Kaiji (manga)


Gambling Apocalypse: Kaiji is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Nobuyuki Fukumoto. It has been published by Kodansha in Weekly Young Magazine since February 1996. The story centers on Kaiji Itō, a consummate gambler and his misadventures around gambling. The series has currently been divided into six parts. The current part, Tobaku Datenroku Kaiji: 24 Oku Dasshutsu-hen, started in 2017.
The first part of the manga has been adapted by Madhouse into a 26-episode anime television series, titled Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor, which aired on Nippon TV between October 2007 and April 2008. A second 26-episode season based on the second part of the manga, titled Kaiji: Against All Rules, aired from April to September 2011.
The series has also been adapted into a live-action film trilogy, directed by Tōya Satō and starring Tatsuya Fujiwara as Kaiji Itō. The first film, Kaiji, was released in October 2009 in Japan. It was followed by a sequel, Kaiji 2, released in November 2011. The third film, , was released in January 2020. A more loosely adapted Chinese live-action film, titled Animal World, starring Li Yifeng and Michael Douglas, premiered in June 2018 in China and other countries.
In North America, the first part of the manga has been licensed by Denpa and being released in a six-volume omnibus edition. The first volume was published in December 2019.
Kaiji is a popular series in Japan and the manga had over 21.5 million tankōbon copies in circulation, as of January 2019. In 1998, the manga was the winner of the 22nd Kodansha Manga Award in the General category.

Plot

Japan, February 1996. 3 years after graduating from high school and moving to Tokyo to get a job, Kaiji Itō fails to find steady employment due to the country being mired in its first recession since World War II. Depressed, he festers in his apartment, biding his time with cheap pranks, gambling, liquor and cigarettes. Kaiji is always thinking about money and his perpetual poverty frequently brings him to tears. Kaiji's unrelenting misery continues until he is paid an unexpected visit from a loan shark named Yūji Endō who wants to collect an outstanding debt that Kaiji has carelessly co-signed for his former co-worker. Endō gives Kaiji two options – either spend ten years repaying this outstanding debt, or board the gambling ship Espoir for one night to clear the debt. Using a con, Endō pressures Kaiji into accepting the deal, believing he will never come back from the voyage.
However, Kaiji survives the gamble and is invited to another gambling night, this time at Starside Hotel. Although initially wary about the offer, he is spurred by his acquaintance Sahara to go. After being the only survivor of the Human Derby, Kaiji decides to avenge his friends by competing in another gambling match the financing corporation known as Teiai Group has prepared: E-Card. Kaiji, despite losing an ear, defeats his opponent Yukio Tonegawa, the second highest ranking executive at Teiai. He goes all-in once again in a new game with Kazutaka Hyōdō, the president of Teiai, but this time loses both the money he had won in E-Card and four of his fingers.
Though Kaiji survives the events at Starside Hotel he now has a debt of over 9.5 million yen. He contacts Endō in hopes of being able to take part in another high-stakes gamble, though Endō betrays him and sends him to Teiai's underground labour camp where he will have to work off his debt for 15 years. In the labour camp Kaiji is paid 91,000 perica per month to dig an underground kingdom. This is reduced to 45,000 perica after Kaiji loses to Ōtsuki in Underground Cee-lo. However, Kaiji allies himself with other Forty-fivers to defeat Ōtsuki and win enough money for a one-day outside pass.
Although Kaiji manages to get out of the labour camp with 800,000 yen on hand using multiple one-day outside passes, he only has 20 days to earn the 60 million yen he needs to buy his freedom and release the other Forty-fivers. Fortunately, Kaiji comes across Kōtarō Sakazaki, a man who tells him of a pachinko game known as the Bog in a high-stakes casino where Kaiji can win over 500 million yen. Kaiji agrees to help him beat the Bog. However, the casino is owned by Teiai, and the Bog has been rigged in several ways by the manager of the casino, Seiya Ichijō, and his men to ensure that it won't pay out. Kaiji succeeds at beating the Bog after a long battle and Ichijō is sent to the underground labour camp working for 1050 years to pay back the 700 million yen from the Bog that Kaiji won.
Months after the events and finally having cleared his debt, Kaiji has been living with Sakazaki and his family until he kicks Kaiji out with 3 million yen in cash. Kaiji then agrees to help the former Forty-fivers Miyoshi and Maeda beat Takashi Muraoka, the president of a casino at his Minefield Mahjong game and potentially win over 100 million yen. After losing sums of money during the game, Kaiji realizes that the game was rigged from the start in Muraoka's favor, with Maeda looking at Kaiji's tiles and giving information to Muraoka and Miyoshi sending false signals to Kaiji. Kazuya Hyōdō, the son of Kazutaka Hyōdō, who was in the same room with Kaiji and the rest, loans him money to continue gambling, and after several matches, Kaiji is finally able to defeat Muraoka and wins 480 million yen through a pure stroke of luck.
Kazuya offers Kaiji an opportunity to gamble with him, to which Kaiji accepts and follows him. Kazuya reveals to Kaiji his twisted and bloodthirsty personality and how despicable he thinks human beings are. He decides to test his view on human nature with a life-or-death game called Salvation Game, with three friends indebted to him, Mario, Chang and Mitsuyama, and see if their friendship is a true bond. Kaiji is an observer to this game and cheers on the three men to challenge Kazuya's corrupted views. However, after several rounds, Mitsuyama ends up failing to put his trust into his friends and betrays them, taking all the money of the game and leaving them behind to die. Kaiji instinctively saves Mario and Chang from death, and before going with Kazuya to a warehouse and do their gamble, Kaiji asks them to join and support him to defeat Kazuya.
Kaiji and Kazuya play a game called One Poker, and after several matches with Kaiji close to death, he finally overthrows Kazuya. Nevertheless Kaiji, in an act of mercy, saves Kazuya from dying with the help of Mario and Chang. While Kazuya lies unconscious, they escape with 2.4 billion yen. Enraged after he found out what happened, Hyōdō commands the blacksuits and Endō to chase after them and get the money back.

