A word of caution before getting into this review: There will be minor spoilers.
I thought that overall, Kakegurui was pretty damn fun and enjoyable. 6 may seem like a bad score, but I think it's fair. I scored it based on what it says by it, and it means "Fine". Perfectly how I would describe this when I look at this as objectively as possible in my review, and not out of pure enjoyment (else it'd be a 7 or 8, to be honest). Now with that out of the way, into the review.
CHARACTERS
Let's start out with the characters. The majority of
...
the notable characters are female. I find this rather unique in a gambling anime since this very rarely happens. The majority of characters also show a crazy side, most of them being female since, as I've said before, most of the notable characters are female. While this isn't anything new, it's understandable since this is gambling themed and gambling can make people go nuts, and this sort of side can add to the excitement or fun of the series, it can also understandably get either dull or ridiculous at times, more likely than not being ridiculous since it often displays most of the characters' crazy side in an exaggerated fashion. There's also one who is just insane all-around, which is the one with the eye-patch, as you probably already would have expected when judging sorely on her appearance in the opening. With how she is, I sometimes wonder to myself why she is even allowed to attend the school. Even when this trait often comes in with the characters, there's quite a good number of characters who either have character development or depth. This even includes Ryouta Suzui, the male main character and one of the most "normal" notable characters of the series. Despite the fact that he mostly sits around and watch the games that the main character (Yumeko) participates in while asking and answering questions, even he will gain bits of a type of character development over the course of the series.
However, there is one thing I noticed about the characters, and that all you pretty much ever see are teenagers. Not really any adults. That's not to say that there aren't any in the series, because there are, but with the exception of the one and only teacher you'll ever see that appeared for a very short time and practically the only time in the very first episode, the few that appear in flashbacks, and a few of them talking a little bit to a character in one episode, there's practically no adults shown to be present. I find this very weird. Who is running the school? Is that person or are those group of people running it indirectly? If they are, do they even care much as to what is going on around the school, like what the student council president making such a system for every student in it to follow? We never know these answers.
Now let's move onto the main character, Yumeko. She is your typical character in gambling series that is very good or intelligent that rarely loses. In fact, Yumeko is the usual "mysterious transfer student that is surprising good at what is essential to this series" general trope. She's also the usual crazy girl trope when it comes to gambling, having traits like being aroused in a few of them. So you can see that she's quite the typical character in numerous ways. Despite being crazy in gambles, she has likable qualities, the main thing being that she's very kind and actually cares about her friends. There are quite a number of things that I find about her that is more unique or enjoyable to me as the main character. One thing is the fact that she doesn't mainly gamble for the sake of others, because if she did, she would have aimed to defeat the student council in order to stop the sort of corrupted system and to put an end to the corrupted student council. As it usually goes with mysterious main characters, you will learn more about Yumeko as the series progresses and understand even more about her character. The series will unwrap more and more about her personality, which is what the ending theme of this series symbolizes. You will learn things like how she enjoys both herself and her opponent feeling the same pain while both having the chances of winning or losing, and since she likes to risk as much as she could, she'll make sure that her opponent does the same, which would bring great worry to them. The way she feels and witnesses pain in the gambles is full of pleasure. Pretty much a type of hedonist, in short. With these types of numerous aspects of her character, you will understand why many other characters who has a crazy side and are in such a crazy environment will even deem her as being insane, which includes the one who is pretty much completely insane all-around.
However, you will only learn the mysteries of her personality. You will not learn much when it comes to her background. It'll unravel a little bit of it at one point in the series, but nothing more than that, and it doesn't look like we'll be able to get anymore than that in the anime series due to how the series ends with it's own, anime-original ending (so it looks like there won't be a second season, though I could be wrong on this). You'll have to go through the original source of it all, the manga of this series (which is still on-going by the time I've made this review) if you want to possibly know more about her background.
STORY AND SETTING
Next, I talk about the story and setting. The story is simple to follow and know what is going on. Nothing really complicated. The premise, the general setting's rules and what they need to do in order to survive around the school, and even the games themselves are easy to follow. As the anime progresses, you will learn more and more about the school and some things behind the main character. The pacing, for the most part, is also fine. The roller coaster keeps on going nonstop without anything feeling slow-paced, and, for most of what is going on, not rushed at all. Surprisingly, even though this series is filled with pretty looking high-school girls, there's not that much fanservice, or at least anything as strong as the ones in the opening and ending. That's pretty much the most you'll get when it comes to fanservice. There's quite a number of teases, and there are a few scenes like bouncing boobs and boob grabs, but they are very minor in numbers. In fact, as far as I remember, the manga of this has a lot more fanservice than this adaption of it.
Despite all of this however, when you think about it, the story is pretty basic and average. Not really much special, even though there are some nice twists here and there, this in a gambling high school, and the main character doesn't gamble for justice. The usual mysterious transfer student who turns out to be good at what is essential to the series is gambling and defeating anyone standing in the main character's way while aiming to challenge the big-bad is what you can pretty much say about what is going on the whole time. There's also the fact that the setting is literally only in high school. There is almost nowhere else they go. Nearly everything that happens in this series happens only at that exact same school. So if you're expecting them to go literally anywhere else outside of the school grounds even a decent amount of times, then you'll be disappointed. In fact, you would very rarely even see them even going outside of school. You will never see any of the characters' homes. It's pretty weird, as if it wasn't weird enough that you don't really see any adults.
