Lucas and Chris tackle the next great vice in anime: gambling!
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network. Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.
Chris
Lucas, remind me never to take my chances in the ANN office pool. Earlier this year, when Sylvia and I discussed the delights of drinking in anime, I called that we'd follow up that vice, as we similarly did with the smoking column, with a TWIA on gambling in 2027.
Well, here we are only six months later, and the chips have fallen to have us doing that discussion now instead! Truly, if I were a betting man, I'd be broke on this one.
Lucas
I don't know, Chris, as someone who took the under on that bet, things are looking pretty good from where I'm sitting. I mean, I'm still going to have to hit it big a few more times to get out of the red, but it's finally starting to all come together!
In an anime landscape where "cute girl doing X thing" is a successful enough formula to be a genre in and of itself, it shouldn't surprise anyone that there are multiple anime dedicated to one of mankind's oldest hobbies! As someone who is no stranger to this vice in all of its forms, I could not be more excited to chat with you today about how different anime tackle the exciting and varied world of gambling!
The thing about gambling is that, compared to smoking and drinking, which lend themselves more to passive, consumptive takes on depicting the activity, these dangerous games can be very active and take so many forms that the same results are never going to come up twice. Case in point: this season's FX Fighter Kurumi-chan, which is nominally about the perfectly legit world of foreign exchange trading, but makes zero bones about what's really going on here.
Dude, thanks to the very specific life I've lived, I very rarely run into anime that hit me where I live, but as a kid who started playing the stock market (which is also just gambling) when I was 13, FX Fighter Kurumi-chan HIT ME WHERE I LIVE!!!
I'm glad to hear that our country's regulatory bodies have always worked to protect the nation's children.
In fairness...I was a bored, gifted, and talented child that my school didn't know what to do with, and Berkshire Hathaway B Shares were about to split! Should I have skipped Ms. Lahey's civics class to get in on Facebook's IPO using the library's computers? Probably not, but I aced that class anyway and sold those shares at a profit once Zuck started undermining democracy!
Plus, I never stole money to recoup my losses on an investment as Kurumi did, which, Jesus Christ, I knew this anime had the juice the minute it skipped right over that moral descent to Kurumi watching her ticker!
Never before have I seen a piece of media so accurately capture the ways society makes day traders or financiers out to be enviable people who are richer than everyone else simply because they are smarter, only to reveal that you have to endure a pants-shitting degree of stress and low-grade terror to even have a CHANCE at making money through something like the Foreign Exchange market.
It's a point about gambling that these are supposed to be "games," but for those who compulsively wind up too in the hole, they're far from "fun," and BOY does FX Fighter Kurumi-chan hit that!
It's driven home how, in this earlier part of the story, Kurumi and most of the other girls really don't have "strategies" they can employ between exchanges—it's just making their buy, hoping for the best, and getting sucked into that feedback loop of sunk-cost fallacy. Which is why the show can hammer home so regularly that this is just gambling with all the associated warnings.
The same warnings we've got to remember to include in another vice-focused column like this, incidentally. Gamble responsibly, kids! This is neither an endorsement nor financial advice!
I know it's hard since we live in a society where Sydney Sweeney comes on TV and calls you a virgin for not gambling during every commercial break of whatever football game you're watching, but if you want to make money in the long run, there are way safer investments out there than day trading or other forms of legalized gambling.
And as someone who got into this particular kind of gambling early enough to have it lose its luster in my adulthood, I do love and respect FX Fighter Kurumi-chan for capturing the fullness of this nerve-wracking experience. It even captures how needlessly stressful it can be to figure out when to sell when you're ahead!
This show knows what's up and even drives the point home with some Madoka-style, fake-out cutesy visuals. I know there are better anime airing right now, but this one is legit my unsung favorite of the season.
I don't know that "fun" is the right way to describe a show like this, but I sure am having a time with FX Fighter Kurumi-chan. I think it's cool to have a show like this that demonstrates the vicious nature of a market like this and the effects of the gambling that it is. Because I'm not ready for an actual prediction market anime.
Kurumi-chan's value comes alongside the gamut I mentioned gambling anime can run, with at least one other major notable example doing the "characters try for a quick and easy shot at debt consolidation and end up very stressed out along the way" thing.
