Gamble Fish

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Alternative Titles

Japanese: GAMBLE FISH

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 19

Chapters: 168

Status: Finished

Published: Feb 1, 2007 to Jul 15, 2010

Genres: Mystery, Ecchi

Themes: Harem, High Stakes Game, Psychological, School, Strategy Game

Demographic: Shounen

Serialization: Shounen Champion (Weekly)

Authors: Yamane, Kazutoshi (Art), Aoyama, Hiromi (Story)

Statistics

Score: 7.20¹ (scored by 7,137 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #6177²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1321

Members: 15,750

Favorites: 200

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Wikipedia

7.20

Ranked #6177Popularity #1321Members 15,750

MangaShounen Champion (Weekly)Yamane, Kazutoshi (Art), Aoyama, Hiromi (Story)

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Volumes: /19

Chapters: /168

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Synopsis

The story is set at Shishidou, a school attended by rich and elite people. Tom Shirasagi, a gambler, is a mysterious new transfer student who has come from a public school (instead of a prestigious private one) and faces the elitist environment. There, he declares a challenge toward any student and claims he will bring to ruin the whole school through a series of gambling matches. Nobody knows why he has come to that school or what the real motivations behind his actions are.

During any match, Tom shows off all of his unique coolness and ability; he employs a wide range of tricks, both psychological and physical, to ensure his victory. In any game, you will constantly ask how he's planning to win, why he's really doing certain things, and what's really going on. At the end of the matches, the tricks are revealed, and they all work in real life, even if they do require one to be highly skilled or lucky in order to perform them.

The story centers around the various matches he undertakes and the interactions between the various characters, like Mika Shishidou, the beautiful granddaughter of the school headmaster, who is highly intelligent but contemptuous and superb, or Abidani, the vampiric looking dorm superintendent and main villain (for now) in the series, who has a sadistic personality and whose goal is to make Tom leave his school (or to get him killed).

As the story unfolds, more and more about Tom's past is revealed, leading to an unpredictable turn of events.

(Source: MU)

More characters
Characters

Shirasagi, Tomu

Main

Abidani, Reiji

Main

Tsukiyono, Yuka

Main

Kimura, Natsumi

Main

Mizuhara, Kazuki

Main

Omaha, King

Supporting

Hanasaki, Mayo

Supporting

Gokijima

Supporting

Akino, Megumi

Supporting

Shirasagi, Yumeichirou

Supporting

Reviews

Aug 30, 2023

hexashadow13

Recommended

tl;dr: A manga held up mainly by how absurdly it’s games play out but that gets less absurd and thus less interesting over time.

Gamble Fish is a manga about a boy named Tom who begins attending Shishidou Academy. His reasons for attending are completely different from a normal student in that his goal is to dominate the academy through gambling matches. There’s an overarching plot surrounding why he’s doing this that has to do with the conflict between the clan that Tom is a part of, the Shirasagi clan, and the Shishidou clan who runs the academy. The plot also involves him searching for his ... missing father and his rivalry with Abidani, a devilish gambler involved in his disappearance. These plot threads do have a significant presence throughout the manga, however the story flows pretty badly and feels really random. On top of that, the ending is half assed in that it does kind of resolve things, but in a way that leaves a lot still left open. Thus, overall, I would say that the overarching story in this manga is pretty weak.

In terms of characters, there’s also very little depth. The cast is really flat and no one has any sort of character arc. The protagonist is Tom and he’s always good. The overarching antagonist is Abidani and he’s always cartoonishly evil. Tom’s has a male best friend Mizuhara who’s mostly just a pervert that serves as comic relief. And then there’s a host of girls that fall in love with Tom, generally after he beats them in some sort of game. I guess watching them all fall in love with Tom and then act as his groupies is kind of amusing, but there’s no relationship development beyond the moment they fall in love, and there’s not really any romantic fluff either. Thus, regardless of what you’re looking for in terms of characters, I doubt you’ll find it here.

As such, the main thing holding up the manga is the games, and since the vast majority of the manga is just the series of games that Tom gets involved in, the games do manage to hold up the manga to a degree. The reason it’s only to a degree is because while the games start out reasonably good, I felt they declined over the course of the manga. The first half of the manga could be considered the Academy arc. Here the games involve a lot of cheating and tricks. It gets kind of absurd, in that cheating seems to be perfectly fine as seen in that even when things that are literally impossible to happen without cheating are happening, there’s no penalty to the cheater. Rather, the focus is on Tom trying to figure out how the cheating is happening and coming up with ways to get around that, often by also cheating. It can be quite nonsensical, but it’s pretty fun.

