"Winning is everything. If you lose, you're garbage!"
"I'll win. I'll beat it all. The worst fate, the worst conditions, the million obstacles, inequality, deceit and dissatisfaction... I'll bring it to submission."
— Kaiji Itō, Kaiji 2: The Ultimate Gambler
The film trilogy that is based on the Kaiji manga, written and illustrated by Nobuyuki Fukumoto.
The cast includes Tatsuya Fujiwara, Yūki Amami, Teruyuki Kagawa, Ken Mitsuishi, Taro Yamamoto, Suzuki Matsuo and Katsuhisa Namase.
The films included in this series are:
- Kaiji: The Ultimate Gambler (2009)
- Kaiji 2: The Ultimate Gambler (2011)
- Kaiji: Final Game (2020)
The Kaiji Series contain examples of:
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Most of the characters look much more attractive than in the original work.
- Compressed Adaptation: Story-wise, the first film is basically a mix of the first two seasons. Specifically, the Cruise/Rock Paper Scissor Arc, the underground city arc and the Steel Beam Crossing/E-Card arc. Movie 2 focuses more on The Bog arc.
- Composite Character: Inverted; Ishida's daughter plays part of Sakazaki's role, splitting it. Namely The Big Damn Heroes moment from part 2.
- Gender Flip: Ishida's son and Endou are both women in this adaptation.
- Logo Joke: Each film has ghostly noises repeatedly chanting "ZAWA" during the Nippon Television Network Corporation (Kaiji: The Ultimate Gambler and Kaiji 2: The Ultimate Gambler) or Nippon TV Movies (Kaiji: Final Game) logos.
- Kaiji: The Ultimate Gambler's chanting gets quieter until the middle of the logo. At this point, the chanting comes back in full force, stopping when the sun's light fades from the Nippon Television Network Corporation logo.
- For Kaiji 2: The Ultimate Gambler have the chanting repeating in decreasing volumes, stopping at the same time like the first film's logo.
- The chanting in Kaiji: Final Game is distorted in different pitches, and when the logo turns black and white, the normal chant can be heard.
- Once an Episode: Each film has a moment where the camera zooms through various locations, with the final destination being somewhere related to the Teiai Corporation. Fittingly, the first and third movies are book-ended with the use of a falling 100-yen coin, which is what the camera follows.
- Smurfette Principle: See Gender Flip above.
- Unsound Effect: Just like the manga, hurried voices whispering "ZAWA" appear when a character is either hesitating or making a big decision.
"Money. It's all because of money."
