YMMV / Kaiji: The Ultimate Gambler

• Fridge Brilliance: Kaiji's strategy for the Brave Men Road challenge has him draw lines on people's shoes with a marker for good balance. But one might ask where he even got the marker in the first place. Well, the answer is simple: since one of his first scenes involves him vandalising cars, the marker is his cheap alternative for spray paint.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the Death Note film series, the characters played by Tatsuya Fujiwara (Light) and Kenichi Matsuyama (L) engaged in an intense battle of wits that caused the former's death and the latter's survival. Here, Kaiji and Sahara both traverse the entire Brave Men Road as allies, but a trap causes Sahara to fall to his death, while Kaiji barely holds on to a ledge. Looks like Light got the last laugh after all!
  • Hilariously, Tatsuya Fujiwara got his big start in acting as the main character of Battle Royale, a movie about 42 school kids force to fight to the death until only one remains. Since then, Fujiwara has gone on to act in many movies about high-stakes/death games. Clearly he never forgot his roots.
• Memetic Mutation: Similar to how the title character in the source material has often been "Crossovered" into various Deadly Game pieces of fiction, so too has Tatsuya Fujiwara.
• Narm: In the Brave Men Road challenge, let's just say that the ones who fall to their deaths act way over the top, even if wind was a factor in their demises.
• Special Effects Failure: The Electric Current Steel Frame Crossing segment doesn't handle its falling scenes very well. Especially Sahara's death, where we can clearly tell that the background was poorly edited onto a screaming man lying on a green screen.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: A point of contention made by the audience was the ending, where the manga's Downer Ending for Part I was not adapted, where Kaiji lost to Hyōdō in a tissue box game, created more debt for himself and was sent back to underground labour. They felt that this shock factor was utterly lost to have a somewhat happier ending, and come the sequel, he still ends up in underground labour off-screen for another barely-mentioned debt.