"Come one, come all! There's big bucks to be earned, but you must have the heart of an entrepreneur - good looks, great mouthpiece to showcase your cunning business tactics, and overall, a heart of paper and steel to accept the money with every opportunity and steel that resolve when you're being hit by losses, to not give up and rebound!"...is what famed mangaka Riichiro Inagaki will tell you, to vet the newest series from the Dr. Stone mangaka: Trillion Game, the 2nd collaboration with yet another famous illustrator of Ryoichi Ikegami (the first being the 2015 one-shot of Kobushi Zamurai), and simultaneously a winner of the 69th Shogakukan Manga Awards alongside Yusei Matsui's Nige Jouzu no Wakagimi a.k.a The Elusive Samurai, Murako Kinata's Suuji de Asobo and most influentially, Kanehito Yamada's Sousou no Frieren a.k.a Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, in 2024.
Yet, with or without knowing Dr. Stone's influence going into Trillion Game, can you still enjoy what Riichiro Inagaki has prepared for this wild Shark Tank-esque startup thrill of a ride? To a certain degree, yes.
What happens when you put the "world's most selfish man" with a tech-savvy nerd that goes nowhere with his legit skills that are dismissed by just about any company that wishes that they could hire him? You get two people with the gamble of a lifetime trying to be the wealthiest company in the world, starting from being underdogs with both smarts and naivete to take on the big dogs in the belligerent society of the business world to earn them a net worth of a trillion dollars (that's 12 zeroes) by establishing the biggest heist that's known to man: Trillion Game. That's the game plan for the friends of Haru Tennoji and Manabu "Gaku" Taira, the gifted negotiator and the nerdy tech geek challenging their biggest rival of Dragon Bank, which is run by the Kokuryu family, where its board director and only daughter of the President, Kirika (or Kiri-hime as everyone dubs her), stands atop the business enterprise in the food chain.
The key rules of being an entrepreneur are being able to hold yourself to a higher regard and be able to concoct strategies at the ready as and whenever they are needed, plus a bit of luck, because a businessman's trailblazer has its green buck gains and red net losses. It's exciting, fulfilling, and (all the more) exhilarating to see both Haru and Gaku navigate each complex layer when it comes to challenging and being challenged about their step-by-step ladder to achieving a trillion dollars — from hiring and poaching competent people for their gain to giving people emotional whiplashes to help turn the tide towards their favour, anything goes to get a win against the conglomerate that is the controlling Dragon Bank, by hook or by crook. Their motive may be one and simple, but it's the people that they hire, from Gaku's similar mindset of Rinrin Takahashi, who is quite the OCD when it comes to details, to the investors of Kazuki Kedoin, who took the chance on them after his own failures to engage with yet another startup company with them, as well as Shingo Sakura, a former president of a small indie company that was absorbed by Trillion Game to help them combat Dragon Bank when it came to their game division business fight.
Just like Dr. Stone when it comes to portraying the new Stone Age, Trillion Game is just as authentic as it could get when it comes to portraying and navigating the ins and outs of the grounded and realistic entrepreneurship that's worth time to invest into. Even if it feels slow, stiff, and uncertain of impending troubles awaiting Haru and Gaku, along with their small startup team of people that could taste fortune or bankruptcy when situations arise to fault them, there's always the counteraction of the "never give up" attitudes, alongside the two-faced facade of the characters on both ends of the spectrum always thinking about the success of their own company and burning their competition to the ground. The fight of Trillion Game vs. Dragon Bank only gets more heated as time progresses and market shifts in the business world proceed at a breakneck pace trying to rope in the average Joe into buying their products, and it says so for the series going forward in its strategy-focused intelligence story.
This may be Madhouse's effort, but it's of their B-team instead of the ones specifically helmed for Frieren and (especially) Chi. Chikyuu no Undou ni Tsuite a.k.a Orb: On the Movements of the Earth, going head-to-head with Trillion Game, being the same 2-cour infighting treatment for resources. As it stands, the production could be better, along with the rather gritty art style adapted from Ryoichi Ikegami's drawings, but for what it is, it gets a pass grade.
The music gets a pass too, though it can be unnoticeable at times. I especially love the 1st Cour's OP/ED set with J-K-Pop fusion band &Team's OP and Klang Ruler's ED, which perfectly suits the anime given its "Start, Start, Start moving" relatability, though the disappointment with the 2nd Cour for rock singer Hiroji Miyamoto's OP and imase's ED songs is foretelling.
It's crazy to think that for much of everyone being able to relate to Dr. Stone, Riichiro Inagaki choosing to venture the niche road is somewhat of a twist that instead deviates from that same relatability and goes into obscure territory. Still, Trillion Game is an Inagaki work that should at least be tried once to know more of what he has to offer, more than just sticks and stones, but in money and fame as well.
