Why You Should Watch Kaiji Ultimate Survivor

there is a moments in Kaiji ultimate survivor where an old man reaches into a tissue box in order to pull out a raffle ticket and this moment this one tiny movements is perhaps the most terrified I've ever been while watching an anime it's hard to describe the sheer level of drama and tension in this scene as well as the potential consequences for every character in it and it created this amazing feeling of excitement cross with omnipresent dread that I have yet to experience again but the question is how how does Koji make these little moments of gambling feel like life or debt bottles of survival well friends we're going to be answering that question today and in the process of doing so talk about why you should watch Kaiji ultimate survivor gambling anime has to be one of these strangers subgenres in the medium not to be confused with carrot Butler's which is kind of its own thing operating off its own set of rules gambling anime are usually pretty nation aimed at a very particular audience and that only began to change recently with the widespread success of this season's kekkai guru II and the moderate success of 2015 s death parade and while these are both great shows that I heartily recommend I do feel they fall short in achieving the sheer exhilarated considered the best in genre Kaiji while other shows treat the act of gambling with a playful curiosity Kaiji is different Kaiji is obsessed with the act of gambling and this passion stems from the author of the kaiju manga Nobuyuki Fukumoto while Fukumoto claims not to be much of a gambler himself his love of the subject is plain to see from the fact that he's worked on seven other series all of which center around gambling in some way and that's only the ones I could find translated into English and it's this passion that's so palpable while experiencing Kaiji you can tell there's a real love and reverence for the mechanic of risk and reward in this series so much so that even if you yourself have zero interest in gambling you can feel Fukumoto sheer dogged passion for the subjects bleed from every episode and this passion is infectious it's hard not to get swept up in Fukumoto slow for the game of Risk and feel it yourself the world depicted by koji is one of Japan in the late 90s right in the middle of what is commonly referred to as Japan's Lost Decade a period of economic stagnation the worst the country had seen since world war ii which caused unemployment to surge to about 5.5 percents making life extremely difficult for any young high school or college grads looking to enter the workforce leaving them vulnerable to low-paying jobs and poor working conditions as well as making it very easy to fall into large amounts of death enter our main character Chi Chi a young nice meaning not in education employment or training the economic situation means Chi Chi spends his days drinking and playing poker and it's the little ways the series sells Chi Chi as character in these opening scenes that make him so compelling there's a sign in his room that reads the future is in our hands a hopeful message but something he very clearly doesn't feel he's deeply frustrated by his inability to find work or make something of himself but also angry at the society around him that's trapped him in this situation and you can see this by his tendency to vandalize expensive imported cars it's a small little action but I think one that's very telling chi Chi both despises the owners of these cars for their wealth but also wishes he had what they did and the fact that he doesn't is the source of Chi Chi's deep feelings of inadequacy and despair like life has passed him by and he's lost control on his future and it's easy to imagine a lot of young people from Japan of this period feeling the same way Chi Chi does and I think the fact that Fukumoto wouldn't have been that much older than Chi Chi during the last decade lends a level of authenticity to his writing and speaking personally as someone who is in a very similar situation not that ago I could really relate to kgs feelings here it's tough to feel lost in life and to not know which direction to move in and it's also a universal problem that mostly everyone is going to face at some point and so it's refreshing to see a main character suffer in such a mundane in realistic way and be defined not by what makes them special or exceptional but in how human and relatable their problems feel later in the episode Chi Chi is visited by a lone shark and is informed that a lone eco signed on as a favor to a co-worker has defaulted to him and he's now in debt to the tune of three million eight hundred and fifty thousand yen and so his only way of paying it off and regaining control of his life is by entering the dark world of underground gambling secret events were heavily indebted people gamble massive amounts of borrowed money at the hope of clearing their debts but at the risk of much greater debt enslavement or even death and I think what makes Chi Chi as a character so much fun to watch in this environments is that his skill set isn't that he specifically talented at gambling in fact the first thing that happens in the show is that he loses a game of poker rather chi Chi's ability that makes him so damn entertaining is as the title of the show implies his ability to survive rather than understanding one specific game or rule set like say mahjong or duel monsters Chi Chi has a far broader ability to analyze a given situation view it from all angles and form a plan to overcome it and sometimes that means rigging a game of rock paper scissors or a dice in his favor and sometimes it applies more directly to dangerous situations like having to cross a large metal beam suspended 74 metres