Gambles

Series 1
; Restricted Rock–Paper–Scissors
; Steel Beam Crossing
; E-Card
; Tissue Box Raffle
Series 2
; Underground Cee-lo
; Pachinko "The Bog"
Series 3
; Minefield Game “17 Steps”
Series 4
; The Sword is Mightier than Love
; Salvation Game
Series 5
; One Poker
Movies
; The Princess and the Slave
; Tower of Babel
; Dream Jump
; Last Judgment -The Human Scale-
; Gold Rock–Paper–Scissors

Production

At the start of serialization, Nobuyuki Fukumoto was 37, and he had a track record of gambling manga, including Ten, Akagi and Gin to Kin. Originally, it was planned to be a short story based on the first game of the series, "restricted rock–paper–scissors", but Fukumoto told to his chief editor at Kodansha that he found it difficult to fit the story in a few chapters. Eventually, the plan to make it a serialized manga was decided in November 1995, and Kaiji began in Weekly Young Magazine in February 1996. Fukumoto stated that the original project did not have the main character's name as the series' title, and he named him so because he "did not want to make it so cool", and wanted a "dull" name.
Assuming that people who will read Kaiji are not familiar with gambling manga, Fukumoto has stated that he created original gambling games in the series because they are easier to process than already existing games, allowing him to make simple and easy rules, adding as well that anything can become a gamble having an original game, and he can draw something surprising or interesting for the readers. To create a new game, Fukumoto first comes up with an idea and then a way to beat it, taking time to prepare tricks in order to win in a creative way, noting that persistence is key in the process.
Kaiji, and most of Fukumoto's other works as well, are drawn in a "cartoonish and loose" style. Fukumoto uses techniques like shake up the character's eyeballs and face to express their feelings. The titular character is drawn "sharper". Kaiji has an angular face, pointy chin and sharp nose, making it difficult to freehand draw him. Fukumoto uses a ruler and rotates the manuscript paper to draw him. For the antagonists, Fukumoto depicts their "ugliness" by bringing up a scary look in their eye and "threatening teeth". Fukumoto uses his trademark onomatopoeia, "zawa...", to express the characters' uneasiness. He also uses visual metaphors, like making Kaiji jump a large crevice or drawing him into a rushing torrent of water, to express the uneasy atmosphere. Women rarely appear in the series, being Mikoko Sakazaki the most prominent, and their appearance in gambling scenes are even more rarely, as Fukumoto reportedly stated that he did not need women in the gambling world. Nevertheless, in July 2019, Fukumoto started Yami-Mahjong Fighter: Mamiya, a gambling mahjong manga series, in which the protagonist is a female character.
The manga portrayals people's psychology in extreme situations, and the characters deal with betrayal and elaborate cons, desperately looking for ways to win. Fukumoto has stated that he can not make manga where the characters readily make friends that they risk their lives for, and his protagonists are always alone, with no friends or followers, and Kaiji himself is frequently betrayed. Fukumoto considered that his antagonists, like Kazutaka Hyōdō and Yukio Tonegawa, are bad guys saying cruel things that maybe are true. By making Kaiji reflecting on his life and noticing his own faults, Fukumoto considered that the story is about maturation, as he wanted to draw a story in which the character gains something or changes in some way, so that he would be able to trust a person, even if he was previously betrayed.

