not a game rigged in one sides favor that needs to be overcome. Unlike having games stacked in the houses favor that game was a straight 2v2 mind game and I loved it. No rigged decks, no magnets, just people playing cards and trying to out bluff each other. The problem with Kakegurui is that the rigged games have so little strategy that as a viewer it's obvious that there must some kind of trick involved, but they end up being predictable. The countertricks also ended up being boring. "Has perfect photographic memory" is a really lame way to end the Concentration gamble, *especially* when that's the exact same trick the other person used in the first place! Admittedly, they probably didn't have any better options to write themselves out of that one. The first episode made it pretty clear that the games were never the focus, and it's really about the mental breakdowns of the various characters as they realize that they've lost their rigged game. On that front they have delivered in spades and I am loving it.
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 23:21 |
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Smoking Crow posted:
This is contradicted in the scene immediately after they leave the Russian Roulette basement, where Yumeko takes obvious pleasure from a coin toss with a dude who frankly sucks at gambling for just about the lowest rear end stakes possible. Yumeko is pissed at Midari because she's being deliberately sloppy to throw the game. It isn't really gambling at all, she's just trying to con Yumeko into shooting her to fulfill a hosed up fantasy.
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 23:31 |
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paragon1 posted:Yumeko is pissed at Midari because she's being deliberately sloppy to throw the game. It isn't really gambling at all, she's just trying to con Yumeko into shooting her to fulfill a hosed up fantasy. Which is a fantastic interaction, I gotta say. The show might end up not following through on some of the ideas it's flirting with, but if it delivers more character dynamics like that it'll be good enough for me.
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 23:47 |
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Persobally, I think that what makes gambling interesting to watch tends to be seeing [/i]how[/i] characters cheat. It makes what's otherwise a game of 70% luck into an actually interesting face off between two characters, as they both try to catch the other person cheating and figure out how to utilize things to their own advantage. In this sense, I liked the rock paper scissors game, as seeing how Mary bent the rules to her favor was interesting, as was seeing how she was beaten by someone perceptive enough to read through the cheat. Drawing scissors by luck was a little lame though. The memory game sucked, because there wasn't really much strategy to it. "I have inhumanly good memory and learned every little mark that vanishes within a couple minutes" wasn't a very interesting strategy, and the counter of "my memory abilities are even more absurd, because I learned every mark within a few minutes" also blew. The gambling in this show is ok, generally, I think. Certainly not the reason to watch the show, but it's usually serviceable enough to be carried by the Crazy Bitches Being Thwarted By The One Bitch Who Dares To Be The Craziest Bitch Of All
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# ? Aug 22, 2017 23:50 |
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paragon1 posted:This is contradicted in the scene immediately after they leave the Russian Roulette basement, where Yumeko takes obvious pleasure from a coin toss with a dude who frankly sucks at gambling for just about the lowest rear end stakes possible. Yes that is what I'm saying. She's lower than the lowest because she wishes to be subjugated by the upper class and aids in her own oppression
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# ? Aug 23, 2017 00:05 |
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Can Of Worms posted:
They could have just made the marks not disappear. Honestly I kind of really didn't like that she has some inhuman memory because it kind of takes her character from "really good at gambling/cheating" to "absolutely perfect ubermensch who is great at everything" territory, which makes things much less interesting imo.
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# ? Aug 23, 2017 01:55 |
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Can Of Worms posted:Rigged games can be interesting to read; One Outs's Mars Stadium arc and Kaiji's Underground Dice/Mahjong Minefield arcs were fun to read precisely because the games were so stacked that the characters had to pull off some amazing tricks to win. (The ending of Mahjong Minefield is one of the best moments ever.) Alternatively, rigged games might have too much strategy or require equally unsatisfying ways of evening the odds. Factor in the complexity of the base game (say Mahjong) and the fact that readers might not be aware of the rules or significance of legal moves also places limits on what can be done to cheat. A lot of sleight of hand factors into series like Akagi and not having the cultural background to understand Mahjong does hiinder my ability to understand how certain rule changes rig the game outside of making points more available to one side. Haven't read Kaiji all the way through, but I've seen some instances of memorization and tile swapping as well from what I have. So while the characters in Akagi are supposed to be Mahjong geniuses, the skill that really becomes important is how well you can swap tiles making the relevant skillset those of a magician. Which is why I liked the debt adjustment game so much. The cheating was still there, but the odds were even for both parties. And the neutral student council, the fact that the deck was always fair helped make it a pure battle of wits and luck rather than who can grab the best cards for themselves. Everything worked in my book, and like I said, the game was setup so that readers that were aware of the flexibility of what "declaring your debt" meant were ready for the big reveal. And the author set us up for that as well when the guy said he did as such with his friend so all the clues were there.
