Kakegurui Review

Sometimes it's nonviolent things that make a manga good.  It's doesn't always have to be a battle to save the world to be exciting.  With Food Wars, it's intense cooking contests.  With Kokoro Connect, it the simple act of opening up to your friend and/or lovers.  Well, with Kakegurui, it's gambling.  High-stakes gambling involving high school students.


Kakegurui is about kids in a school for the wealthy and elite who gamble their butts off.  They may be kids, but they aren't gambling for lunch money.  They toss out big numbers the could rival many people's monthly or yearly salary.  So, things start off crazy right of the bat.

The main character is kind of a deception.  You start of thinking that it's some worthless boy, but things quickly shift to a crazy girl who's obsessed with gambling.  It doesn't take long for things to get disturbing afterwards.  First, they start off gambling for yearly salaries.  Then, they start gambling for fingernails.  Yeah...things get crazier, but that would be spoilers.

Our protagonist, Yumeko Jabami.
As for the "hot" girls the manga is so proud of...their cute, but not hot.  Mary Saotome is as good as it gets in this manga.  Yumeko Jabami, the main girl, looks too young to be hot (she does make me laugh, though) and the other girls look too creepy.  Some of the nameless girls look alright, but otherwise, the girls are just meh.

The incomparable Mary Saotome resting her legs on unfortunate (or very fortunate?) guy.
For a series that prides itself on the girls, it's not too fanservicey.  Yes, you will get a pantyshot every now and then, but (as of this post) no nudity.  It does a good job of staying on point and keeping your attention without using too many cheap trick.  It stays focused on the gambling and the relationships and rivalries of the characters, not how big the girls' breasts are.  It's proof that you can have a focused narrative and cute girls without being overly sexy.

About the gambling.  One thing that's made abundantly clear is that everyone is cheating.  The bad guys are cheating.  The good guys are cheating.  The tweeners are cheating.  The point isn't to learn how to gamble, but how to figure out who's cheating and how their cheating.  You can learn some nice terminology, though.

Kakegurui: Compulsive Gambler is the wrong title for this manga.  They should have called it Crazy Bitches Who Gamble, because that's what it is.  Sometimes incoherent, yet always as addictive as gambling itself, it's a page turner.  I can get disturbing sometimes, but you can overcome it.  Check it out.

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