in the air and it's exhilarating watching Chi Chi run the numbers and break down these problems piece by piece slowly tipping the scale in his favor gradually trying to claw his way back to regular life and because of all this it means that you really really root for Chi Chi it's hard to watch him struggle in such a difficult world but it all makes the little victories feel worthwhile there's a moment in the second season where he comes into enough money to actually buy himself a decent meal and I swear I have never felt so happy for a main character but before we go any further I'd like to address what I think is going to be a deal-breaker for a lot of people and that is Chi Chi's art style Chi Chi is not a conventionally good-looking show and I think not even its most hardcore fans are going to make the argument that it's visually appealing to newcomers and it's easy to see why for most anime the visuals and in particular the character designs serve as the first point of contact with the viewer and so it makes sense that Studios want to create brief visual windows into the world they've created and have the view from those windows be is immediately appealing as possible and so it makes sense why people would look at a show like Chi Chi and find its appearance so off-putting nothing about it seems to be trying to directly appeal to the viewer every part of chi Chi's world is designed to look harsh and unforgiving from these sharp angled facial features that make some of its characters nearly feel beastly or demonic in appearance to the thick black lines it's characters are rendered in making them feel solid rigid and heavy but the reasons Chi Chi's visuals look so unsettling is that the world of Chi Chi is unsettling it's a harsh place a cruel existence for the rich play upon the weak and human life has monetary value and it's visuals are reflective of that so much of the appeal of Chi Chi is about watching a character struggle his way out of difficult situations and by designing the visuals in a way that reflect that it means that the viewer has no recourse or comfort from the events playing out on screen like every aspect of the series has been specifically designed to keep the viewer on edge as possible and I genuinely don't think it would be as effective if the show had a more conventional art style there's an intention to the visual design of this show and once you look past these surface-level impressions visuals give you can begin to see the exceptional amount of skill that's gone into making the show look this way because the show isn't concerned with keeping its characters conventionally attractive it allows them to really push the facial posing to convey exactly what emotion a character is experiencing as well as to what degree they are feeling it really bringing to life those major moments of victory and defeat the storyboarding behind Kaiji is also exceptional the show has a knack for framing very minor actions in a way that carries weight and significance making something as simple as a footstep feel like an all-out declaration of war just look at this shot in particular and the design behind it the way the foot fills the frame the parallax on the background conveying motion the slight camera shake as the foot slams into the ground and the bursts of dust that accompanies it it's such a tiny action but it's framed and animated in such a specific way that it really shows kgs conviction in facing his opponents moments later we get this shot and again just look at how this one is composed code you're taking up a massive amount of the frame the camera tilted in a way that makes it feel like his weight is pushing down the composition of the shot tipping the angle of the scene making Koji feel heavy and powerful tying directly into his place in the story at this point and it's little pieces of visual storytelling like this that keep these encounters so engaging furthering the intense informative storyboarding is the use of color throughout koji the show is often cast in cold neutral hues with dark and sinister lighting but it's often also punctuated by intense bursts of sharp saturated reds or deep ominous purples with the lighting and tone of a scene shifting dramatically in accordance with the characters feelings and emotions it's visual design like this that I think makes koji hard to appreciate through stills or gifts but makes the experience infinitely more engaging when consuming Kaiji as a whole as the design and direction of these visuals directly connect to the broader themes and stories of kgs worlds and this is never more true than the gambling Encounters of chi-ji these make up the majority of kgs runtime and so it's fortunate that they're so exceptionally executed the gambling battles of Chi Chi feel more like tooth and nail struggles for survival more so than many actual shown and action series and I think one of the reasons for this is how well the show understands the underlying meta of shown and battles motion and series based or in combat or sport will eventually break down into the matter of their competition two or more characters trying to figure out what their opponent will do and attempting to counter accordingly and you can see this in everything from Pokemon to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure to yugioh to high Q this is the underlying matter of motion and anime series and where Chi Chi is so successful is that it boils this meta down into the smallest most simple possible States slight alterations on games like rock-paper-scissors carrots or dice meaning we can skip these special techniques and training arcs and just jump straight into the mind games the show is careful to explain each one of its rule sets so that the audience has just a clear of an idea