Media

Manga

Kaiji is written and illustrated by Nobuyuki Fukumoto. The series started in Kodansha's Weekly Young Magazine issue #11 of 1996 published on February 19, 1996. The manga has currently been divided into six parts so far:
In August 2018, it was announced at Otakon that the then new brand North American manga publishing company Denpa licensed the first part of the manga Gambling Apocalypse: Kaiji. It is being released in a six-volume omnibus edition with 500+ pages each one, and the first volume was published on December 10, 2019. In June 2020, Manga Planet announced the digital English-language publication of the manga. It was planned to start on June 23, 2020, however, it was postponed.

Spin-offs

A spin-off, titled Mr. Tonegawa: Middle Management Blues, written by Tensei Hagiwara and illustrated by Tomohiro Hashimoto and Tomoki Miyoshi, began serialization in Monthly Young Magazine on July 20, 2015, and later moved to Kodansha's Comic Days manga app on March 5, 2018. In May 2020, Comic Days manga app announced that the series would end in three chapters. The series finished on June 8, 2020. Kodansha has compiled its chapters into individual tankōbon volumes. The fist volume was published on December 4, 2015. As of November 13, 2019, nine volumes have been published.
A second spin-off series, titled 1-nichi Gaishutsuroku Hanchō began serialization in the combined 4th and 5th issue of Weekly Young Magazine on December 26, 2016. The manga is written by Tensei Hagiwara and illustrated by Motomu Uehara and Kazuya Arai.

Anime

In August 2007, in the issue #35 of Weekly Young Magazine, it was announced an anime television series adaptation of the first part of the manga, titled Gyakkyō Burai Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor, known simply as Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor. Produced by Nippon Television, D.N. Dream Partners, VAP and Madhouse, the series is directed by Yūzō Satō, with Hideo Takayashiki handling series composition, Haruhito Takada designing the characters and Hideki Taniuchi composing the music. It aired between October 2, 2007 and April 1, 2008 on Nippon TV. The individual episodes were collected into nine DVDs released by VAP between January 23 and September 26, 2008. VAP later re-released all the episodes on a DVD box set on October 7, 2009.
A second season with the same key staff, titled Gyakkyō Burai Kaiji: Hakairoku-hen, also known as Kaiji: Against All Rules, was announced in the issue #9 of Weekly Young Magazine in January 2011. Based on the second part of the manga Tobaku Hakairoku Kaiji, it premiered on April 5, 2011 and ran until September 27 of the same year on Nippon TV. A scene depicting Kaiji throwing himself into large-stakes gambling by symbolically drawing him into a rushing torrent of water, was replaced due to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which occurred midway through the anime's production. The 26 episodes were collected into nine DVDs released by VAP between June 22, 2011 and February 22, 2012. VAP also re-released all the episodes on two DVD box sets on September 21, 2011 and February 22, 2012.
In the United States, Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor was streamed on Joost video-streaming service in December 2008. In July 2013, Crunchyroll announced the streaming rights to both seasons.

