Chuukan Kanriroku Tonegawa

As a Kaiji fan, I was initially hyped when it was announced we’ll be getting more Kaiji. However, that excitment slowly faded away as soon as I started watching this series.

This Kaiji spin off is shit. It’s basically a pointless story with exaggerated, forced comedy on boring, trivial scenes and trying to make them funny. It repeats the same joke for too long sometimes, e.g. remembering the men in black’s name dragged on for 3 episodes. Comedy is subjective, but I find it hard to believe anyone finds this type of humor funny. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed once while watching ... this show.

Tonegawa is supposed to be this cool, competent, strategic right-hand man, but in this show he’s reduced to a bumbling insecure man that stresses over remembering some men in black’s names. The president is supposed to be this intimidating, wise old man. Here he’s a old coot with mood swings. The show butchered their characterisation and the way I view them all for the sake of comedy.

The men in black are bland, one dimensional characters and I don’t care if it’s intentional.

The narrator’s voice is so annoying and tries so hard to be funny it ends up having the opposite effect. The osts aren’t helping, the “zawa zawa~” doesn’t fit the tone of this show and just builds false suspense.

I can’t fathom why there’s so many positive reviews on this garbage.
If you’re a fan of Kaiji, I’d recommend steering clear from this because it fails to capture what makes Kaiji so great and it’s not even about gambling to begin with.

I like a five-star rating system rather than 10 stars, so a four really means a two and that means that I thought this anime was ok, but I don't think I would recommend it to other people.

I wanted to watch this because I thought it would be a deeper exploration into Tonegawa as a character and the rest of the Teiai organization. In a way I got that, and I wasn't opposed to it being a comedy series, but it just was not as fulfilling as I thought it would be. I don't mind the artstyle but it just doesn't look as good as ... the other series, it references the Kaiji series too much, the narrator (announcer, really) can be too much, and there isn't much that goes into how the characters and corporation really tick in a deeper way. Having good comedy would make up for that, but it was ok for me, definitely some laughs, but not amazing.

The last episode sums up the series, not coming to any real conclusion, but referencing Kaiji a lot and ending on a half-decent joke. It's alright for people who want to see more of this world of Kaiji, even with less ruthlessness, but it really feels like a published fan series, which it basically is. It's not so bad, but take it for what it's worth.

I struggled to get through the first episode looking for something I could enjoy, but it was all disappointing and utterly boring. The art style isn't bad at all, but that's where anything decent about this show ends. I'd literally rather watch paint dry than continue to enjoy this crap because at least paint wasn't designed to be entertaining. You're brought in with an utterly confusing intro of the present, which probably gets explained later so not gonna count against it for that, but every moment after we get sent back to the beginning of the story is just boring and utterly pathetic. This show ... should never have been released, don't waste your time.