YMMV / Kakegurui

• Adorkable: The Vice-President. Ririka is only able to maintain to her confident persona whenever she has her mask on. The second it gets removed, she turns into a Shrinking Violet. This tends to make her the butt of the joke during her interactions with Mary, who has little patience for both sides of her personality.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Yumeko Jabami an insane and cynical monster that will do any immoral action if there is excitement in it, or is she just a Manipulative Bastard with a cold mind that masterly manages to manipulate people and punish scammers? Or is she, even if only in her mind, a Nice Girl trying to share her orgasmic love for gaming with her friends because she thinks everyone would feel the same thrill? Also on the matter of Yumeko, are her actions fueled only by her addiction to gambling, or are they also to provide support for her sister, who’s locked up in a mental asylum? Or is it a combo of all of those?
  • What is the nature of the relationship between the three protagonists? Are Mary and Yumeko in love with Suzui and have a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship among themselves? Or is the Les Yay between them in fact symbolizing their mutual lesbian feelings for each other, and Suzui is Just Friends for them?
  • At one point during the war game, Rin does not share some information with Ibara, making him lie involuntarily and ignores his concern at the moment. Later on however, it's revealed that Rin had a gamble under covers to make sure that, no matter what happened, he and Ibara would be safe. Does that means that Ibara is right to trust Rin and even though he is dishonest, Rin would never harm his Childhood Friend, or is that Rin simply making sure that someone that is useful to him sticks by his side?
• Anti-Climax Boss: Marusame in the 2019 live action film, he won against Kirari once and defeated Mary & Kitawami due to having dynamic vision. However, in the finals he struggled immensely against Jabami & Suzui due to his teammate Arukubi turning against him and only got the chance to win due to Jabami's planning ^note  in deciding follow Arubuki's manners (i.e, lose on purpose) and teaming up with Mary in rallying The Village ..
• Awesome Art:
  • The manga has very good and detailed illustrations, which only benefits it during the portrayal of the bizarre reactions of the characters. The anime also has this, thanks to a very good use of colors and memorable directing.
  • The OP of the anime, directed by Sayo Yamamoto, deserves a special mention, with the jazz music, colorful visuals, and 6 volumes worth of references in a minute and a half sequence. To the point that Mother's Basement ^note Who is not a huge fan of the work quickly discussed about it in under a month.
• Awesome Music: The OST has both exciting and downright haunting themes. One track that comes to mind is Something Like Joy, that plays for the first time in episode 10 of the first season when Kaede is trying to break Sumeragi's sprit, while Yumeko is daring her take her life in her own hands and to bet everything. The music, with the crying violins and sublime piano, highlights the whole scene's gravitas.
• Badass Decay: Yuriko Nishinotouin Arguably gets hit the hardest of this out of any of the Student Council members. After barely defeating Yumeko through pure luck, Yuriko frequently get portrayed as being a nervous wreck and she's the most out of her depth during the Hundred Devouring Families arc. Considering Yuriko, unlike a majority of the other characters in the show, has never been shown as being a particularly skilled gambler. There was only one specific game she favored that she specifically rigged in her favor.
• Base-Breaking Character: Jabami Yumeko is one, people like her for being attractive and crazy with a unique point of view on gambling and humanity, but struggles to relate to her as she remains static while everybody else going through dynamic changes and didn't seem to face the consequences even with her sometimes losing.
• Broken Base: The Sentai Filmworks dub. Some people think that it’s an interesting idea to compare it to the Netflix dub. Others think that it’s unnecessary and that Sentai should’ve released the Netflix dub instead.
• Cliché Storm: Intentionally, as it uses most tropes for Stealth Parody and Deconstructor Fleet. This is especially noticeable in the example of Yumeko, who is Ax-Crazy and Memetic Molester under the guise of the maximally stereotyped Yamato Nadeshiko Ojou.
• Creator's Pet: The live action writers really like Jun Kitawari and/or his actor, Yuma Yamoto: not only does he appear in various episodes prior to the arc he actually plays a major role in, he's also given a major role in the first film (the light novel it is based on does not feature the character), and has cameos in both the adaptation of Kakegurui Twin and the second movie.
• Die for Our Ship: Poor Suzui, he was not lucky to be the only heterosexual Love Interest (though, even that is up for debate) in a work that is filled with Les Yay and written by a Yuri Fan. In the best case, he will be simply perceived by people as a useless Audience Surrogate.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Sayaka Igarashi also gets a fair amount of attention thanks to her status as the Only Sane Man alongside Suzui in the crazy gambling cast, as well as her relationship with Kirari.