Music

The music for the anime series was composed by Hideki Taniuchi. The original soundtrack album for Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor was released by VAP on January 23, 2008. The original soundtrack album for Kaiji: Against All Rules was released on July 20, 2011.
The opening theme for Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor is a cover of the Blue Hearts's song "Mirai wa Bokura no Te no Naka", by Masato Hagiwara with Red Bonchiris and the ending theme is "Makeinu-tachi no Requiem", written, composed and performed by Hakuryu. The opening theme for the second season is "Chase the Light!" by Fear, and Loathing in Las Vegas and the ending theme is "C Kara Hajimaru ABC" by Wasureranneyo.
Yugo Kanno composed the music for the live-action films. The first film's original score was released on October 7, 2009. For the first film, two songs by Japanese pop singer-songwriter Yui were featured, "It's All Too Much" and "Never Say Die", used as theme song and insert song respectively. The original score for the second film was released on November 2, 2011. The original score for Kaiji Final Game was released on January 8, 2020.

Live-action films

Kaiji has been adapted into a trilogy of live-action films. The first film, Kaiji, was announced in October 2008. The film premiered on October 10, 2009 in Japan. Directed by Tōya Satō, starring Tatsuya Fujiwara, Yūki Amami and Teruyuki Kagawa. In the UK, the first film was released on DVD by 4Digital Media under the title Kaiji: The Ultimate Gambler on July 26, 2010.
A sequel, Kaiji 2, was announced in November 2009. It was released on November 5, 2011. Directed by Tōya Satō, starring Tatsuya Fujiwara, Yūsuke Iseya, Yuriko Yoshitaka, Katsuhisa Namase and Teruyuki Kagawa. Both movies are a little different from the manga/anime, both having alternate choices of what Kaiji did, but all have the same settings and events in different orders and rule changes in each gamble.
In May 2019, a third and final film, titled , with a completely original story by Nobuyuki Fukumoto, was announced to premiere on January 10, 2020. Directed by Tōya Satō, starring Tatsuya Fujiwara, Nagisa Sekimizu, Mackenyu, Sota Fukushi, Kōtarō Yoshida and Suzuki Matsuo. Other cast members includes Yūki Amami, Katshusa Namase, Ikusaburo Yamazaki, Masatō Ibu and Toshiki Seto. A novelization of the film by Van Madoy was released on November 14, 2019.
A more loosely adapted Chinese live-action movie, Animal World, starring Li Yifeng and Michael Douglas, was released on June 29, 2018 in China and other countries. Netflix has acquired the global digital rights to the film.

Video games

Tobaku Mokushiroku Kaiji, developed by Kodansha, was released for the PlayStation on May 25, 2000. Gyakkyō Burai Kaiji - Death or Survival, developed by Compile Heart, was released for the Nintendo DS on September 25, 2008. A PlayStation VR game, titled Kaiji VR ~Zetsubō no Tekkotsu Watari~, was released on August 28, 2017. The game is developed by Solid Sphere and is based on the events depicted in the Castle of Despair arc of the first part of the manga. A version of the game was also launched for the Nintendo Switch on December 28, 2017.
Several pachinko and pachislot machines based on the series have been released. Rodeo has launched three pachislots; Kaidō Mokushiroku Kaiji in October 2004, Kaidō Mokushiroku Kaiji 2 in December 2008, and Kaidō Mokushiroku Kaiji 3 in September 2013. Sammy launched the pachislot Kaidō Mokushiroku Kaiji 4 in December 2018. Takao have released multiple pachinko machines. The first, CR Dan-kyuu Mokushiroku Kaiji, in 2007, the second, CR Dan-kyuu Mokushiroku Kaiji Numa, in 2009, the third, CR Dan-kyuu Mokushiroku Kaiji 2, in 2011, the fourth, CR Dan-kyuu Mokushiroku Kaiji Numa 2, in 2012, the fifth, CR Dan-kyuu Mokushiroku Kaiji 3 in 2014, the sixth, CR Dan-kyuu Mokushiroku Kaiji Numa 3 in 2017, the seventh, CR Dan-kyuu Mokushiroku Kaiji HIGH & LOW, in 2018, and the eighth, P-Numa, also released in 2018.

