Usogui

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: The Lie Eater, Igyou Tobakusha Usokui, Yakou-san

Japanese: 嘘喰い

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 49

Chapters: 541

Status: Finished

Published: May 11, 2006 to Dec 21, 2017

Genre: Action

Themes: High Stakes Game, Psychological, Strategy Game

Demographic: Seinen

Serialization: Young Jump

Authors: Sako, Toshio (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 8.65¹ (scored by 10,605 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #80²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #346

Members: 53,050

Favorites: 2,311

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Resources

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8.65

Ranked #80Popularity #346Members 53,050

MangaYoung JumpSako, Toshio (Story & Art)

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Volumes: /49

Chapters: /541

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Synopsis

Taking risks is a part of human nature, and to gamble means to risk losing something important in the pursuit of obtaining something greater. However, the world of gambling is neither welcoming nor forgiving, and some will lie and cheat to win. Therefore, a powerful organization, "Kakerou," exists to ensure that all bets maintain a semblance of fairness.

Baku Madarame, often referred to as "Usogui," is a genius gambler willing to bet more than just money. Putting his life on the line, he faces off against psychotic opponents in deadly psychological games. With his cold and calculating nature and high level of intellect, Baku challenges the liars known as gamblers while aiming to seize control over Kakerou itself.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Included one-shots:
Volumes 12–15: Igyou Tobakusha Usokui
Volume 25: Yakou-san

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Background

Usogui was adapted into a live action movie in 2022.

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Related Entries

More characters
Characters

Madarame, Baku

Main

Kaji, Takaomi

Main

Marco

Main

Kiruma, Souichi

Supporting

Kyara

Supporting

Yakou, Hikoichi

Supporting

Lalo, Vincent

Supporting

Kadokura, Yuudai

Supporting

Midara, Yuusuke

Supporting

Suteguma, Satoru

Supporting

Reviews

May 15, 2025

donteatme_

Recommended

The story was really unique because it explored so many characters so well, the mindgames are the deepest I have ever seen, and the games are really unique.
The character development and tying of backstories is absolutely perfect.
The art is also really good and gets better as it goes on.
The art style is perfect for the story and it really gets you in the exact mood for reading it. The lighting,text boxes flashbacks all are masterfully inserted.
I think some people might not enjoy the story as at some of the beginning parts it is quite slow to start but I promise you it is 10000% worth ...

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Apr 29, 2025

hexashadow13

Mixed Feelings

Usogui is a manga centered around Kakerou, an organization dedicated to ensuring that its members can gamble in a fair manner. However, these gambles often involve extreme games and prizes, and thus ensuring that these gambles are allowed to proceed properly requires Kakerou to have immense political and economic power. Furthermore, the way to take over as the leader of Kakerou involves first making a major contribution to Kakerou’s political and economic power, and then winning a life staking gamble with the current leader of Kakerou. This manga follows the super gambler Madarame Baku as he uses gambles to gain the economic and political power ... necessary to then surpass the leader for control of Kakerou.

The highlight of this manga is definitely the games. There are a lot of unique games with quite a lot of variety, ranging from simple and quick games like battleship to longer and more complex games like full on reenactments of MMOs. All of the games have mind games within them, but a lot of the bigger games often have more explicit games within the games as well with the players essentially gambling for elements of the larger games. These are pretty much all incredibly well designed. The games have a good amount of depth to them and the mangaka uses that depth really well for a very suspenseful plot. There’s pretty much always some sort of big twist secret plan that the protagonist had in mind from the beginning. However, even if you know that there’s some sort of twist coming, these twists are still generally pretty surprising and thus exciting.

Unfortunately, these games are often bogged down by other aspects of the manga. This manga has way too much of an emphasis on physical fights for a battle of wits manga. Having physical fights play into things is fine, but the fights here felt pretty disconnected from the battle of wits aspect. As in, the outcome connects to the overarching story, but the fights themselves are just long brawls between the fighters without any sort of tactics of strategies. The fights aren’t horrible, but they aren’t all that great either. And as all that matters is the outcome, the fights feel like a waste of time. Especially as they interrupt the much more interesting mind games and battle of wits going on.

It also doesn’t help that everything relating to gambles is overexplained. It basically felt like the mangaka was operating under the assumption that the reader forgot what was going on after each chapter. So there is a lot of reexplanation of the rules as well as commentary by observers on how players are doing despite it being immensely obvious if you are even somewhat following along. That may well have been for the best when the manga was originally running and was being released chapter by chapter. But when reading through it all at once this just results in significant amounts of the manga being pointless. Sure, you can just skim these portions, but trying to parse what’s important and what’s not still slows the manga down to a crawl at times.

The overarching plot also isn’t very good. The base premise is really interesting and it does some really interesting things with it, but things don’t come together all that well. I think the biggest issue comes down to how the plot seems to be entirely focused on big twists at the expense of all else. These twists are well written in a way in that they’re the type that are slowly built up to over a long stretch of time. But at the same time, just because a story is full of major unexpected twists with good foreshadowing doesn’t make the story overall good.

The cast is also really weak. Baku is likable enough and easy to get invested in. His allies Kaji and Marco are also decently well developed. But everyone else is lacking. Pretty much everyone has some sort of attempt at an interesting background that influences their motivations or some sort of character development. But none of it lands all that well and it’s hard to care about any of them all that much. Also, the ending is a complete mess, wherein it basically feels like the mangaka wasn’t sure how to ends things, so after the final game he just showed a bunch of random stuff and left it to the reader to interpret what it all means and how it all comes together. It wasn’t a bad ending, and thus for a manga like this where I cared mostly about the games I would say I was satisfied with it, but I certainly wouldn’t consider it a good ending.

The art I have mixed feelings about. Overall, I don’t like the style and I think most of the time it doesn’t look very good despite it being very elaborate. The character designs overall I thought were pretty bad too. However, there are times where things come together just right and the art is amazing.

tl;dr: A manga with great high-stake gambles full of suspense, but pretty weak in terms of everything beyond that.

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Aug 19, 2023

MangaIsPolitical

Not Recommended

Funny

STORY: 4

Meet Usogui the king of gamblers! He has an agenda and he is willing to bet his life to succeed. Along with his companions, his fate will cross a LOT of very colorful (read mostly psychotic) characters along Kakerou, a mysterious organization of game referees (and at the same time assassins because why not) that operates in the shadows of Japan.

The story is a succession of high-stake 'games' that Usogui takes on to conquer power. Call the right number and immediately 30 guys in black suits show up to insure the game goes as it should. Each game is anything-goes as long as ...

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Poll: Usogui Chapter 9 Discussion FarCritical - Mar 6	1 replies	by otakuweek »» 5 hours ago
Poll: Usogui Chapter 8 Discussion FarCritical - Mar 6	1 replies	by otakuweek »» 5 hours ago
Poll: Usogui Chapter 7 Discussion FarCritical - Mar 6	1 replies	by otakuweek »» 5 hours ago
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Poll: Usogui Chapter 5 Discussion FarCritical - Mar 6	2 replies	by otakuweek »» 5 hours ago

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