Why do teachers allow students to form an organized gambling ring in the school? How was a student council, which promotes a blatant system of oppression, even elected in the first place? Are parents really ok with allowing their children to bet millions of dollars on an after-school game of poker?
And, perhaps the most important question of all, who cares?
Sure, there are a lot of elephants in the room, but these elephants are damn cool. With Kakegurui you're getting an original, thrilling anime, so who's to blame you if you simply close you're eyes and enjoy the ride. (Don't actually close your eyes. If you do, you won't be able to see your computer screen).
The anime's strongest and weakest point has to be its characters. As one might expect from a school full of gamblers, every character is a psychopath on some level, and Kakegurui does a great job of juxtaposing these various personalities. What's more, (almost) none of the characters are expendable, with even the minor characters serving as foils which offer the viewer striking comparisons. The one exception to this would be Kakegurui's protagonist who, in keeping with the time-honored tradition of Japanese animated culture, is virtually nonexistent. In an anime as wild as Kakegurui, this is almost forgivable. The protagonist offers a more normal lens through which the demented behavior of the rest of the characters, and I found myself craving his commentary about one-third of the time just to have some normalcy. The other two-thirds of the time I either wished he would get lost and make room for the more interesting characters, or else forgot he existed entirely.
Although we view the show and the self-destructive actions of its many insane characters through the eyes of a sane (and boring) protagonist, Kakegurui never feels like a public service announcement, courtesy of the Japanese, against the horrors of gambling. The show's characters tend to suffer in relation to their lack of internal stability and, generally speaking, each character's greed or arrogance eventually leads to their downfall. This isn't always the case, however, as some of the more mentally sane, goal-driven characters take massive losses as a result of their tenancy to play it safe.
Despite the show's repetitive premise, it never got boring. It was incredibly entertaining to watch the characters weasel their way in and out of trouble by making the tables turn dramatically one way or the other, and the fact that the bets were often won by cheating only added to the fun. The games in which the characters participated were a joy to watch - always with some type of original spin but never too complicated to be understood.
Unfortunately, the ending was completely anticlimactic (probably something to do with trying to cap off a 13 episode show while staying faithful to the original source material) but, considering the sheer brilliance of the anime's jazzy opening, I'm willing to give back some partial credit. All things considered, Kakegurui was a joy to watch as long as you're willing to put up with some occasional issues. 7/10.