Other media

A guidebook, titled Overwhelming Official Guide Kaiji × Kaiji × Kaiji, was published by Kodansha on October 28, 2011. It includes complete information about the series' first fifteen years of serialization. It also includes a one-shot chapter, titled "Kaiji Gaiden", originally published in Young Magazine Zoukan: Aka Buta #12 in 1997, and depicts a "what if" scenario where Kaiji chooses not to accept Endō's offer to board the Espoir.
Good Smile Company launched a figma figure of Kaiji Itō in August 2011.
In August 2011, when Kaiji reached its 500th chapter, Weekly Young Magazine published tribute illustrations by popular manga artists to celebrate Fukumoto's manga achievement, including Clamp, Tetsuya Chiba, Naoki Urasawa, Shuichi Shigeno, Jyoji Morikawa, Keisuke Itagaki, Hideo Yamamoto, and 12 others.
Kaiji was featured in Level-5's game Girl's RPG Cinderellife, launched for Nintendo 3DS in 2012. Kaiji and Mikoko Sakazaki were featured in a promotional collaboration for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game in 2016.
A Japanese variety show, titled Jinsei Gyakuten Battle Kaiji, aired on TBS in December 2017. In the show, indebted contestants have the opportunity to earn money participating in different challenges inspired by the games of the manga. An application process was available in the program's official website until November 2017. Another variety show with the same topic, titled Real Kaiji Grand Prix, was streamed in AbemaTV's AbemaSPECIAL Channel in April 2018.

Reception

General reception

Manga and anime

The manga had 18 million tankōbon copies in circulation as of November 2011, over 20 million copies in circulation as of July 2012, and over 21.5 million copies in circulation as of January 2019. Individual volumes have been featured in Oricon's weekly charts of best-selling manga every year from 2009 through 2018. Kaiji is a popular series in Japan, and like Nobuyuki Fukumoto's other work Akagi, it has a cult following overseas.
In 1998, along with Sōten Kōro, the manga won the 22nd Kodansha Manga Award in the General category.
In February 2015, Japanese website Goo Ranking conducted a "Top 10" online web poll of the "Best Cerebral Anime", where Kaiji ranked #2 behind Death Note.

Live-action films

At the Japanese box office, the first two live-action Kaiji films grossed , including for Kaiji and for Kaiji 2. Overseas, the two films grossed, including $460,073 for Kaiji overseas and $68,175 for Kaiji 2 in Singapore. Kaiji: Final Game has grossed in Japan, bringing the worldwide box office gross of the Kaiji film trilogy to. The Chinese film adaptation Animal World also grossed in China, bringing the worldwide box office gross of all film adaptations to approximately.
In September 2011, Goo Ranking conducted a web poll of "Live-Action Manga/Anime Adaptations That Worked" and the first Kaiji film ranked #6 out of 38 live-action adaptations.

Critical reception

Anime

Michael Toole of Anime News Network praised the narrative of Kaiji, stating that "the series is run through with entertaining lowlifes, odd situations, and intoxicating moments of suspense". Bradley Meek of T.H.E.M. Anime Reviews said that Kaiji is "one of the most unique anime I've ever seen, and I don't expect to see anything like it again". He praised the series' "ingenious games", depicting them as "devilishly clever and depend as much on the psychology of the players as it does strategy". Meek also wrote that the theme of the series is "the rich always screw over the poor" and the games could be seen as a "direct form social commentary". David Smith of IGN praised the games' rules development and strategies, but said that watching the titular protagonist "trip and fall into obvious traps is more than a little frustrating". Regarding the tone of the series, Theron Martin of Anime News Network wrote that the first episode of its second season "wars between being a psychological character study and just clinically depressing", and that could be a "turn-off", noting that the series is aimed at an older male audience. Gia Manry of the same website ranked the titular character second on her list of "Anime Characters with Terrible Karma". In comparing Kaiji to other gambling series like Fukumoto's other work Akagi, Shinobu Kaitani's One Outs or Fūmei Sai's Legendary Gambler Tetsuya, John Oppliger of AnimeNation considered that Kaiji appeals to a wider audience due to its depiction of a variety of high-stakes games instead of focusing on a single kind of game, and due to the fact that the aforementioned series star "a prodigy rather than an ordinary guy", but stated that a "skilled gamesmanship" viewer could be disappointed with Kaiji by the "extensive reliance on coincidence, deus ex machina, and authorial manipulation" that "substitutes for intelligence and strategy".
The series' art style has been particularly commented by reviewers. Toole described Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor as "fantastically ugly" and "cheaply animated", and Martin stated that it uses a "very old-school artistic style", noting the use of "noses that are either huge or lethally sharp, extra-heavy lines in the character designs, and limited animation". In another article, Martin said that the simplicity of the series' animation is "pretty clearly calculated" and "heavily stylized" due to Fukumoto's original work. God Len of Japanator wrote that the artwork "is quite ‘unique’ to say the least. Noses are long, heads are misshapen, and something about their teeth really scares me. This look might be bad for most series out there today, but for Kaiji it works. The most important part is that it is consistent; and as long as its consistent, it works for me. Anyways, gamblers are supposed to be ugly". Daryl Surat of Otaku USA, commented that Fukumoto's "exaggerated facial expressions and contortions" of his character's design allows "selling the peaks and valleys of emotion that go with gambling matters of life, death, and big money". He also highlighted Fukumoto's trademark sound effect "Zawa Zawa", used to "denote minds ill at ease" and the "highly talkative and hard-selling" narrator, used to explain "how a big a deal everything is with a suitable mix of gravitas, bombast, and wild metaphor that is invariably realized through an outlandish fantasy visual".
Crunchyroll listed the second season Kaiji: Against All Rules among the best anime series of 2011, with reviewer Joseph Luster commenting, "Ideally, Kaiji would be super popular in North America. I'd certainly like to think it would blow up if someone licensed it, but who knows. Still, if you managed to catch the second season this year, you know how dangerously addictive it can be. Zawa zawa, indeed".

