The Future is in Our Hands!The year is 1995. After graduating from high school, the young Kaiji Itou has moved to Tokyo in hopes of finding a steady job. Two years later, he's still unemployed and in a state of depression. Kaiji wastes what little money he has on cheap gambles, alcohol and cigarettes on a daily basis. To feel better about himself, he sabotages expensive cars and collects their emblems. One of these cars belongs to Yuuji Endou, a yakuza with ties to the financial empire Teiai Corporation.It turns out that Endou has been searching for Kaiji for a while, ever since he co-signed a contract for his friend Furuhata, which left him with a large debt. Endou also wants Kaiji to compensate for the car's damages. Kaiji is left with a choice; he must either spend 10 years working off the debt in a labour camp, or board a gambling cruise called "Espoir" (French for "hope") where he will be able to pay off the debt in one night... If he wins.And that's just how the first series begins. Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji is probably the most famous work of Nobuyuki Fukumoto, a seinenmangaka. Starting in 1996, it has since then received critical acclaim for its ridiculous yet brilliant gambles as well as the complex psychological analyses of the characters. There are currently four series, the first two of which have gotten anime adaptations by Madhouse (much like Akagi before it), and eventually Live-Action Adaptation films and pachinko games. Kaiji also makes an appearance in Girls RPG Cinderellife, a dating sim by Level 5, for Nintendo 3DS. As of 2012, the fourth series has been put on hiatus and will resume in a year.
Aesop Amnesia - By the end of season 1 Kaiji seems to have learned his lesson about hard work and not trusting life to give you what you want. When we see him again at the start of season 2, he's back to the lousy deadbeat gambler he was at the beginning. Justified in that a year has passed since the end of the first season.
End of season 2 - in the day it takes him to meet the 45ers after they're free, he manages to blow his entire cut of the winnings on Pachinko.
Bad Boss - Hyoudou. If you work for him and if you do anything he doesn't like, he'll do various bad things to you. He also puts his bare feet in a tub filled with wine and makes his workers drink out of it. Once, a worker started speaking during this, but Hyoudou said he didn't appreciate his tone of voice, and had him taken away. It's anyone's guess as to what happened to him, but it was without a doubt very bad.
Fingore: When his Tissue Box raffle goes horribly wrong.
A less gory but still very painful example is provided by Ichijou to Kaiji in series 2.
Gambit Roulette - Kaiji's plan to beat the bog at the end of Season 2 relies on a series of convoluted plans. But Kaiji and Ichijo both Didn't See That Coming so many times, it turns into a Roulette that would almost look like Xanatos Speed Chess if it weren't for the fact that Kaiji can't change anything after he starts playing.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Most of the cheaters in the series fall victim to this. Key word being most of them.
Notably, at the end of series 1, Kaiji himself loses in the one game he tries to rig.
Hope Spot: Constantly. Especially in the Pachinko Arc.
Idiot Ball: Kaiji gets this occasionally; by halfway through the second episode, he has already fallen for two Obvious Traps, leaving him in what seems to be an Unwinnable situation and requiring him to struggle for an entire arc just to try to restore the status quo.
Moving the Goalposts: The bad guys aren't really interested in having a fair game, they just want to see the underdogs suffer. Thus they will resort to this tactic as necessary.
Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Played straight much of the time. Occasionally, Kaiji will seem to explain his plan, but will only explain the first and less important half; in these cases, the entire plan is guaranteed to work fine. Played painfully straight in the Tissue Box Raffle arc, though, when Kaiji explains his entire grand scheme four whole episodes before the end of the series, which naturally falls apart and leaves him ruined.
Villainous Breakdown: Everytime Kaiji wins. Witnessing them is particularly satisfying since he's generally up against arrogant bastards or Complete Monsters
Yaoi Fangirl: Kaiji, Akagi, and many other series by Fukumoto Nobuyuki have surprisingly large female fanbases. Put that together with an almost complete lack of female characters and this happens, apparently.
Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Andou betrays Kaiji twice, and he's in the story for fewer than four hours in-universe. Tonegawa has something more along the lines of Chronic Frontstabbing Disorder.
Eye Scream: In the E-Card game, Kaiji gets to choose between putting his ear or eye on the line. Averted when he picks his ear, but we are still treated to some nice Imagine Spots with the mini-drill moving closer to his eyeball.
What Happened to the Mouse? - Tonegawa's fate is unclear at this point. Seeing as how Kurosaki has replaced him by series 2, it's probably safe to assume that, at the very least, he was demoted to a lower rank in Teiai.
Yank the Dog's Chain - Series 1 plays this brutally with Sahara's death. After making his way across the bridge of death, he finally prepares to open the door to cash in on the price money... Only to be blown off the building by the air compression blast from the window towards a certain death.