Before I say anything else about Kaiji, it really is a testament to this anime's writing and framing that it can make a card game version of rock, paper, scissors hype as hell!
Kaiji is simultaneously "a lot" and shockingly straightforward. While on its face, this anime is about a young man participating in high-stakes games of chance organized by sadistic oligarchs to escape his debt (if you liked Squid Game, you should watch Kaiji), this anime also has a lot of baked-in politics about life in post-bubble-economy Japan and goes unreasonably deep into the weeds about the strategies involved in these seemingly simplistic games.
Throw in every character riding an adrenaline high big enough to restart their heart (them stopping is a very real possibility considering the stakes tied to these games!) and the end result is an anime that has me on the edge of my seat during what are largely mundane activities.
This subject was a perfect excuse for me to finally kick off checking out Kaiji myself, and even knowing my propensity for getting the gambler's high off these sorts of shows, I was surprised at how immediately it got its hooks into me!
A lot of the effect comes from the title character himself, I'd say. The girls of FX Fighter are ostensibly "everyday" people, but they got into their dangerous day trading of their own avaricious volition. Kaiji however, really is just a nobody who happened to get dealt a couple of bad hands (pun intended) and now finds himself on a black-money death gambling boat fighting to survive.
It makes it that much more engaging when Kaiji shows that he has just enough intuition and cleverness to come up with ways to win at the game. It also means he sort of figures out the layers to it at the same rate the regular audience does, which is always a nice storytelling arc in this kind of show.
And, as the show goes on, those accumulating narrow victories transform into a confidence and familiarity with stress that allows him to engage with games that are more akin to tests of will than games of chance, like the steel beam crossing.
Though other characters literally fall to their demise around him, the show really hammers home that not everyone can escape systemic inequality by getting lucky. While Kaiji is, ostensibly, about gambling, it's just as much about how people will destroy themselves for even a modicum of wealth and success. This show is even more brutal than FX Fighter Kurumi, and I find it even harder to look away as a result!
The show does a pretty neat trick where it shows characters seemingly in different strata of game strategy or has scrappy characters band with Kaiji to win against those stacked odds...only to make you pull back and realize "Oh right, all these people are here because they're broke, debt-ridden screw-ups on their last resort!"
So it's actually about the people at the top of the system pitting those at the lowest against each other for their own amusement and benefit. Society, live in, etc.
Kaiji really does hit you like a ton of bricks, and it's really easy to understand through these down-on-their-luck characters why the idea of gambling, and changing your life through an equal measure of skill and luck, is so appealing to so many. Especially considering (and once again I need to urge our readers to gamble responsibly if they choose to do so) gambling can be super cool!
I mean, as you mentioned with Kaiji's steel beam crossing, the fact is that virtually anything can be a gamble, and a lot of anime has caught on to that for raw entertainment value!
As with smokers and drinkers, just introducing a "gambler" character can cue them to get the audience ready for a cool time, hence JoJo's Bizarre Adventure's exceedingly memorable showdown with Daniel J. D'Arby.
The D'Arby the Gambler story arc really is the best example of how JoJo's is miles ahead of just about all of its battle shonen contemporaries. Without either of these characters throwing a single punch, a downright gripping power struggle plays out between them using the easy-to-understand but impossible to master game of five-card poker.
I hate this particular strain of modern slang, but Jotaro managing to aura farm his way into a victory in this scene is both the perfect crystallization of why he's been the baddest dude in anime and manga since his introduction, and is deeply hilarious.
The show primes the characters with so much cheating through earlier exchanges with D'Arby (all done without the use of Stand powers, notably) so that it's that much more of a swerve when Jotaro just Cool-Hand-Lukes his way through the duel instead.
It also works as an example of how the mind games of gambles can define the characters who participate in them. i.e., Joseph is still utilizing his Bugs-Bunny-ass trickster tendencies to try to win, while Jotaro doesn't have that and just has to rely on his cultivated badass facade instead.
As you said, it shows how different acts work in the context of "battles." No wonder Araki would return to this idea a couple of times through the series' run.
You know, a part of me is bummed that we're doing this column before the Steel Ball Run anime reaches the storyline where Gyro and Johnny are, to their annoyance, the richest men in Milwaukee, but I'm having a pretty fun time regardless!
