Reviews

I am going to start this review off by saying that I loved this show at first. It was different from every other anime I had watched before and It really gave me a character I could get behind. He is very likable and you root for him. The first arc is incredible. The boat and the whole scenario really feel like a new innovative thing that really kept me enthralled the whole time. It was grim and bleak with no end in sight, but it worked. Then it all changed. The second arc was good, until they got to the big bridge. First thing I will say is this show for me is predictable at this point. I can predict how it will go, who will die, and what will happen to Kaiji. Its sad. It becomes this sadistic game and this show really is trying to prove a point of, "No matter how hard you try you will not get anything and no one will help you. You are on your own". This does not sit well with me, but not because it is grim, but because there is no relief from it at any point. I am fine with grim things, but this is grim to the point of predictability and is almost torturous to watch. The whole time on the "death bridge", I knew how many people were going to die and that regardless of what happened it would be grim for Kaiji. The show pushes this idea of no hope home so much that it becomes tiresome. Overall, this show really did not do it for me and I wish I had stopped after episode 15 because it just gets worse and worse after that. I will say as much as it was predictable and grim, the visual metaphors were great, I really enjoyed Kaiji and the supporting cast as a whole, and the art style and animation was solid. It was just this grim predictability that did it in for me and really made this show unwatchable. 4/10