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# ? Aug 23, 2017 14:23 |
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While it has a real wet fart of an ending, the games in Liar Game are pretty uniformly fantastic. The rules of a given game aren't inherently in one person's favor, it's all about finding strategies and loopholes within those rules. That said, they also almost all involve way more people (for social engineering types of things), and are also pretty lengthy arcs unto themselves. I know it has a handful of shorter, two-person games (there was a Russian Roulette-style thing that comes to mind), but not a lot. I think Kakegurui's games are mostly just too short to be super engrossing.
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# ? Aug 23, 2017 16:41 |
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The Lord of Hats posted:While it has a real wet fart of an ending, the games in Liar Game are pretty uniformly fantastic. The rules of a given game aren't inherently in one person's favor, it's all about finding strategies and loopholes within those rules. That said, they also almost all involve way more people (for social engineering types of things), and are also pretty lengthy arcs unto themselves. I know it has a handful of shorter, two-person games (there was a Russian Roulette-style thing that comes to mind), but not a lot. I think Kakegurui's games are mostly just too short to be super engrossing. Liar Game also has the problem of the protagonist being an absolutely irredeemably worthless idiot. Like she doesn't even learn or get better or pull off a win or anything, she's just bad at everything.
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# ? Aug 23, 2017 16:50 |
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Do all gambling manga have unsatisfying endings? Gamble fish went "and everyone learnt the error of their ways and adventure continues", And Liar Game went "and the gov't gave everyone the middle finger and censored everything the end."
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# ? Aug 23, 2017 17:30 |
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AnoHito posted:Liar Game also has the problem of the protagonist being an absolutely irredeemably worthless idiot. Like she doesn't even learn or get better or pull off a win or anything, she's just bad at everything. She's the protagonist to about the same extent that Ryota is the protagonist of Kakegurui. Ryota is better than she is, but neither one is the person doing the cool stuff.
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# ? Aug 23, 2017 17:36 |
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Was Liar Game the one with a villain that talked poo poo wrt Hitler being a no-good punk that couldn't hack it in the real world?
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# ? Aug 23, 2017 17:46 |
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The Lord of Hats posted:She's the protagonist to about the same extent that Ryota is the protagonist of Kakegurui. Ryota is better than she is, but neither one is the person doing the cool stuff. But unlike Ryota, she is the primary focus a lot of the time. And like you said, she's worse.
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# ? Aug 23, 2017 18:36 |
I didn't feel like Kanzaki really brought Liar Game down at all, and her presence in the series is constantly being balanced with Akiyama.
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# ? Aug 23, 2017 22:02 |
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AnoHito posted:Liar Game also has the problem of the protagonist being an absolutely irredeemably worthless idiot. Like she doesn't even learn or get better or pull off a win or anything, she's just bad at everything. Wark Say posted:Was Liar Game the one with a villain that talked poo poo wrt Hitler being a no-good punk that couldn't hack it in the real world? Annointed posted:Do all gambling manga have unsatisfying endings? Gamble fish went "and everyone learnt the error of their ways and adventure continues", And Liar Game went "and the gov't gave everyone the middle finger and censored everything the end."
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# ? Aug 23, 2017 22:25 |
The One Outs scans jump in on the middle of an arc with huge changes from where the anime left off so I probably wouldn't bother with it.
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# ? Aug 23, 2017 22:32 |
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Poulpe posted:Hate to derail, but I tried watching Kaiji after reading about it in this thread, and hated it. Unless the anime is significantly worse than the manga, this is a really bizarre opinion. Like, Kaiji certainly isn't flawless or anything, but at the very least it has more interesting games and characters. One thing to keep in mind is that the characters all freaking out and crying and stuff is just sorta a stylistic thing Nobuyuki Fukumoto does. Exaggerating emotions is sorta a thing in his comics.
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# ? Aug 23, 2017 22:48 |
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the protagonist of kaiji isn't inept or a moron ever, that's certainly a weird opinion to have. kaiji's about people being really depressed and their realistic reactions to being put into insane, sadistic situations, while kakegurui is more about people being comically insane, so they really shouldn't be compared at all beyond the merits of their gambles.