Still, you can take it from someone who's killed a few cool evenings just breaking even at blackjack—gambling can be fun! Responsibly! In measured doses! Which means I've got to bring up one of the other big dedicated gambling anime and a personal favorite.
Okay, Kakegurui makes gambling "fun," but it also spares no illusions about how that's not a perspective any healthy person would have. So of course I'm going to love it and its cast of mentally ill-adjusted women who would sell my soul for a single poker chip.
These girls ain't right, and I pray nobody tries to fix them!
Blending high-stakes gambling with queer-coded eroticism all for the sake of allowing aristocratic young women to actually feel something in their deeply affluenza-addled lives, Kakegurui is my kind of trash TV and stuffed to the brim with super well-designed characters making some of the best faces you'll ever see in this medium!
It's so thoroughly steeped in the psychosexual thrill appeal of gambling while also conceding, "You might need to be the Literal Devil to go all in and enjoy these bets."
And noticeably, after checking out Kaiji and FX Fighter Kurumi-chan alongside it, it was neat to note a common thread among all of them despite their very different emotional perspectives on gambling: the personal choice and risk component of the activity. Gambling is meaningful (if not inherently "good") because even with all the odds or cheats stacked against you, you're still at least afforded the appearance of unswayed choice.
It's freedom—to screw up and ruin your life, of course, which is what makes it a vice. But freedom nonetheless. Which is probably why Kakegurui's use of that freedom to encourage women's wrongs makes it such a perennial favorite of this column.
Listen, if you're someone who believes that meritocracy is real on any level, you're going to find gambling appealing on some level or another. Gambling is one of the few vehicles we have in society today where you can beat someone outright with your wits alone! For much the same reason, I'll always hit up a blackjack table over a slot machine when I visit a casino, because knowing that my choices explicitly led to my victory feels WAY better than making money through random chance.
I'm not saying it's necessarily healthy that someone else's loss makes my win feel even better, but, well, you know how it goes sometimes.
Kakegurui also understands that the games and their rules and mechanics are half the fun in getting a feel for the characters manipulating them to their advantage. This was thus one of the many, many, many problems that Netflix's Bet adaptation had in fundamentally misunderstanding this.
The fact that we've got another season of this thing on the way while we're still indefinitely waiting on continuations of the original Kakegurui or Kakegurui twin anime really feels like we lost a...well, you know.
Yeah, there were a lot of conceptual issues in Netflix's Bet, but making it a soft-core Euphoria clone is probably one of the most egregious. Though, I guess it is longstanding tradition at this point for US adaptations of global media to just jam in formally popular cultural artifacts in the adaptation process to make something more palatable to American audiences.
And speaking of culture, gambling can be a fascinating window into another community's subcultures, and I am delighted every time one of these anime or another cultural artifact reminds me that horse racing is quietly big in Japan!
Showing up in anime that would never be mentioned in the same breath otherwise, like CITY The Animation, Golden Kamuy, and Jujutsu Kaisen, I attribute horse racing so completely to European and US culture, and seeing it show up in anime always reminds me of how we all have far more in common than we do separating us. Heck, I bet if folks combined horse racing with something like idols, the resulting franchise would have enough power to topple the current US political regime!
One losing bet now would be if we can actually get through a given month of columns without bringing up Uma Musume!
Though this is also the point where I have to bring up the fun fact that, canonically, there is no betting on races in the world of the horse girls! Everyone's into it purely for love of the game! Which does make it funny, given the origins and motivations of both its real-world inspiration and its predatory gacha ecosystem, but also goes to show how ingrained the institution of horse racing is in the culture.
It's to the point that, as you pointed out with your examples, if a "gambler" character pops up in a series, it's even odds they'll be a track addict!
I like how it can run the gamut, too. Like Cowboy Bebop's Faye Valentine isn't a gambler purely for thrill-seeking. She's doing it out of desperation because it's the only chance she can see to scrape together cash to pay off her crushing medical debt. Escapism!
I was literally just talking to a friend about how cool a character Faye Valentine is! Beyond the whole "being a very attractive anime woman" thing, I think her struggle to create a better life for herself despite her circumstances, and the culmination of her character arc being that she's worthy of love and celebration regardless of those circumstances, is something that everyone can learn from.
