KAIJI, THE MOST 'HUMAN-LIKE' GAMBLER

ZEYANG ZHU - Writer, 1st Year, Japanese

Gambling or not, Japanese Riichi Mahjong is fun.

SPOILERS FOR KAIJI (ANIME)!

If you loved watching Squid Game, you may or may not know that its concept of death games is highly inspired by the manga Kaiji, written and illustrated by Nobuyuki Fukumoto. From 1996 until today, Kaiji has since come out with six main series and two spin-offs, undoubtedly making it one of the best gambling-related works produced, (even though the artwork might put many people off). As a Mahjong player, I love and am often inspired by Fukumoto's Akagi, a Mahjong gambling manga. Still, I must credit Kaiji for being the most 'human-like' gambler in anime.

Kaiji is not a genius at gambling. In fact, he's a piece of trash–he’s jobless, does nothing daily, and is jealous of the rich. He was unable to repay the sudden, overwhelming debt and had no choice but to get involved in gambling (organized by Teiai Financial Group, the last boss of this series), and unfortunately, got addicted to it. He's weak, always crying when he loses or gets betrayed. But all these flaws make him human-like, and we only start respecting him when we see his ability to rise from death when he's pushed into a desperate situation.

But let’s get to the games. Kaiji is forced to participate in a gambling game on a cruise ship. He faces off against other desperate losers. The game's rules are basically the same as the "rock, paper, scissors" game with three lives and four cards each for Rock/Paper/Scissors, plus funds offered by Teiai Financial Group to use while being on the ship. The winners can get freed from debts and return to their everyday lives, while the losers will be sent to an underground prison. The game's rules seem childish. However, after a few episodes, you'll begin to admire the design: limited resources, combined with exchanging funds and information between participants, create a brilliant competitive environment. Participants can cheat, betray teammates, and manipulate minds to escape safely. These are all considered human nature by Kazutaka Hyodo, the owner of Teiai Financial Group, as he believes wealth is everything and controls humanity, marked by his words in a later game: “If the poor unite and rebel, declaring that they don’t need money, the king will be vanquished. But the poor pursue money in the hopes of becoming king. This strengthens the existence of the current king. As long as you don’t break out of that fruitless paradox of wanting money, you can never overthrow the king but be chained forever.” But Kaiji is challenging this with his 'human-like' characteristic. He is too kind, always trusts his teammates, and unavoidably gets betrayed and almost pushed to death. But only in such a desperate situation does he become the scariest gambler and find a way to escape even though we, as audiences, might give up. He even trusted the ruthless organizer and tried to follow the rules. Still, he always forgot that cheating from those who designed the gambling game is natural. As audiences, we could laugh at Kaiji's naivety, but at the same time, we must applaud this 'human-like' nature. It makes me admire him more and more when I see his excellent counter attacking methods after figuring out the organizer's cheating.

However, such 'human-like' characteristics could destroy him when he wins, and the ending of the first season is what I never expected in anime but like to see from a gambler protagonist - painful failure. After a stressful card game with Yukio Tonegawa, the second most powerful man in Teiai Financial Group and winning twenty million yen, which could help him repay all his debt and even earn something from the organizer, he chose to go further and challenge Hyodo Kazutaka. In a typical gambling anime, another hard-win victory and a happy ending are what you expect from a protagonist. But Kaiji is human–he's nowhere as sensitive as the boss's level. Kaiji creates an almost perfect way of cheating and designs a gambling game. Still, the boss quickly sees through his trick and finds a way to, in return, perform a trick to invalidate Kaiji's trick and also perform his cheat (I'll not go into details; watch that part. It's brilliant). As a result, Kaiji loses all his money and four fingers and is pushed into the underground hell in Season 2. But another desperate situation goes on, and we can't even catch a break to see how Kaiji rises again. This series is full of such unexpected turns, and that's probably the reason for its popularity in Japan.

Let's conclude my recommendation. This series focuses on the characters' psychological events, creating tension, but you can never predict how it will go on. Kaiji represents the kindness of human nature in the heavy and dark theme of gambling, even through all these failures. This is a perfect anime for us to avoid gambling because not every one of us is Kaiji in a desperate situation. The manga is still far away from finishing, and I can't even predict how it will go on. Still, I'm excited to see whether Kaiji will play a revenge gambling game with the boss and how it will end. While we often dream of becoming the protagonist of a gambling anime and winning everything, can’t we remember that there is a protagonist called Kaiji, who failed miserably on multiple occasions but still refused to completely sell his soul to wealth?