of what's happening as its characters take emperor card for example which is the game played by kg and tonegawa later in the first season each player has their respective hand and could play one of three cards and give it round with the Emperor defeating a citizen a citizen defeating a slave and a slave defeating an emperor I am leaving out some of the nuance for the sake of brevity but the basic idea is that you want to predict what card your opponent will use and counter accordingly with your opponent's trying to do the exact same thing and so the mind games begin with both players trying to predict each other's strategy and what I think really makes this work is the fact that Fukumoto does not take the easy way out of these encounters it feels like he really sat down and took the time to figure out the rules of these games and what strategies could be actually viable there's never a point where Chi G notices some impossible detail or is saved by any kind of deus ex machina rather he forms his own strategies by care observing his opponents as well as deeply considering the rules of the game and slowly he draws out the subtle tactics of each one carefully edging his opponent towards defeat and by giving us all the same information kg has it means that we are right there with him trying to figure out these games and their strategies in the same way he is there's no moves made by kg or his opponents that we ourselves couldn't have thought up if we had the time and creativity and this exponentially raises the intrigue of these games drawing us directly into the mind games of the characters making it especially thrilling when a character uses an obtuse strategy from out of left field and completely changes the flow of a game the Battle of tonegawa is also a fantastic example of how the show creates stakes because of the vast difference in kg and Tony Gow is financial wealth kg can't match the massive sums of money being put forward by tonegawa and so is forced to use his body as collateral with a device being attached to the side of kgs head that aims a small drill directly into his ear with kg force to bet with the units of centimeters between the drill and his ear drum and if that sounds like it's going to be a little hard to watch you have no idea in any other series it would be easy to wave off such stakes safe in the knowledge that the main characters plot armor will protect them but here's the thing Chi Chi can lose and lose bud there are several instances where I genuinely thought these stakes were too high for Chi Chi to suffer a defeat only to watch as a tragic twist of fate robbed him a victory and I don't think I've ever seen a show so willing to hurl its main characters into such deep abyss of despair and just when you think he's hit rock bottom you watched the floor beneath him shatter as he sinks even further it's heartbreaking but it also gives a huge amount more tension and ways to each one of the encounters and it's also with that context that the drill aimed at chi Chi's ear drum begins to feel that much more real and danger and the same is true for nearly every encounter of the show there's always something very tangible and defined on the line with the results having massive life-altering consequences both for Kaiji as well as those around him furthering the intensity of kgs gambling encounters is the series stellar use of surreal visual metaphors the sheer level of creativity the show employs to bring these encounters to life is exceptional often giving physical form to the thoughts and feelings of its characters like in our pulse pounding battle with tonegawa Kaiji hopelessly outclassed having every one of his moves predicted and countered begins seeing his opponents as an all-seeing all-powerful demon God and it's all accentuated by some terrifically executed sound design just check out this clip and how the sound of jet engines are used to push the velocity of tonig arrows movements while push tada [Music] pretty intense since all he's doing is flipping a card it would be criminal to talk about Kaiji and forget to mention not only its stellar soundtrack but also it's beautiful implementation within the show itself the way musical cues are used to elicit tension and doubt is on a level that I've quite frankly never seen in an anime with the possible exception of Ipoh helped in no small part by how fantastic the music actually is there is a sinister dark heart to the soundtrack of chi-ji layering biting aggressive guitar / whaling alien sounding synth and it adds an incredible amount to the build-up of the show's major reveals as well as the dramatic explosion as these moments climax which is also why I tend to favor it as a soundtrack in a lot of my own videos as much as I love this show we're at that point where I don't feel comfortable giving it my full endorsement unless we acknowledge its shortcomings and one of the biggest for me is the show's pacing which can be really grueling it's tricky because this aspect of the show helps as much as it hinders a lot of the excitement of the series is when the show traps you in an unbearably tense situation and then drags it out as long as possible but there is definitely one or two arcs that felt about an episode or two too long with the occasional episode where very little happens and the pacing grinds to a halt this is a kind of odd one but try as I may I could not find the first season in anything above 480p and that includes super legit streaming sites like crunchyroll and it's a real shame because it hurts Kaiji specific visual style a lot making the lighting feel imprecise and muddy and giving a low-quality jagged edge to a lot of the thick black line work and this really sucks because these shows use of sharp angled lines is a big part of