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「人間になった女」 (Ningen ni Natta Onna)
“The Woman Who Became Human”
I swear sometimes Kakegurui is meant to screw with you. It’s sick and twisted, revelling in the worst aspects of sadistic selfishness, yet outright encourages you get in the act and cheer as the strong willed and eager become thoroughly broken over the wheel of luck and chance. It’s a good example of excessiveness done right, and if this week was any indication, we haven’t begun to even plumb its true depths just yet.
Case in point this time was the cheating. I think it’s a given now every game in Kakegurui will feature rule breaking in some form, but this episode showed how ingenious it can be. Touchy feely information sharing? That’s child’s play, how about rigging the match before it even starts? It attests to the thought going into the mechanics of these games that we don’t even consider these possibilities. The cornucopia of rape faces might be what initially draws us in, but it is the show’s inner complexity which compels us to keep on watching. We know there’s a shocking twist coming, we know it will be a sight to behold, but goddamn if we can quickly identify it ahead of time. It’s perfect popcorn entertainment, with the only thing really limiting Kakegurui’s shock and awe being its imagination. So long as the show can keep throwing unique and increasingly insane games at us, I cannot see it losing steam anytime soon.
The other driving force behind Kakegurui is its psychology, and by hell did we get that this week too. Besides the student council realization of Yumeko’s clinical insanity—I thought it obvious before—the standout for me was the gradual collapse of our wannabe slaver Jun. His graceless take down was a textbook example of “having one’s number”, or in more modern parlance, playing on tilt. As soon as Jun let Yumeko and Mary get into his head with his initial round loss, he lost the game. You can see this unfold over time as Jun’s anger and frustration start leading to predictable actions and sloppy mistakes. He fails to think, rashly forces Nanami to act, and never considers any alternative options. No surprise then when the debt cover up is revealed the poor guy loses his mind. Well, a taser may have helped with that too. At least the show is willing to show some good at times too by having the cutie pie Nanami rediscover her humanity. For all the glorified suffering Kakegurui revels in, it’s quite nice knowing a hint of compassion remains just under the surface.
When we return to Kakegurui in three weeks though (sad panda face), we are almost assuredly back to the torture as the student council struggle against Yumeko continues anew. New life plans, one confirmed crazy, and what looks to be Kakegurui’s own version of Jigsaw. Oh yes, I think I do want to play watch a game.
Preview
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This anime has more ahegao faces than your standard lewd material.
Also yuri, yuri everywhere!
Somewhere out there you just know the doujins are having a field day with this material lol.
https://randomc.net/image/Kakegurui/Kakegurui%20-%2005%20-%20Large%20Preview%2001.jpg
Oh shit! We’re having Saw next?!
Sure looks like it XD
At the start:
“I want to play a little game.”
At the end:
“Game over!”
It was a treat to see Jun get his comeuppance for how he crappy he was to Nanami and Jabami. To see how intricate the full extent of Jabami’s plan was as it was unfolding was insane.
I’m looking forward to Midari’s Saw room in…three weeks.
The break is irritating as hell, but we at least get two episodes in two days, so I’m not complaining. Too much 😛
I don’t think Yumeko is actually insane. She’s a good person at heart, just addicted to gambling. She decided not to win so she could help Nanami out a bit. She’s good enough to fix the match exactly the way she wants it, and she’s doing it to help other people.
She won big if you ask me, they managed to throw 310 million debt onto someone else.
Initialy: 310,000,000 + 50,000,000 = 360,000,000 DEBT
Post-game: 10,000,000 + 50,000,000 = 60,000,000 DEBT
A net gain of 300,000,000 Yen
Believe me everything she does is calculated including going into debt.
IMO it remains to be seen. Her helping Nanami felt a lot like a decision made simply because it seemed interesting to do, not for any altruistic reason on Nanami’s behalf. She could be a good person, but there’s not enough evidence for it just yet.
https://randomc.net/image/Kakegurui/Kakegurui%20-%2005%20-%20Large%2030.jpg
Yuri doujins incoming (if they aren’t already).
But seriously, f**k that Jun guy. Seeing him get screwed over by just about everyone, including his “slave”, is just pure bliss.
https://randomc.net/image/Kakegurui/Kakegurui%20-%2005%20-%20Large%20Preview%2001.jpg
P.S.: Looks like Midari wants to play, and not just with herself after a round of one-man Russian roulette.
Why has no one told me this anime existed before now? This is the stuff I live for! It’s like 3 things I love, insane anime girls, gambling, and a twisted, meritocratic fucked up system, all mashed up into one. I haven’t read a gambling manga (or anime) this good since Liar Game. Can’t wait to see what happens next!
Mary x Yumeko is the thing of dreams.
So the gist of how Mary and Yumeko won is basically that they just weren’t exactly honest with the amount of debt they declared?
Yupp pretty much. There was no rule specifying the players needed to declare their preexisting debt loads, so some players made use of this for one reason or another. Jun for example never had any debt, but declared some in order to participate (he was playing to eliminate the monetary debt of a friend).
Yumeko’s and Mary’s strategy only worked because Jun (and Nanami) never once considered a player heavily in debt would declare a different amount. A smart player would have noticed such a trick immediately.
This was the first episode that I wasn’t able to understand how they won..