  • Among the characters introduced in the Devouring Families arc, Ibara got a particularly nice chunk of attention. Part of it was due to his Hunk-ish good looks, a welcome sight for female fans, and from being one of the few legitimately nice people in the manga, despite his rough looks on the outside. There are also those who like him for being a cool Woobie, based on your view of his relationship with Rin.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • First of all with the fans of The Irregular at Magic High School, who view Yumeko as the Evil Twin of Miyuki because of their very similar appearance and having Saori Hayami as common Voice Actor, but fully opposite personalities. Similar settings in the form of an Elaborate University High and Grey-and-Gray Morality, also helps this.
  • There are also the fans of Yuri!!! on Ice, since Studio MAPPA produced the Ho Yay-laden anime last year and now produced another show, this time full of Les Yay.
• Growing the Beard: The story starts to improve after the writer decided that the storyline will be more focused on the characters during the gamble against Ikishima, which helps as the writer would then focus on more complex games & strategies for Kakegurui Twin.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Saori Hayami as an Ax-Crazy Large Ham Ms. Fanservice girl. This is such a strong contrast with her standard Nice Girl roles, that it's very hard to watch seriously. Moreover, this is only doubled because of Jabami's external resemblance to Saori's other ojou heroine, which is why for some viewers she looks like a crazy version of Miyuki Shiba.
    • What is even more ironic, given that Jabami hates predictability and thus would likely hate the Invincible Hero status of Miyuki and her brother in their series.
  • It's kind of funny to consider how MAPPA adapted a work where women are portrayed as artful and cynical temptresses after they created the more positive and idealistic Yuri!!! on Ice about a strong male "friendship". Interestingly, Sayo Yamamoto is the director of both Kakegurui's opening and Yuri!!! on Ice.
  • in the Live-Action version, Mahiro Takasugi plays the Only Sane Man in contrast to one of his early tv roles as Mitsuzane Kureshima, one of the most psychotic characters not only in his own series but also in the whole Kamen Rider franchise in general.
• Ho Yay: Rare for a manga with so few major male characters, there is Ibara's devotion to Rin, which has similar, though less romantic, undertones to Sayaka's devotion to Kirari.
• Hype Backlash: The anime adaptation started off with a considerable amount of hype where despite being locked in "Netflix Jail" it, along with Made in Abyss was one of the most talked-about series of the Summer 2017 anime season. Over the course of the season, however, this gave way to some criticism of the actual gambles being lackluster and formulaic, which led to unflattering comparisons to other gambling-themed series as listed below. Not helping matters is that the seasons have gone for original endings to avoid catching up to the manga.
• I Knew It!: Many people guesses that Jabami and Kirari are distantly related, based on the suffix on their names being the same (the "bami" word meaning "devouring")
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Even though Mary is mocked by her classmates, and the school council even wanted to marry her with an adult man, we still see that she is full of strength and ready to laugh with pleasure at her opponents in games.
  • Yumemi during the gamble against Kawaru Natari , during which it becomes more and more apparent that she doesn't have what it takes to become an actress, let alone to achieve her dream, and even as a singer, she might be only so-so, coasting on her idol popularity. She isn't reacting well to these realizations, making her look very pitiful in spite of her previous actions against Yumeko.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many viewers were attracted to the adaptation thanks to the Cast Full of Crazy and a very strong Les Yay between Jabami and the rest of the female cast.
• Les Yay: Almost always deliberately, not to mention that if you do not have enough of this between Jabami and other girls◊, then in the adaptation's opening she even Screw Yourself.
  • Yumeko and Mary have so much of this◊ that their theoretical couple is not only OTP in fandom, but also formal Fanon. Weights also add to the fact that the author of the work is a big Yuri Fan.
  • Tsuzura, Mary's Childhood Friend introduced in Kakegurui Twin, seems to have quite an interest in Mary and has referred her as the prince to Tsuzura's princess.
• Magnificent Bitch: (2017 anime):
  • Yumeko Jabami, the compulsive, gambling-addicted lead of the series arrives at Hyakkakou Academy at the series' start, befriending the hapless Ryota Suzui after her first brilliant gambit defeats skilled gambler Mary Saotome. Allowing herself to be placed upon the lowest rung of the academy's hierarchy, Yumeko is gleeful to challenge whomever she wishes with a constant bevvy of luck and skill in her games. Yumeko has no compunction with resorting to blackmail, either, having secretly recorded idol singer Yumemi Yumemite saying how much she hates her fanclub to force her into another match, while simply relying on her instincts, friends and luck at other times to make sure she can take a match with the Student Council President herself. Yumeko simply revels in the chaos her gambling creates as it gives her the chance to rise to greater heights and thrills even as she takes the time to look out for her close friends.