The second half of the manga could be considered the Macau arc. While there’s still a bit of the cheating focused part towards the beginning, when the games fully get into the swing of things the games are much more tightly controlled, so cheating isn’t possible and thus there’s a larger focus on actually playing the games properly. However, the commitment to being absurd doesn’t decrease so instead the focus is on crazy things that are technically allowed, such as throwing dice so hard that the corner gets stuck in the table and thus multiple sides are facing up. This absurdity is still kind of fun, but it’s not as fun as the stuff in the school arc, and the games themselves have never been written all that great in terms of actual logic and strategy, so it’s a decline.

Towards the final stretch it goes even further in focusing even more heavily on the games themselves, essentially mahjong and blackjack, with the only crazy stuff happening being stuff with ridiculous chances consistently being relied on and happening, such as getting blackjack a dozen times in a row. To be honest, this section lacked what made the games in most of the manga fun and was thus just straight up a slog. That combined with how the manga drops the ball on the overarching plot and characters results in the manga overall ending on a pretty low note and not being very satisfying.

I will also note that I really liked the art. It’s certainly really rough in terms of both style and quality so it definitely took some getting used to, but it has a lot of personality and great design work that was used really well so ultimately I enjoyed it quite a bit.

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Apr 3, 2016

CrossWiredGarden

Mixed Feelings

Story:
So this story starts off a bit strangely. As most people are use to the characters being of high school age, Tomu and his friends are actually all of middle school age. The story was well thought out with a lot of twists and turns. Of course it also made you feel smart as Tomu explained each one of the tricks to the games. The only downside to the story is when the games started to get a little TOO complex. It really took away from how Tomu really was outplaying his opponents and generally just lead to 'yay, he won, I guess?'

Art:
I personally am ...

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Oct 17, 2015

Nervin

Not Recommended

In a school composed of elitist students, which is dominated by gambling matches with very high stakes, Shirasagi, the mysterious transfer student, declares war upon the school by stating that he will bring ruin to it through a series of gambling matches. Who is he? What are his motives? Gamble Fish appears to use an interesting concept, but fails to transmit a coherent and realistic storyline with uninteresting characters.

The story of Gamble Fish is simple: Shirasagi, an extreme gambler, who transfers to the famous Shishidou elite school where he challenges students in his conquest to bring ruin to it. As stated earlier, there is a ... gist to the matches: the stakes are extremely high. The bets ranges from "harmless" unaffordable amounts of money to own body parts, subjection to slavery in case of loss, even their own lives. What makes these confrontations even more interesting is, that as the story progresses, more complicated games surges with intricate "death" constructions.

This appears to be appealing, but there problems associated with it: the variety of games remain steady, but the various deathtrap constructions do not. In fact, the pacing in which these are introduced throughout the manga is fine for the beginning of it, but this has as problem that it is not possible to keep up with this pacing. This causes to lose the novelty in these traps, consequently a bit in the games as well.

To keep the readers interested, the author decides to introduce a different direction for the manga into supernatural powers and myths nonsense, as well as introducing military forces in a game; this is where all realism left. This was a rather big drawback, as so far the mangaka managed to create a somewhat realistic story progression with believable matches, even though being won through sheer luck or plot convenience. Going back to the story, the author manages to represent an image of what he considers how a real gambler is: ruthless, unwavering, knowledgeable and with a lot of guts, which was a positive point to the manga.

The characters of Gamble Fish are varied, be it directors or tengu, yet lack any depth. Shirasagi is your typical badass shōnen character who is good in everything he does, is good looking and has immensely success with the ladies. He seems to have an intriguing past, yet little of it is displayed. Throughout the series of matches Shirasagi defeats countless opponents, be it male or female, yet all females fall in love for the protagonist for no real reason, even for harem standards it's pretty unreasonable.

There is Mizuhara, whose only purpose is to highlight the main character and remark and explain the games; then all the other females, who basically have no personality at all, being the only distinguishable feature their character design. Some background story has been provided, but no expansion onto it is provided. The villain Abidani was the most interesting character, being a ruthless and insane gambler, which further enhances the ruthlessness and craziness of the manga.

Gamble Fish's art style is distinct and clean, yet character designs have the same facial designs, and thus don't really provide any real distinction, besides of me personally not being a fan of the art. Nevertheless, the facial expressions alongside with good shading, makes the art shine, though some inconsistencies can be found.

Now the question is whether Gamble Fish is enjoyable. Yes, it is, to a certain degree. But is it good? No, it is not. It tried to display a realistic storyline which was accomplished in the beginning, however with the unsatisfying change in narration in order to keep the manga entertaining, as well as over the top challenges just didn't leave any satisfaction. Characters are dull and shallow with little development, with a debatable art style. Recommendable if you're fan of ecchi/harem with over the top games, though even on these terms it fails to a degree.

Thank you for reading.

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