The first season of Kaiji was a fantastic gambling anime, with the exception of the bridge crossing, but the character driven drama made even that lull in the tactical aspect of the anime enjoyable.
However, this season went a bit overboard with how slow some games are drawn out for, in particular, Kaiji vs the Bog goes on for an excruciatingly long number of episodes, and debatably it's long enough to diffuse tension, which is the opposite of the goal.
Another recurring problem was the narrator and characters repeating some phrase upwards of three times for emphasis. Though this in itself is an innocuous, effective technique, I felt as if it were slightly overused in this season, which ultimately pulled me out of the experience whenever it happened.
The final problem I had with Kaiji - Against All Rules, is they changed something that made season one very enjoyable. Though watching the characters come up with strategies and ways to combat the other person cheating, the real joy is from realising all the information needed to figure out the same strategies were shown to us. This however, does not happen in the last stand off this season. There is a moment where Kaiji overhears something in a bar that becomes crucial to his plan that is not revealed to us until many episodes later, exactly when that piece of information became important. Although it is a common theme for mysteries to withhold tiny bits of information until the big reveal, it is unfortunate that Kaiji does not stick to the old formula where everything is revealed to us beforehand.
Criticism aside, this was still an enjoyable anime and the character animation was done very well, succeeding in invoking fear and relief in the audience. Definitely worth giving it a watch.