You should always bet on yourself, but you don't need to be chasing a better life and an idealized version of yourself to be happy. Faye's a great character because, through her, we see exactly how difficult it can be to reach that internal conclusion, and how doing so doesn't magically fix all of your external problems.
It's a great example of how a vice like gambling can be used to help codify a character and make them, their story, and the world they play out in resonate that much more effectively.
Conversely, this topic had to remind me of stories where gambling is awesome and will magically solve all your problems so long as you trust in a hot dealer with superpowers.
I mean, I don't know what else I expected from Rio! Rainbow Gate given its title character is literally a walking ad for blackjack, but this is still pretty galling. At least the English dub (the only way I found to check it out on Tubi) has some life to it.
If I were a betting man (and I am, but I've TOTALLY got it under control), I'd wager that you just surfaced an anime that's likely to show up on our upcoming Secret Santa lists!
I'm just saying, there's a reason I only knew Rio before because she crossed over into my beloved Dead or Alive.
Also, if folks are interested in an anime that is far more dead than alive and focuses on all manner of games of chance, I'd be remiss if we got through this column without highlighting Death Parade! An anime where the recently deceased play bar games, it is exactly as edgy and pseudo-intellectual as you'd expect a brooding anime from 2013 to be, and it's certainly a fun nostalgia romp for anyone who got into anime around that time!
Death Parade (and its preceding OVA, Death Billiards) is cool because it still fits that "gambling" vibe with the games, but the wagers are all more metaphysical examinations of the characters coming to terms with their lives.
So you still get the effect of characters concealing and revealing their decisions, just with even more raw ramifications than watching someone spend their whole livelihood on a bad bet.
Again, not necessarily "fun," but extremely cool and engaging, as a good gamble must be.
Hey, gambling's only as fun as you make it and, as most of the series we've talked about in this column make clear, sometimes acquired tastes are the best ones! And, while I hope folks give some of these titles a chance, please remember, if any of them do inspire you to explore gambling, please do so cautiously and responsibly!
These volumes really flesh out Mushoku Tensei's expansive world, introducing a fascinating cast of varied new characters and building on already established relationships.― For a prepubescent boy, Rudeus Greyrat sure is competent. He's already mastered multiple forms of magic, plus he survived a year traversing the highly dangerous demon continent, becoming an adventurer along the way. I suppose it ...
Lucas and Chris tackle the next great vice in anime: gambling!― Lucas and Chris tackle the next great vice in anime: gambling! Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead. Crunchyroll streams FX Fighter Kurumi-chan, Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor, Jujutsu Kaisen, Golden Kamuy, U...
The Amazing Digital Circus, Knights of Guinevere studio Glitch Productions discuss SAG-AFTRA Agreement― Knights of Guinevere released its second episode days before its screening with the cast and crew at Animation is Film Festival 2026. Directed by Dana Terrace, the creator of The Owl House, the adult animated series has garnered over 34M combined views on YouTube. Despite its easy online access, ...
Rebecca Silverman discusses "TL", the by-women-for-women genre of smoldering romance comics.― The Tale of Genji, that classic of Japanese literature, may just be the world's first romance novel. Despite that, romance fiction worldwide is often, as scholar Eileen B. Mikals-Adachi puts it, “still viewed as a ‘low’ form of writing in many literary circles.” That's true in Japan, too; Mikals-Adachi is ...
Yūta Shimotsu, the man behind the live-action anthology Strange: Junji Ito's Tales for Sleepless Nights, sat down with ANN to discuss his influences, favorite Ito stories, and what it takes to bring Ito's world to horrifying life.― Master of horror Junji Ito creates works that are hard to adapt. Relying on elements of terror, horror, and absurdity, effective adaptations require care and a full under...
As her professional debut continues, Akane tries to clinch a win at the Four Person Selection Event held by Ikken Arakawa, but can Akane move past her father’s shadow?― In my last review, I griped about the fact that while Akane's debut into the professional world of rakugo hits snags in the form of toxic workplace behavior and misogyny, her status as a protagonist seemed to negate some of the impac...
