Tobaku Datenroku Kaiji: One Poker-hen

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You know, I will not write a huge review about this wonderful work. I could write a huge one, but you can’t do without spoilers there, and I have no right to spoil and I don’t want to. So my review will be the shortest of all that you will see here. I'll just say that I really like it, I watch it until now and I get goosebumps from every part. Sometimes I care more about characters than real people. It happens. I love everything in such a cool style. So my review is simple: watch and you will not regret.

Warnings :
- This review contains some major spoilers that will surely blow you enjoyment, so make sure to read the first part if you haven't read this manga yet.
- Sorry if you find some errors in my English.


- General review without spoilers :
Finally, Kaiji's gambling life reach it's climax, with the inhuman devilish Kazuya that have showed up in the kaiji's series since the 3rd part. The story takes part just after the end of Kazuya's 'dinner' while watching the true friendship gamble with Kaiji, when Mario and Chang ended up being betrayed by what they were calling a friend, and being rescued by ... Kaiji by giving a 70 million yen, after that Kaiji decides to take them as spectators for his long awaited gamble in the endless night.
In this gamble, Kaiji fate will be decided by the goddess 'Mother Sophie' (a machine), the referee and dealer of cards for this gamble, the minimum betting amount of this gamble is 200 million yen, where basically Kaiji have the possibility to bet a couple of times in the worst case.
In this part, our fateful game that will decide the fate of Kaiji is named One-Poker, in general a game where the cards are the same poker cards excluding the joker, divided in 2 type of cards Up and Down. The cards from 8 and above, the faces cards and the ace are Up, the rest is Down, each player have 2 cards, and will be served a one in next round from mother Sophie's hand, the biggest card can win the weaker one. Down card is automatically losing to an up, expect that an ace can be defeated by a 2, in each round you can bet at least 200 million represented as a life, the game will not stop until the total lost of a part.
What makes this whole manga entertaining and special is the psychological non-stop war in every part of it, leaving the reader in a doubt of everything, the continuous comparison of every situation in a realistic way, everything in Kaiji's betting games is unpredicted excluding the end, you will be at lost in every chapter, what's exactly going to happen next, every round of this One-Poker is a life or death one, the mangaka has gathered all of Kaiji's momentum in all these years and betted in an once in lifetime game, you won't complain even if you want to.
The drawing didn't degrade at all even if the mangaka is continuously become an old man, but continuously giving the impression that I still can evolve in every part of the Kaiji series, and what makes it more and more enjoyable expressions and way of reactions drew by the author, reflecting some realistic sides of human like greediness and evil.
This story is one of the most enjoyable games manga I have even read, and the characters development makes it a good one.



- Second part of my review (WARNING SPOILERS):

This fifth part was unexpectedly good one, that made me enjoy it the most, especially when Kaiji was on the verge of winning the game and getting all the 2,400,000,000 Yen for himself, but suddenly losing all the momentum and turning the table upside down by Kazuya, where Kaiji loses all his lives and is cornered, but after that with his useless struggle, he pass through all the calamities/hardships and return the strike a double to Kazuya.
Kazuya loses the bet for not believing Kaiji that he will surely lose, and by betting his life, it will be sacrificed by the executioner mother Sophie. Here where Kazuya will be saved by Kaiji and at the same time the end of this part.
The end was definitely predictable but at the same time it was an emotional one, cause after all this time when Kazuya doubted all the people surrounding him and calling them hypocrites, he finally puts his believes in someone like Kaiji who was belittled by him. And in all this part, the author has given us a bunch of new manners that didn't even exist in the previous parts, one of them was the true friendship, cause a you may notice, Kaiji was always betrayed by his so-called friends, but here, it was the contrary, where Mario and Chang had given up there own lifes to save Kaiji.
Truly I was expecting the continuation of the story... But at least it was a good part, that was overflowed with art given to us by the author.
And hopefully waiting for his next gambling works... As I was always doing.

The follow-up to the abstract gamble of part four is a rehash of E-Card from part one. While many may praise the stakes and mind-games between Kaiji and Kazuya, there is really not much difference between the similar stakes and mind-games present in part one. E-Card held up because it was a short arc that complimented a game with such trivial mechanics. The meta-game and twists revealed themselves quickly and resolved themselves quick enough to not lose steam. This rehash suffers by repeating the same game with a blackjack veneer. The gamble is repetative and lacking in any ingenious or imaginitive cheats or meta-game. The ... cheats and meta-game are exactly what you'd predict in a blackjack themed card game and the stakes can't really hold much suspense since the maximum stakes have already been played since part one. What kept me reading Kaiji after the adrenaline-fueled stakes of part one have been the puzzle-like nature of the gambles and the imaginitive cleverness of the meta-game, such as the rock paper scissors twist, defeating the bog, or part four's psychological game. Dedicating an entire part to a gamble that is as dull as you'd expect watching a blackjack game to be was a total misstep in the series. Fortunately, there is some interesting backstory for Kazuya to break up the monotony and it does set the stage for part six which would break this tired formula with a refreshing deconstruction of the gamble by making life itself a gamble.