Gyakkyou Burai Kaiji Review

Overall Rating 9.0/10 - Exceptional, both entertaining as well as deep and intellectual. 

I recommend watching.

'This is not a gambling cruise; this is a cruise of realization.'

A little bit from my life: After finishing this long metaphorical trip over the abyss, I finally realized that they no longer exchange Uni Degrees for cash and rich privileged existence as they promised me in the beginning. Life is as much of a fraud as these bastards, who organize these games. This show is like a metaphor of real life, one of the faucets of its puzzle.

This is a very relatable show, Kaiji is very relatable character, at lest to me. Second season ruined his relatability and I dropped it because of it, but here Kaiji makes a lot of sense. He is like me here, because of that I was unusually invested in this show and wished him to succeed and win big.

'You are doing it not because you hate it this luxury, but because you actually want to own all these luxuries.'

So Kaiji went on a gambling trip, not so much to pay back debts, so much is to win himself a lifestyle he always craved. There he encountered a lot of cheaters and frauds, however he managed to turn the game around with his crazy and ingenious tricks and plans. This guy is almost as smart as Lelouch is, Light does not even comes close to these two.

Games themselves only appear simple, for example Rock Paper Scissors on the Espoir, however extra rules the have make this simple game much more tricky and ambiguous. Suddenly a lot of outside of the box thinking can turn the game around completely. All of this is fun and interesting to watch to every person who enjoys thinking.

In fact this outside of the box thinking is the most dominant theme of the show, almost everything is solved with this kind of approach.

Some games are completely rigged, like walking the beam between the two high rise buildings on 20s floor I think. Even if you cross the gap and reach the other end, the wing gale from the inside of the building will blow you away to your certain death. The only way forward is he invisible glass stairway to the side of the beam. 

Form my life experience I often found that such metaphoric invisible stairways were often the only way forward for me.

And there are much more existentialist and philosophical metaphors in this show, then just that. Someone who can pay attention adn rad between the lines will be able to find a lot in this show.

All in all I can recommend this show for everyone smart enough to understand its sublime message. 

If you just like gambling and dirt, you can also watch its second season. However it is nothing but a hollow shell of its illustrious original.