Live-action films

Carlo Santos of Anime News Network ranked the first live-action film Kaiji: The Ultimate Gambler as a C. Santos wrote that the greatest strengths of the film are the psychological gamesmanship and the theory of gambling games, preserving the spirit of the original work. He criticized the characters' one-dimensional characterization, the "artificial" closed-room scenarios and the "contrived" staging of "scrappy working-class hero versus evil old rich guy", stating that Kaiji could be labeled as a "fantasy". Santos also mentioned the changes from the original work and the "awkward plot manuevers" to make the events fit in the film's two-hour time frame. Chris MaGee of Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow described the film as a "very uncomfortable mix" between the social commentary of the 2009 film Kani Kōsen, Tatsuya Fujiwara's first starring role in the 2000 film Battle Royale and televised poker shows. He criticized the "over-the-top" acting of Fujiwara, Kenichi Matsuyama and Teruyuki Kagawa, stating that "William Shatner would end up telling Kagawa that it might be a good idea to dial things down a little bit. It seems that in the world of Kaiji more always equals better". He concluded "I could only see director Toya Sato and the producers of Kaiji the film being entertained by its game show strategies and hyper-dramatics. For those of us unfortunate enough to be sitting in the audience the whole experience is just painful. Not to give away any spoilers, but the fact that the film's ending leaves things wide open for a sequel or sequels makes me shudder".
In a review of the second live-action film, Kaiji 2, Maggie Lee of The Hollywood Reporter felt little suspense and satisfaction with the characters and the actors' performance. She wrote that the cast "cranks up their acting" but due their "cardboard" roles they "have no hopes of being more than that". Lee expressed no excitement in the "character reversals", pointing out that they have become quite common in the survival game genre, with works like Liar Game or The Incite Mill, stating "no matter how many times the key persons in Kaiji switch their allegiances, it no longer surprises". Nevertheless, Lee praised the camera movements, music and sound levels, ultimately calling the film a "geeky but still entertaining sequel to the crowd-pleasing "gambling" genre".
Tay Yek Keak of Today in his review of Kaiji: Final Game, considered it as "quite enjoyably fascinating and intellectually stimulating", due that in this third installment "the ambition has grown much bigger. National-size bigger, in fact". Keak mentioned that Fujiwara in his role as Kaiji looks exactly as he was in the first film, and that the only thing that shows that 11 years have passed since the first film is that the "main winner-takes-all game here is more sedentary and less energetic". Keak ultimately added that "it's protracted, it's filled with the outlandish clichés which Japanese flicks love to indulge in and it may seem like a juvenile plaything to the uninitiated. But I like the dark financial apocalypse proposed here which is quite grimly thrilling just to ponder on".