The tone of the series is quite dark, but not that serious, to be honest. It is marked as a drama series and definitely does have some serious moments, along with very dangerous and risky elements, but still not that serious overall. I would say that despite how dark it clearly is, it mainly portrays itself as being lively and fun, so if you are expecting this to be something pretty serious, you might be disappointed.
As an adaption of the manga, it has done pretty well for the most part. It has been extremely faithful to the manga while doing a few things in it's own styles, although they did skip a notable amount of things, and the final episode went into it's own original direction to end things instead of continuing to being faithful to the manga, which is odd when this suddenly happened. To be honest, I find the way it decided to end things in the final episode to be disappointing, and that it just gave me even more of a feeling that this really should have had a couple more episodes in order to adapt the next event that would have been a worthy stopping point to the series in my opinion.
GAMES
I would now like to talk about the games. Pretty much all of them are simplistic, straightforward, and pretty much basic plays. This also includes most of the strategies being used. You'll probably quickly understand what's going on throughout. While these aren't necessarily bad things since there's actually not really anything wrong with the gambles themselves, apparently it makes certain others want more from the games, if not much more since it doesn't help that, much like other gambling anime/manga series, the pattern of how the games basically go as are pretty similar (and it's in a basic shounen way), the outcomes of the overall games are mostly very predictable, and that this series focuses a lot on cheaters. Despite all of this, I find that the games can still be enjoyable. Why? The characters themselves and how they exaggeratedly bring out their various emotions and personalities in the different situations of whatever games with the great or ridiculous looking art. This is probably the main aspects in what makes it fun for me to watch through. Seeing the ridiculous reactions from the characters never really gets old for me, but if you're expecting depth in the games from this series, then this will disappoint you.
ART AND ANIMATIONS
Now for the art and animations. I think MAPPA did pretty good in the art department. They make the cards and poker pieces look very well done at times, and there is a lot of impressive visual moments and effects in this series. While the character designs themselves mostly look pretty standard, the amount of details they put on certain aspects of the close-up faces impressive to me. This especially goes for their eyes. Not often do I see such beautiful looking eyes nearly everywhere in an anime series, with some of them having nice-looking visual effects. They also added little extra details on different parts on the faces at times, most noticeably on the insane faces, such as bits of wrinkles on the lips and making the nose drawn to look a bit more realistic. This is helpful for the type of faces since it helps give you that ridiculous, shocked, or cringing feeling to the viewers like most were purposely made and presented to be as, and it can even help add into the excitement and feeling of whatever is going on, but the insane faces are understandably not for everyone. Due to the amount of details they often put on them, they can look over-the-top, even when ti comes to anime usually making things over-the-top. There have been a few to some faces that look absolutely hilarious to me, and I unfortunately mean that in a bad way since I'm not talking about the ridiculous ones that were clearly made purposely to look funny, which are also hilarious looking. As for the animations, they're mostly standard and decent, but there have been a fair number of very good ones. The opening itself is just filled with great animations.
SOUND AND VOICE ACTING
Last I will talk about is the music and voice acting. Starting with the opening and ending, it's honestly a couple of my most favorite songs of the whole season. They're very good and I find them perfectly emphasizing how energetic and upbeat the anime portrays itself as despite how dangerous and dark it is. The opening will take a bit of getting used to, but still great and very stylish. As for the overall soundtrack of the series, I would say it's decent to above average. There's a few weird and questionable tunes, but overall everything else has either been fine or enjoyable, and they fit well in the situations present. The crazier tunes help add to the fun and insanity of the situations the type of songs it's used in. There's not really much to comment on the voice acting to me, but I think they did fine. I think Saori did very well as the main character, Yumeko.
And on that note, I think that wraps up the review. If I would have to score and summarize each aspect I've talked about,
Characters - 7/10. A lot of the characters are your typical anime characters, but a good number of notable characters have depth or character development.
Story and Setting - 5/10. Not really anything special when you think about it, and nearly everything only happens in the school. Not to mention with the way they've ended it at the final episode is pretty disappointing.
Games - 5/10. Not really bad since it didn't do anything wrong, but will probably leave you wanting more from them.
Art and animations - 6.5/10. Great details and sometimes visual effects on numerous things such as the items and certain parts of the faces, especially the eyes, but the insane looking ones are a major hit-or-miss.
Sound and voice acting - 7/10. Fantastic opening and endings with a lot of decent to enjoyable tunes in the overall background music, but there are a few questionable or weird tunes. The voice acting is fine to me.
Overall - 6/10. A very stylish and lively series overall, but it could leave much to be desired, since it's pretty basic when you think about it. As long as you don't expect too much or have very high standards, then I think you'll be fine. I highly suggest watching through the PVs first in order to know what you'll pretty much be getting into throughout if you're still interested.
Sep 23, 2017
A word of caution before getting into this review: There will be minor spoilers.
I thought that overall, Kakegurui was pretty damn fun and enjoyable. 6 may seem like a bad score, but I think it's fair. I scored it based on what it says by it, and it means "Fine". Perfectly how I would describe this when I look at this as objectively as possible in my review, and not out of pure enjoyment (else it'd be a 7 or 8, to be honest). Now with that out of the way, into the review. CHARACTERS Let's start out with the characters. The majority of ... |
