Gyakkyou Burai Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor

After one of his coworkers fails to repay a debt, apathetic bum Kaiji Itou is pressured by loan sharks to settle the large sum of cash. Since Kaiji has little money and no future prospects of his own, he is unable to return what his colleague borrowed. Faced with massive financial burdens, Kaiji is given an offer to board the illustrious Espoir—it is said that "one night aboard the ship, and all of your debts will be paid."

What seems like a simple night of gambling quickly turns into a game of strategy and betrayal. With the losers of the tournament being subjected to a backbreaking life of indebted servitude, Kaiji must choose his actions—and allies—carefully. However, this is only the beginning of a series of gambles that will wager Kaiji's life, testing the full extent of his wits and will to survive.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Itou, Kaiji Main

Hagiwara, Masato Japanese

Tonegawa, Yukio Supporting

Hakuryuu Japanese

Narrator Supporting

Tachiki, Fumihiko Japanese

Hyoudou, Kazutaka Supporting

Tsukayama, Masane Japanese

Endou, Yuuji Supporting

Uchida, Naoya Japanese

Ishida, Kouji Supporting

Yanaka, Hiroshi Japanese

Sahara, Makoto Supporting

Komoto, Masahiro Japanese

Andou, Mamoru Supporting

Sakurai, Toshiharu Japanese

Funai, Jouji Supporting

Ishikawa, Hideo Japanese

Furuhata, Takeshi Supporting

Matsumoto, Yasunori Japanese

Tamura, Manabu Producer

Nakatani, Toshio Producer

Takahashi, Ryouhei Producer

Kobayashi, Mikiko Assistant Producer

Reviews

Dec 9, 2007

Torisunanohokori

Recommended

This review was originally written after the first arc, and has since been revised to cover my opinions of the entire show, with minimal spoilers.

Story: Itoh Kaiji, a bum with 3 million yen worth of debt gets into a gambling cruise to pay off his debts. The game played on the cruise is Gentei Janken (Restricted Rock-Paper-Scissors), where the players get four cards of each type and battle it out. What's the catch? Several things; each card can only be used once, cards can be bought off of other players, con men abound, and losing forces one into the vaguely established but ... horrible "other room". Also, one must not only break even in the actual matches, but also earn enough through the buying and selling of "stars" (3 of which equate a trip off the ship) to pay off their debts. A simple premise which gets expounded on to a cleverly intense degree. That, mind you, is the first arc. The later arcs follow up with themes on society, and it gets philosophical in a gritty sort of way. But, unfortunately, the"ending" is not anything of the sort, devoid of climax. The last 4 episode arc feels a bit tacked on, and leaves season 2 wide open.

Art: I looked at the promo picture, and I thought one thing: Elves. These noses are big, and the faces look pretty weird at first. However, once one gets past the first five minutes, it really becomes apparent just how expressive these faces can be, as the characters go through one emotional crisis after another.

Sound: Nice intro, nice ending. Where the sound really shines, though, is the intense scenes. It's well integrated into the rest of the show's experience - so much so that I didn't notice it except after watching a second or third time. However, once I did look into the more dramatic half of the soundtrack, I found it a fairly nice score.

However, soundtrack isn't the best part of this show's auditory arsenal either. That honor goes to the best voice acting I've ever heard. It may sound silly, but I have never heard anyone cry as effectively as Yanaka Hiroshi's character. Ever. The voice acting really captures the gritty, dreamless atmosphere which the show exhudes. Also, an extremely dramatic narration often helps the story along, and helps the viewer make sense of sometimes subtle mindgames.

Character: Sheeit- there's just too much to say. Men (absolutely no women in this show) betting their lives can make for pretty deep plots, and this is perhaps one of the very best. Kaiji himself is a normally hopeless person whose survival instincts lead him to fight off the system intended to break him down, and he takes himself down a number of pegs to help people who have nothing to give him (and occasionally stab him in the back). The rest of the cast of characters is a bit less scrupulous, and Kaiji suffers three major betrayals by con men and friends alike in the first nine episodes. In the antecedent arcs 2-4, shit hits the fan for our hero, though he is never betrayed after arc 1. Plenty of manly tears make the whole process very entertaining.

A major part of Kaiji that I feel I shoud mention is it's haves vs. have-nots dynamic. Rich "haves" are constantly responsible for the suffering of impoverished "have-nots", and situation which naturally causes tearful frustration for the have-nots. At times the narrator's observations of both sides sound like Hobbesian logic.

Enjoyment: A couple of major highlights: fistfights, naked wrestling behind a one-way mirror, and a fat guy being kicked in the corpulence. The presentation is terrific, dramatic, and bold. Just be aware that, when the chips are down and everything is at stake, there's a very real possibility that Kaiji will lose...

Overall: Kaiji=Pwn+Max Drama-A Decent Ending. If you don't want to be dissappointed, stop watching at episode 22 and wait for season 2 before watching episodes 23-26. There's no reason to skip the first 22, though. If you have any free time, what are you doing still reading this review? Watch it now!

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Apr 30, 2010

ExDeath

Mixed Feelings

Kaiji was a very interesting series for me, in that I found it to be so incredibly hit-or-miss, it's difficult to review.