Artistic License - Physics: In one game, the contestants have to cross a metal beam placed across a chasm without falling. In the first round, some people fell, but were able to grab onto the beam and avoid being injured. In the second round, the beam was electrified. However, since electricity seeks the path of least resistance, there would be no reason for it to travel through a person, then through the air to the ground. If the voltage was high enough for that, we would probably see electricity arcing to the ground upon flipping the switch.
No. Rubber tennis shoes are decent insulation; the current does not need to be terribly strong to force a person to loosen their grip and fall.
Furthermore, the only way a person would be shocked is if touching the beam completed a circuit. The metal beam is split in half. In order to be shocked, a person would have to essentially short circuit the path by touching both halves of the beam.
Lightning wouldn't strike the ground from twenty stories. Air is, you might notice, not the best conductor. You don't often see arcs from high voltage lines to the ground precisely because the path of least resistance is the high voltage line itself. These beams similarly would be the path of least resistance.
Foot Focus: In the Underground Chinchiro Arc, workers are barefoot when off-duty—the Foot Focus itself most notably coming into play at the end of episode 5, when there's a dramatic closeup of Kaiji's feet as he accepts the chief's challenge. Then there's the Pachinko Arc, where it's a requirement for the participant to be barefoot.
Luck-Based Mission: A rare non-game example. Double Subverted. Kaiji decides to take on "The Bog" a notorious pachinko machine. There is no luck involved in playing the Bog, because it's rigged to be impossible. Kaiji must use his wits to create artificial circumstances that will LEAD to his victory. But because he Didn'tSeeThatComing so much, the game goes back to simply being a Luck-Based Mission.
Mood Whiplash: In episode 10, when Sakazaki is talking about his daughter, Mikoko, the initially serious atmosphere prevalent throughout the series suddenly (and briefly) shifts to a comedic one. Doubles as a Crowning Moment of Funny.
Pet the Dog: At the end of season 2, one of the black suits gives a broke Kaiji a few thousand yen to meet his fellow 45ers. Mind you, this was after Kaiji blew what was left of his pachinko earnings on pachinko.
Shout Out: At one point in the second season, Kaiji stays with Sakazaki and Endou for a night at Hotel Akagi.
Your Princess Is in Another Castle: End of season 2 - after Kaiji's finally defeated the Bog and become rich, it turns out he didn't read the fine print in Endou's contract...
Part III & IV
Chekhov's Skill: Kaiji's reactionary gambling style is referred to by Kaguya as a tsunami. Kaiji dismisses the notion at first but invokes the metaphor again when in doubt.
Mahjong: The entire third part focuses on this game, but it's a two-player variant.
Poor Communication Kills: In series 2, the Bog payed out 700 million yen, and Kaiji split it with Sakazaki and Endou. When Muraoka tells Miyoshi and Maeda about this, he tells them to "test" Kaiji by asking for his help and seeing how he responds after they add that he can profit from it. Because Kaiji denied their request at first and accepted it only when they offered money, they thought Kaiji had been using and holding out on them and the other 45'ers. As such, they decided to scam him out of money. Had Kaiji not been too proud to admit that he didn't beat the Bog alone, none of this would have happened.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: Miyoshi and Maeda did not betray Kaiji just because they could; due to a misunderstanding, they thought he had betrayed them.
Live Action Movies
Compressed Adaptation: Story-wise, the first film is basically a mix of the first two seasons.
Creator Cameo: Fukumoto himself appears as a black suit.
Gender Bender: Ishida's "son" and Endou are both women in the movies.
The Future is in Our Hands!The year is 1995. After graduating from high school, the young Kaiji Itou has moved to Tokyo in hopes of finding a steady job. Two years later, he's still unemployed and in a state of depression. Kaiji wastes what little money he has on cheap gambles, alcohol and cigarettes on a daily basis. To feel better about himself, he sabotages expensive cars and collects their emblems. One of these cars belongs to Yuuji Endou, a yakuza with ties to the financial empire Teiai Corporation.It turns out that Endou has been searching for Kaiji for a while, ever since he co-signed a contract for his friend Furuhata, which left him with a large debt. Endou also wants Kaiji to compensate for the car's damages. Kaiji is left with a choice; he must either spend 10 years working off the debt in a labour camp, or board a gambling cruise called "Espoir" (French for "hope") where he will be able to pay off the debt in one night... If he wins.And that's just how the first series begins. Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji is probably the most famous work of Nobuyuki Fukumoto, a seinen mangaka. Starting in 1996, it has since then received critical acclaim for its ridiculous yet brilliant gambles as well as the complex psychological analyses of the characters. There are currently four series, the first two of which have gotten anime adaptations by Madhouse (much like Akagi before it), and eventually Live-Action Adaptation films and pachinko games. Kaiji also makes an appearance in Girls RPG Cinderellife, a dating sim by Level 5, for Nintendo 3DS. As of 2012, the fourth series has been put on hiatus and will resume in a year.
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