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# ? Aug 23, 2017 22:54 |
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ninjewtsu posted:the protagonist of kaiji isn't inept or a moron ever, that's certainly a weird opinion to have. The very first thing he does is get duped by a scam artist (twice in a row) on the life-or-death murder death cruise. The second thing he does is find the man whose debt got him into this situation, team up with him instead of reporting "hey the dude that vanished from his debt is here, maybe make him pay it instead of me, you already have him" The third thing he does is find a third member for his rag tag team of rock paper scissors misfits, who immediately fucks him over, and decides to remain a team because the power of friendship And then, despite it being made clear that he is a garbage gambler, and also that everyone on that boat is there because they're a poo poo gambler/general idiot/loser, he is suddenly a brilliant gambler with all kinds of in depth strategies and insights about rock paper scissors, and spends eight goddamn episodes enacting and failing at crackpot schemes because anime. I could go on, but really it just didn't click for me, and I found myself more irritated than intrigued. Poulpe fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Aug 23, 2017 |
# ? Aug 23, 2017 23:19 |
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Poulpe posted:The very first thing he does is get duped by a scam artist (twice in a row) on the life-or-death murder death cruise. this had more to do with him being trusting than him being an idiot Poulpe posted:
i don't think there's any reason to believe that the boat organizers would care, or even give him the opportunity to have such grievances be listened to Poulpe posted:The third thing he does is find a third member for his rag tag team of rock paper scissors misfits, who immediately fucks him over, and decides to remain a team because the power of friendship again, kaiji's downfall is the human desire to trust others, not any actual ineptitude on his part. the show also goes on to poo poo all over kaiji, because the power of friendship ends up being a pretty bad idea in a cutthroat situation, so i dunno if that's supposed to be a criticism of the show being naive or something (it is kaiji who is naive. he is naive and gets taken advantage of for it, but being naive doesn't preclude someoen from also being able to figure out gambling) Poulpe posted:And then, despite it being made clear that he is a garbage gambler, and also that everyone on that boat is there because they're a poo poo gambler/general idiot/loser, he is suddenly a brilliant gambler with all kinds of in depth strategies and insights about rock paper scissors, and spends eight goddamn episodes enacting and failing at crackpot schemes because anime. when is it made clear he's a garbage gambler? i thought he was thrown in the boat because he slashes people's loving tires for fun. also, there's lots of people on the boat who are there because they're really good at gambling. they're the ones who've been there multiple times, one of them betrays kaiji like immediately. the people like kaiji are there as prey, with the good gamblers there as hunters. the chances of someone like kaiji, who is in massive debts but also smart enough to be really good at gambling, showing up is a big part of the reason why the boat exists int he first place: it's entertaining for the assholes who own the boat and like to watch. he spends eight episodes enacting and failing at schemes because it's an economy as well as rock paper scissors, so there's a lot of concepts and exploits to explore and be shown the downfall of (kaiji, being someone unfamiliar with this kind of gambling, runs through all of them as he learns about the system, and constantly fails because having a protagonist that rides by the skin of their teeth rather than become rich in a single episode makes for a much more interesting show) really though, kaiji as a show is about the psychology of humans. kaiji is a trusting person and that's exploited several times, and he learns to exploit people that he's able to read too.
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# ? Aug 23, 2017 23:34 |
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# ? May 23, 2024 17:53 |
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ninjewtsu posted:when is it made clear he's a garbage gambler? i thought he was thrown in the boat because he slashes people's loving tires for fun. Probably it's different in the manga, but the opening scene of the anime is him failing at a card game, and expositing that he fills his time with "cheap booze and gambling" (implying he isn't successful there, either.) He slashes tires, but the Yakuza dude basically goes "don't worry, you owe us enough already that that doesn't matter." His actual debt is because he cosigned on coworker's loan which his coworker then ghosted on. I honestly don't remember any mention of people being on the boat for any other reason than being in incredible debt. In fact the Yakuza dude has this whole speech about how everyone there is a massive loser and failure, so that angle is probably revealed later in the show. Perhaps it's just the trust thing that aggravated me, watching him plunge into the same pitfall over and over again. All the same, those ten episode could totally have been pinched down into four or five if all of the anime expository filler were cut. ninjewtsu posted:really though, kaiji as a show is about the psychology of humans. kaiji is a trusting person and that's exploited several times, and he learns to exploit people that he's able to read too. I think I can agree, but I must have stopped just before this happens, because the whole RPS arc was just "getting hosed and loving myself."
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# ? Aug 23, 2017 23:58 |