Kaiji - Ultimate Survivor

To think that this anime would take me over a year and a half to complete is not something I would have thought about when I initially asked EpikProStarZ to watch this show with me. This was when we used to play amq together all of the time and the idea of watching ghost stories together was floating in the air. I ended up asking EpikProStarZ one day to watch kaiji with me and he did end up agreeing but I mainly decided to watch it because of the yakuza tag score on anilist being somewhat high. The show we watched together before this was wonder egg priority if I remember right and I only watched one episode before losing interest but yeah.

Now to come back to the show, I was not even close to prepared on what this show truly was. It's a sad tale about one man and his struggles to pay back the debt he has accumulated due to being wronged by one guy and also because of his gambling addiction. The show itself though starts off on a cruise ship where kaiji is given a chance to payback his debt by playing rock paper scissors using cards and if he wins he will pay off a certain amount of money after the game's end. I believe that if you lose the game, you basically become a slave to the organization and have to do years of manual labor to pay off the debt. Just with this first arc, I was enthralled with the world that kaiji had created because they made a simple game of rock paper scissors have REAL WORLD STAKES and made it so fun while also showing the true nature of humans. The show also does a great job exploring the human psyche and the characters feel very realistic due to this. All of this was done with just a rock paper scissors game and that's a testament to the mangaka and their abilities. There are some side characters introduced here but really only one of them is important because of the next gamble which involves walking on a metal pipe to get to another building and if you fall, you die.

This arc is called the human derby and there's a really profound moment in this arc where someone talks about how everyone leads their own separate lives and are all trying to get by but I can't seem to find the exact quote sadly. It is something similar to what I said though but this is the arc where people start to die and I started to get pissed at the people in charge of this gamble and so did the winners of this gamble who got cucked out of the money they were supposed to get. Then kaiji has to end up negotiating and eventually wins and we get e-card which is the next gamble. This is also a really high stakes gamble where if kaiji loses, he loses an ear and could potentially die because of a machine attached to his ear. It's really intense and this is when kaiji truly loses all hope and you can finally start to see his spirit start to dwindle and he truly starts to feel ultimate despair. I believe this is the arc where the amount of kaiji I was watching with anthony started to dwindle and the gap between the last time I had seen the show really started to widen. Getting to the actual arc though, it's really intense and serious and the characters are truly written well because by the end of it, I could sympathize with one of the characters who was actually supposed to be a villain. This is because there is an even bigger evil that is truly nonredeemable at the top of it all who is finally challenged in the final gamble which is the tissue box gamble. When you actually get the backstory of this villainous character, I felt some sympathy but then his actions were way too extreme to even start to sympathize with him and he turned out to be a sociopath who truly didn't care what it took to get the money he loaned out. The final gamble seems to be in kaiji's favor since he organized it but at the end, you realize that kaiji was never in control of his situation and the ending leaves kaiji way worse off than he originally started with.

I just love how the characterization of kaiji and even though he isn't a great person, you can still sympathize with him because of the situations he ends up being in and you can start to feel the pain he feels as the show goes on. This show pulls 0 punches when it comes to making kaiji suffer and it just helps make the show that much more impactful and convincing. The actual gambling games itself may seem long at first because there's usually an episode dedicated to explaining the rules and the characters end up playing a game for like 3 or 4 episodes but I think because of high the stakes are, it makes sense in the context and it doesn't feel like they drag on for too long. Also kaiji loses his left nut in the final tissue box gamble but yeah. The ost of this anime is FUCKING BRILLIANT and every time a song comes on, it serves to heighten the mood and can put the viewer at unease because of what is about to happen next and though other shows have done this before, this just does an exceptional job at it where if one song comes on, you can instantly tell the outcome of the next scene. The artstyle may look weird for the show since every character has a huge ass nose or the eyes are really big but I really think that madhouse did a great job with animating the show and you can look past the character designs to watch the show. Kaiji truly does pose some interesting philosophical questions on the value of human life and how far you really will go for money and some other things but you guys can figure that out yourself.

Now since I have taken over a year and a half to finish this show you may be wondering, did it impact my experience of the show in a positive or negative way? I'd say it impacted my experience in a positive way because I didn't end up forgetting what happened in kaiji even after all of the long breaks and I had more time to appreciate and fall in love with the story's elements. It also felt all the more satisfying when I finally finished it because it felt like the end to an era and heightened my enjoyment of the series as a whole to another level. Also the op and ed of the show are really good! Overall I am giving this show a 10/10 because it did everything right and it is the best if not the greatest gambling anime to be ever made. There sadly wasn't that much yakuza screen time though but yeah I'm giving kaiji the ultimate survivor a 10/10. If you liked squid game you will definitely love this.