Anime: Kakegurui by Homura Kawamoto (Season 1)

This thrilling, gambling anime has everyone sitting on the edge of their seats. I had to rewatch this to refresh my memory of everything but it's as good as I remember it being. The story centers around Hyakkao Gakuen, a prestigious private school full of rich kids and the more money you have the greater your status in the school, also did I mean that you have to be a great gambler too? All the students in the academy gamble, it's a pastime for them and it also can help them achieve a greater status with their peers with the accumulation of their winnings...


A new student, Jabami Yumeko, joins this prestigious academy and turns everyone on their heads. The academy has a system: if you end up in such a large debt, due to losing money and games continuously, you get dropped down to "house pet" status, but the more money you gain from winning has others revere you. The better your gambling skills are the better. "House pets" are considered less than human at the academy, girls become "Mittens" and the boys become "Fido." They are indebted to whoever and are basically slaves to them from that point on because it is nearly impossible to pay back a debt while being a "house pet," due to the fact that the only way to be dropped down that low is if you have a substantial amount of debt.

(SPOILER WARNING! START)

Jabami Yumeko. Our main character is a transfer student, completely new to the school and new to the system of gambling in place. She is paired with our other main character, Suzui Ryota, to help cope with the new school life. Nearly as soon as Ryota warns Yumeko of the dangerously high stake gambling that goes on after classes, Saotome Mary, one of their classmates asks Yumeko to gamble with her. 

Side note: the gambling games are easier to understand in the anime in comparison to the manga. The manga I felt was harder to explain the rules because of the fact that everything is in black and white, so it's hard to differentiate items and the fact that the panels are still. The anime can take up a lot of time to explain things and show everything due to the fact that generally one episode is thirty minutes long.


Back to the anime, Yumeko and Mary are gamble with Rock-Paper-Scissors, not your typical RPS though. This has a twist to it that involves everyone in the class and makes the game a little more thrilling. No surprise but Yumeko ends up winning the game against Mary, seeing right through her cheating ways, and puts Mary in debt 8.8 million yen to her. Mary had only wanted to put Yumeko in her place by having her in a little bit of debt, but it got flipped to her instead with her incurring a large debt. It is also revealed that Yumeko is a gambling freak, a compulsive gambler, getting off on the high-risks and the uncertainty of winning or losing. You'll see that throughout the episodes, Yumeko making a semi-erotic face for the high stakes she takes... 

(SPOILER WARNING! END)

I only condensed the first episode above, I had considered doing only that due to the fact that all the episodes have the same events happening in them. Every episode, Yumeko is challenged/challenges important plot characters to gambles. Usually the gambles are extremely high-risk and thrilling, causing Yumeko to become very excited. Her end goal however, is to gamble with the Student Council President, Momobami Kirari. I do love this series and I think the anime does the manga justice. 

Moving on, I tried to keep this review as spoil-free as possible. The anime is great! The explanation of the games were easier to follow than in the manga, because some of the games' rules confused me in the manga. The anime follows closely to the manga until the end of the season, which I understand why but considering all the others things that were allowed to slide I wasn't expecting this particular event to be omitted and changed. 

I loved this! The opening theme especially. The characters that you meet will leave you enamored, I know I was. Completely fell in love with Yumeko as a character, she's very quirky and I found it charming. I had not come across a series that dealt with gambling such as this and it was an interesting surprise and an interesting take on gambling itself. I'm very excited to start the second season that recently came out on Netflix just last year. I am going to be putting it off however, I have a very long list of anime I must rewatch and review, along with manga as well. 

How did you like this review? I know that it's much shorter than some of my other ones. I really almost went off on a tangent here, but I wanted to lay off on talking about the events too much. Please leave a comment down below! I will always reply! See you next week!

I hope everyone is well by the time is post is up. Right now things are getting a little more stricter with rules. The grocery store my significant other works at now requires you to have to cover your face to even enter the store! I'm staying at home right now, but I hope the rest of you are safe and things have died down by the time this releases. Watch me come back to this post, read this tidbit, and nothing has changed...