First, there are many pros. The art is the first thing you will notice, but don't let the cover fool you; this anime is pretty well-drawn. The style fits, and you won't even notice anything unusual after 5-10 minutes of watching. The music and ambient sounds are some of the best I've come across, as well as most (but definitely not all) of the voice acting. This comes across to give the series a very creepy and believable atmosphere.

The story is ... basically what you would expect. It's probably the reason you want to watch Kaiji, if you're a fan of Battle Royale or Shadow Star Narutaru-type tragidrama. It also has many elements of a mystery or puzzle-solving anime that were rather enjoyable to unravel. As for shock value, there are a few disturbing moments, but it's not nearly as shocking as I had hoped, so I was let down in that department. Still, I found it very enjoyable for its premise, and I was not disappointed by the gambles or the characters and the way they handle their adversity.

Now, the cons. The BIG cons. First, every arc is way too long. The reason for this is mostly the narrator, who will start to annoy you right around the second episode. Rather than allow you, the viewer, to grasp Kaiji's situations with your own eyes, heart, and common sense, he will explain everything for you in the most obvious and melodramatic way possible, using similes and metaphors that will remind you of bad 40's radio programs. Oh, and each of these bad metaphors is displayed onscreen as a literal interpretation (Kaiji leaping across an imaginary crevice to overcome his fears, for example), to make you feel even more condescended. Subtlety is something that was mastered by series like Evangelion and Higurashi, and it is most certainly not present here.

Secondly, the crying. There is way too much crying. I don't mind the dialogue, but it just always happens to be accompanied by crying, even when the situation doesn't call for tears. There's even happy crying! This may seem minor, but combined with the cheesy narrator and long anticlimactic story arcs, it's very distracting and only serves to lessen my interest in what happens.

So, there you have it. I love gambling, tragedy, and dialogue, so of course I enjoyed this series. In certain moments I was feeling true fear out of sympathy for the characters, and excitement for what was to come. Unfortunately, the number of times I had to look away or do something else because I was bored/annoyed took some points away from what really could have been one of my favorite animes. I don't see how anyone can give this a 10, since the narrator alone drags it down to 8 for me. I think most "normal" anime fans should probably avoid it, and go try Monster or Higurashi instead.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Feb 16, 2017

basilevs27

Not Recommended

---The review contains spoilers---


3/10. Explanation:

Starts off strange to say the least. A young man is deep in debt and is being given a chance to repay it by boarding a cruise ship to do the 'gambling' (?). At this point I was already a bit wary, because why would a loan company give an opportunity to repay the debt and get rich on top of that to somebody who owns them money? Surely that's not a profitable thing to do. Why not collect the money from them or make them repay somehow, idk. On the ship though, this series becomes amazing, and I mean ... top-tier material, the plot is well thought out, the mechanics of exploiting the faults of the restricted rock-paper-scissors are very well done, there's betrayal involved, competition is dynamic with worthy opponents, kaiji's brain is being turned inside out from all the stimulation and he really becomes a much much better gambler after that, who is able to think outside the box and quickly adapt to various difficulties he faces on later in the series.

However after that this anime completely destroys itself. The so called 'gambling' is no longer gambling but rather a selection of sadistic game for pleasure of the wealthy. By the way I hate this trope, the rich that make poor risk their lives to do crazy stupid things for money, which involves gore and death that supposedly gives them great pleasure somehow. This is completely unnatural, this goes against human common sense of what is pleasurable and what is merely disgusting, and eventhough such twisted people might indeed exist, there would be nothing of such scale of cruelty that is portrayed in the show.

The biggest issue I have with the show is not the fact that 2nd half of it is pure garbage from the logical point of view, or that the 'gambling' games are unoriginal and not intellectual in any way, but rather the pacing. It's so fucking slow it's unreal, the 'card-game' arc with Tonegawa lasts forever for no apparent reason, the narrator repeats everything at least THREE times that is obvious to absolutely anybody watching who has at least 1/4 of the mean IQ value. The series was dragged out for so long that I genuinely started to lose the feeling of tension and suspense that you develop when engaged with the series. About 5 episodes before completion I was so annoyed that i wanted to drop the show despite being so close to the finish line.

Another thing that annoyed me was how the outside people were brought into the plot. There were a bunch of crippled men (after the disgusting sadistic 'gambling' competition) who were cheering Kaiji on and helping him moraly and providing first-aid. WHY????????????? All those delinquents hated each others guts, treated each other like trash during the 'cruise ship' arc, and then they suddenly developed friendly feelings for kaiji when he won the 20million from Tonegawa. Were they just after the money? Perhaps, but then they had plenty of opportunities to steal the money whilst kaiji was busy, but they didnt. But even if they weren't after the money why was kaiji so willing to trust them after being betrayed so many times in the first part of the series?

The show is simply put illogical, everybody acts irrationally, completely against what real-life humans would do in most of the situations. I can't stress that enough. This is a show about gambling after all, psychological interactions needed to be thought out properly, but instead we get this. It rendered the show completely useless.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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