  • Mary Saotome was an untouchable gambler at Hyakkakou Academy until a series of losses forced her to confront the possibility of having her whole life mapped out for her. Allying with former rival Yumeko, she and Mary concoct a scheme during a debt swap game to lure their smug opponent into betting all his chips and destroying him financially while erasing Mary's debt. Content sitting on the sidelines for sometime afterwards, Mary steps back into the game when the Student Council President offers up her seat to whomever wins her gambling tournament. Mary shows her skills yet again, winning a match by analyzing the shuffling pattern of the deck, defeating the Vice President of the academy and even saving Yumeko from being poisoned. During the final game of the series, Mary comes up with a strategy to intimidate her opponents from betting against and even uncovers the secret mastermind.
  • Kirari Momobami is the Student Council President of Hyakkakou Academy and the ruthless founder of its oppressive housepet system, designed so she can always be in control while giving her a chance to dictate the lives of graduates. In Kirari's quest for power, she outplayed and defeated the previous President to take control, while deciding Yumeko is too intriguing to expel. Kirari makes sure to use her subordinates to challenge Yumeko so she might see her worth, eventually opting to play Yumeko herself in a game of chance. Never cheating to give herself an advantage, Kirari even handles rebellions with a trademark flair, undermining them by using her "shadow" and twin sister Ririka as a decoy, even testing the loyalty of her beloved secretary Sayaka Igarashi in a game against Yumeko which ends in Sayaka's loss and attempted suicide, only for Kirari to leap out the tower after her and reveal she had placed a mattress below them all for the thrill of being able to leap such a height together.
• Memetic Molester: None of the characters actually molest each other, but most of them have this reputation among the fandom anyway due to their over-the-top expressions. Jabami is especially subject to this.
• Memetic Mutation: The adaptation quickly became known because of the overabundance of Large Ham reactions from the characters, despite the rather poor information about the plot initially.
• Narm:
  • Some of the emotional reactions of various characters can come off as this, due in part to the deranged nature of them.
  • Yumeko in an idol singer costume in episode 9 looks both sexy and silly.
  • In the anime, having Yumemite be defeated by Sumika singing something as cliche as Amazing Grace (a genre of song that's not particularly in her voice actress / singer Ayahi Takagaki's wheelhouse either) can come off as more ridiculous than showing off Sumika's "superior" singing skills.
• Narm Charm: Extravagant opening and eccentric directing with a bunch of quirky reaction faces quickly made the anime adaptation famous as an example of this trope.
• One True Threesome: While not as popular due to the fandom's rampant preference for Yuri couples, some people do try to fit Suzui in the Mary/Yumeko ship.
• Paranoia Fuel: The disclosure of the fact that Yumeko's sister lives in a university hospital and potentially has some strong psychological trauma is quite disturbing. She also creates paper cranes that in Japanese culture can mean hope for getting rid of the inevitable. Given how screwed up the Hundred Devouring Families are, the family that Yumeko and her sister presumably are part of, one might think that she might have been caught by their families' madness and got on the bad side of someone important.
• She Really Can Act: Participation in this anime markedly raised respect for Saori Hayami as a Voice Actor, as she demonstrated her talent when she's Playing Against Type, with sharp changes in the character's voice in contrast to her traditionally somewhat monotonous Typecasting.
• Squick:
  • Midari Ikishima gouging her left eye herself to pay off her debt. Even Kirari (who unlike the viewers, watched it in front of her) got shocked for a moment in the manga.
  • Itsuki Sumergi pulls off her fingernails with her teeth to show off her determination to win against Manyuuda.
  • Ikishima first gets an orgasm with all the details from the idea that Yumeko can kill her, and then in a state of hysteria professes her love for Yumeko while drooling excessively and either urine or vaginal excretions spilling off the table she's on. It's a wonder that Yumeko kept a straight face through all that...
  • The anime adaptation ups the raw factor of the gambles, often times including an Extreme Close-Up the participants and having them slobber on the camera lens when they start to lose their cool.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: This work has received many accusations from fans of Kaiji because of being an alleged rip-off, on the grounds that both works have The Gambling Addict as the main setting and studying of human psychology. Though for manga readers, this applies more to Gamble Fish, due to their similarities in high school setting and gambling.
• Tough Act to Follow: Zigzagged with Kakegurui Twin. Maeri is a decent protagonist in her own and the games written here are a step up compared to the original. The art, however, is significantly weaker compared to Naomura's.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Kawaru Natari, the Japanese Hollywood star introduced in chapter 50, looks a bit less like a human than anyone else in the manga, even for the floating art style. She looks more like a porcelain doll than a human, specially her eyes, which are drawn in a different style than everyone else's, even when the art is still in it's "standard manga art" mode.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: We are clearly shown that Yuriko is an inveterate swindler and sadist who enjoys giving hope to desperate people, only to humiliate them even more. However, she becomes a little more sympathetic when we learn that she uses her money to protect the girls in her club from becoming house pets.
• Unnecessary Makeover: Some felt that Rei's more feminine appearance in the final episode of the second season was this, compared to her uniquely androgynous look before.