The protagonist named Kaiji works a minimum wage job. He's such an intelligent guy that he manages to get himself into a ton of debt with the Yakuza by being his friend's guarantor for a 300,000 Yen loan. With the ridiculous interest on that loan, it quickly becomes over 3 million yen.
Then the protagonist demonstrates further intelligence by joining a gambling cruise with promises to eliminate that loan. Thus begins the story, involving various gambling and psychology elements. It's not a bad premise entirely. It's just executed very poorly.
First, the pacing is something awful. In the first game, they are given a deck of cards with rock/paper/scissors to play against other duelists in the battle for star chips which are worth money. The cruise is 4 hours long. It takes about 10 episodes to finish the cruise, but mind you the last 20 minutes of the cruise last two or three episodes themselves. I had serious DBZ 5 minute-Namek deja vu when the characters were talking about how only 17 minutes remained, then proceeded to spend NEARLY FIFTEEN MINUTES discussing what they should do next. By the end of the episode, only two or three minutes passed on the timer. Grandpa without his walking stick can move faster.
Then there's the fact that while some psychological aspects are interesting, many more are just too basic, or something that can easily figured out by a middle schooler (which they proceed to explain for the next 60-120 seconds). Some are even nonsensical. Kaiji proclaims by just looking at a guy that he can tell he's a "balanced" type of thinker. Hey Kaiji, how about putting those prophetic powers to use and instead not sign a shady loan agreement? Even more so: When the first game is practically over, Kaiji assaults three other players, stealing all of their cash/valuables. He does so for some reasons, but why do the guards allow this when they wouldn't let him do so earlier? Earlier he assaulted another player and was promptly stopped.
Other than Kaiji being a dunce a lot of the time and other times outwitting the opposition when the plot calls for it, there are no noteworthy characters. They are pretty much all shallowly greedy characters, with no real history or motivation or anything noteworthy about their design.
The art style will be a huge turn off for some, even if it didn't bother me much. Characters have weirdly shaped heads, eyes, and everyone has a big nose. There is nothing memorable about the music or voice acting or sound effects either. Nothing memorable in either department.
I didn't finish the series because by midway through the second game, I was sick of the crappy pacing where they take an entire episode just to explain some rules, have some nonsensical dialogue, and then end the episode with whatever conclusion they came to, or to set up the drama for the proceeding episode. No character is remotely interesting, with grown men crying every episode. The art style didn't bother me personally so much but it will definitely be a turn off for some. Only a few neat gambling/psychological elements resonate strongly, but it isn't enough to override the overall stench of this series.
Pros:
+Some good psychological aspects
+Decent premise
Cons:
-Awful pacing
-While some psychological aspects are good, many more are too basic/elementary
-Shallow characters
-Art style may be a turn off