its visual identity thankfully these second season is readily available in a far more palatable 720p and in general just looks a lot better finally the second season of Kaiji is divided up into two arcs the first of which is my favorite of the entire show and the second of which involves Kaiji going toe-to-toe with and I [ __ ] you not a demonic pachinko machine and it stretches on for 16 long episodes and there's a point in the middle where I really feel it started to drag as it's a bit of a departure from the show's usual battles of wits and mind games and turns into something more akin to a heist film now don't get me wrong this arc is still uniquely fantastic in its own way and the eventual payoff makes the pacing more than worth it but there's definitely a point late into the second season where I realized this arc would be taking up the remainder of the show and my stomach dropped a little this is probably made worse by the fact that the 52 episodes of kg only spawned the first 26 volumes of an ongoing 62 volume story and so if you want to pursue the show after that boy you had better know a whole lot about mahjong that said though the show does end extremely strong and one or two unresolved plot details aside I was left feeling very satisfied as the credits rolled on the final episode ultimately though any criticism I do have of Kaiji fall away in the light of what a unique and rewarding experience the show actually is and I think the reason for this isn't any specific one of this series aspects we've talked about today but the unique story that forms when they're all combined together and to talk about the scene that best exemplifies this for me we're going to have to delve into some spoilers from midway through season one so skip to the time shown on screen if you want to avoid our scene takes place halfway through the steel frame crossing arc Creek IG and a group of indebted people are attempting to cross a giant electrified steel girder suspended hundreds of feet in the air the group start off hopeful but as the event goes on the sheer mental drain of the situation begins to set in and slowly they begin to lose their composure and start to panic until suddenly one by one they begin to fall until we're left with just a handful of contestants one of whom is Ishida a man kg saved from enslavement at the end of the previous ship of Hope arc Ishida now paralyzed with fear tells Kai G that he can't go on before handing Kaiji his winnings and asking him to deliver them to his mother and sister who he's dragged down with his death and whom he's considered himself a burden his entire life and so Kai G agrees before turning away and moving forward but is then struck by one final moment of hope and turns back to Ishida to try and bolster his spirits where he sees nothing he should a having fallen silently into the darkness below and the way the show conveys this is brutal just with a simple empty shot he's just gone his life blinked out in an instant but what makes this moment hit so hard is issued as personal narrative he is someone who's made a lot of mistakes in his life which has resulted in his massive debt as well as the fact that he keeps appearing in these games but his attempt to cross the beam and win the prize money isn't him trying to get rich or to seek glory it's him trying to rid himself of debt and return his life to what it once was a simpler existence without the financial waste that's crushing him and his family and I think it's this journey for redemption that makes his death all the more tragic but Ishida isn't alone in this regard in fact you can see this same struggle in a lot of the characters from this series people struggling to obtain a second chance and make up for past mistakes and none more so than Kaiji himself as what he is really fighting for is the chance to make up for a wasted life and get a second chance and for me this is what makes chi Chi's journey so deeply engrossing but also kind of hopeful for as dark and even morbid as the show can get through it all we are watching a character atone for past mistakes and fight for the chance to start again and to me that's a powerful idea to build a story around the idea that we make mistakes but no matter how bad things get no matter how much we might [ __ ] up there's always the chance to recover and move on and ultimately I think this is where the show's real strength lies its ability to encapsulate this struggle for personal Redemption in these intense instances of gambling focusing the line between salvation and Oblivion down to a roll of the dice a hand of cards or even a tiny slip of paper this is what makes an old man reaching into a tissue box feel like such a life altering Lee important events it's why I love this show and also why you should watch Kaiji ultimate survivor friends that's gonna do it I really hope you enjoyed today's video and if you did and would like to help me create more like it you can do so over at patreon.com slash super eyepatch wall where you can see your name listed with all my beautiful and amazing patrons right here this week I'd like to personally thank I browse car wee-bey McCool man cg man saige Whittaker Miri wind Guerra P I'm so sorry win bill strand wave nautical - language kendrick LMAO jonathan schultz phil and son as always I'll be back soon with another video but in the meantime you can catch me on the let's fight a boss video game podcast or on Twitter eyepatch room friends take care of yourselves and I'll see you next time

Channel: Super Eyepatch Wolf

Views: 1,012,130

Keywords: Kaiji Ultimate Survivor, Why You Should Watch, Super Eyepatch Wolf, kakegurui, Death parade, Gambeling

Id: zIzpA1Lqluw

Length: 24min 46sec (1486 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 30 2017