Nodame Cantabile: Finale director Chiaki Kon helms anime at J.C.STAFF― A website opened on Wednesday to announce the television anime adaptation of Tomoko Ninomiya's Nanatsu-ya: Shinobu and Her Jewelry Box (Nanatsuya Shinobu no Hōsekibako) manga. The website also revealed the anime's teaser trailer, teaser visual, main staff members, and 2027 debut.Ninomiya also drew an illustration to celebrate the...
The worst of Hell Mode is very firmly behind us in this season, but being an improvement doesn’t necessarily mean it’s suddenly fun to watch.― There's not a word for the space so low in the known universe where one can find naught but the bar the second season of Hell Mode has to clear to be better than its predecessor. The first season of Hell Mode, I can't emphasize enough, is the beige of beige—t...
Godzilla contains multitudes, and we're not just talking about the people he eats.― Godzilla contains multitudes, and we're not just talking about the people he eats. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chat log are not the views of Anime News Network.Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead. Netflix streams Godzilla Minus One, Godzilla Singular Point,...
Celebrating its 15th anniversary, MAPPA is looking back on its history with the MAPPA EXPO 15th Anniversary exhibition at the Yurakucho Museum in Tokyo.― In 2012, the anime world saw a new addition to the annals of great animation studios. That studio was none other than MAPPA. While its beginnings were humble, with its involvement with Kids on the Slope and Teekyū, the Studio has gone on to be invo...
Naokazu Tsuruta heads company handling works from planning stages to actual animation production― DMM.com announced on Tuesday that it has established GLEESTONE, a new animation studio which will handle animation works — including television series, movies, and shorts — from their initial planning stages to the actual animation production. Naokazu Tsuruta, the head of DMM Group's content creative un...
Put in your nominations for the Best Movie of the year, Best Leading Man/Woman, Best LGBTQ+ Character, Best Seiyuu/VA, etc. Full list of categories after the link.
Manga adaptation's artist Mitsuya Otosu commemorates anime of Izumi's light novel series with drawing― Manga Box announced on Tuesday a television anime adaptation of Izumi's My Death Flags Show No Sign of Ending (Ore no Shibō Flag ga Todomaru Tokoro o Shiranai) light novel series, which will debut in 2027. The manga adaptation's artist Mitsuya Otosu also drew an illustration to commemorate the anno...
Los Angeles-based Tyrus Pictures plans to start production in 2027― Entertainment news website Deadline reported on Monday that Yu Satomi's Noah Of The Blood Sea (Kekkai no Noah) manga is getting a Hollywood live-action film adaptation from Los Angeles-based Tyrus Pictures. The studio is looking to start production in 2027. Tyrus Pictures' Michael Zelman and Hamid Mokhneche are producing. The studio...
With a large cast and novel premise, it required at least twice as many episodes to reach its full potential.― With all the issues plaguing modern society, one has to pick and choose which causes they pour their energy into. As an educator, I worry about the world our children will inherit, with looming environmental collapse, marginalization and oppression, and a growing wealth gap. One where self-...
From avant-garde manhwa to vertical scrolling delights, come find your next K-Comics read in our guide to fall's releases!― Welcome to Anime News Network's Fall 2026 K-Comics Guide, the companion to our manga guide! Every included manhwa was published in September or October or is an upcoming November release, although some are ongoing titles without a physical release. This guide focuses exclusive...
What's it like to work on an internationally beloved anime franchise like Dragon Ball?― Dragon Ball Super: Beerus is another animated retelling of the introduction of the God of Destruction Beerus to the Dragon Ball mythos. This retelling brought a completely new opening and ending theme featuring music from MEGATERA・ZERO and VK Blanka, respectively. MEGATERA・ZERO, who previously wrote theme songs f...
With this final update, the Fall 2026 Manga Guide comes to a close. Check out our reviews of Beck, a new Full Metal Panic manga, and more yuri mermaids!― Welcome to Anime News Network's Fall 2026 Manga Guide! You may have seen one of our seasonal Anime Preview Guides, where a team of critics writes up each new anime television premiere as it airs at the beginning of a season. Now, doing something l...
@Jetzero Infinity
@BWProwl
@LucasDeRuyter
@vestenet
