Tobaku Datenroku Kaiji: One Poker Hen

You don't read (most) Fukumoto works for high-paced action, man, you read it for the utter delight in slowing down seconds to a bouquet of expectations and hope. If you want to feel high speed excitement you can watch grass dry.

Earlier FKMT works were actually much faster-paced, lol. He would pretty reasonable amounts of non-filler text into a single chapter. Go back and read the entirety of Ten, or the start of Kaiji or Akagi, lol

With that said, yeah, I still enjoy it and I'm not recommending anyone stop reading or anything. Just... if you have self-control (unlike me), you might be better off checking on the scanlations once a month rather than once per release.

Fukumoto's current record is a single overnight mahjong session lasting 20 volumes.

Ah yes, the Eternal Gambling Abyss Akagi.

Oh no,  he used the freaking 2 XD.

Well, I've used the raws to spoil myself... I won't spoil anyone here about the content itself, but I'll warn you that the pace slows down _even more_, and to the point where just a couple of moves will take approximately an eternity to resolve.

Fukumoto's current record is a single overnight mahjong session lasting 20 volumes.

Well, I've used the raws to spoil myself... I won't spoil anyone here about the content itself, but I'll warn you that the pace slows down _even more_, and to the point where just a couple of moves will take approximately an eternity to resolve.

You don't read (most) Fukumoto works for high-paced action, man, you read it for the utter delight in slowing down seconds to a bouquet of expectations and hope. If you want to feel high speed excitement you can watch grass dry.

Well, I've used the raws to spoil myself... I won't spoil anyone here about the content itself, but I'll warn you that the pace slows down _even more_, and to the point where just a couple of moves will take approximately an eternity to resolve.

I was listening to the anime's soundtrack while reading this part and miraculously this song began right after I was in the middle of episode 154. 155 made me cry.

I'm surprised neither of them is dead yet, Kaiji already lost a red life. Is Kazuya that much of a "good guy" that he''ll let them die together at once, or is that going to be the next chapter's twist?

Huh, Kazuya has a mother complex...

i was expecting that they would enter the gamble, but not like this

Okay, it makes sense if they chose to do it *without Kaiji's consent*. I said Kaiji would never ask for it.

But my guess is that he can't take it back anymore, either.

Also ignoring Goral because I've classified him as "too stupid to be alive".

( a ) do you only know how to start comments with "lol"?

( b ) people seem to agree with my comment and not yours. So I think you're reading the manga incorrectly. Pay attention to author intention, don't just pretend you're reading something set in the real world where the standard rules of probability apply. They don't. The author scripted these gambles, he didn't simulate them and then write down the results. Just like Washizu (but to a much lesser extent, of course), Kazuya is favored by the FKMT gods of luck. All gambles with him should take that into account (and Akagi would easily know to do so). The author in fact loves making fun of people like you in his manga that play strictly by the numbers. He makes characters designed specifically to destroy you. Would they destroy you in the real world? Of course not. But he doesn't write the real world.

( c ) I wasn't even just talking about Kaiji, I was talking about _every_ FKMT manga. So your "Do you think I've started reading Kaiji with 5th series?" thing is just... "lol", as you would say.

lmao
I'm starting with "lol" whenever I see a silly post but you've broken the record here so I'll bite.
@b Who cares that more people agree with you than with me? As if that was an argument in a discussion... Million of flies and all that.
And are you playing stupid or are you really retarded? I know what author's intentions are and I know that standard rules of probability don't apply but my comment was a reply to Cori's "Kaiji made a mistake" - yeah, no shit. The point I was making was that from Kaiji's perspective he does live in a world where our rules apply and him risking his life on a remote probability that Kazuya would have another ace was so slim that going with his "instinct" would have been insane so listening to Chang was the best decision he could have made. At this point Kaiji obviously didn't think that Kazuya was cheating, otherwise he wouldn't agree to continue the game (which I've said already but you have problems with reading with comprehension) so he had absolutely no reason to go with such insane decision. If he went with it that would be like breaking the 4th wall.

 

Congratulations!

 

Kazuya had the mechanism installed in the first place, so that if he loses he wouldn't die, didn't he?

Probably, yeah. 

So, no we gamble three lives instead of just one, like I thought. It'll just make Kaiji's comeback more sweeter. 

Even before this "one life statue" was introduced I predicted that Kaiji's friends' lives would end up as playing chips. I still think that's gonna happen.

Congratulations!

Kazuya had the mechanism installed in the first place, so that if he loses he wouldn't die, didn't he?

I forgot about their use as lives, I guess that'll happen when chapter releases are usually weeks apart.

lol

Do you think I've started reading Kaiji with 5th series? No, gambling instinct doesn't beat math, logic and luck, hence Kaiji went from 500 million to zero and to putting his life on the line again. He had "gambling instinct" on earlier, was on a lucky streak and no one interfered with him and yet he lost due to insane luck that Kazuya has. From Kaiiji's perspective only luck was involved in all this, otherwise he wouldn't agree to play against Kazuya with no means to verify whether he's not being duped (and even if he was he could be killed if Kazuya wanted to and he would have no way of stopping it). We're talking about Kaiji's POV and from his POV betting his life on a super remote chance that Kauzya would have an ace again was retarded. On the other hand Cori admitted that he either read or saw the raws earlier so it's no wonder he was so sure Kazuya would have an ace, lol.

( a ) do you only know how to start comments with "lol"?

( b ) people seem to agree with my comment and not yours. So I think you're reading the manga incorrectly. Pay attention to author intention, don't just pretend you're reading something set in the real world where the standard rules of probability apply. They don't. The author scripted these gambles, he didn't simulate them and then write down the results. Just like Washizu (but to a much lesser extent, of course), Kazuya is favored by the FKMT gods of luck. All gambles with him should take that into account (and Akagi would easily know to do so). The author in fact loves making fun of people like you in his manga that play strictly by the numbers. He makes characters designed specifically to destroy you. Would they destroy you in the real world? Of course not. But he doesn't write the real world.

( c ) I wasn't even just talking about Kaiji, I was talking about _every_ FKMT manga. So your "Do you think I've started reading Kaiji with 5th series?" thing is just... "lol", as you would say.

Flip floppy works for opinions. But for "character", especially one that is written in a way which you'd expect them to develop some traits after all this time, shouldn't flip flop around gambling.

 

Thats the flip flop I have issue with. Hes a gambling addict. Hes not a god, but hes not trash newbie either. Yet the writing of the author has to take you through the entire game, from newbie status to godlike skill level, and he uses Kaiji as the tool to bring you through that, at the expense of Kaiji's character. Kaiji isn't a inexperienced gambler at this point, but the writing strategy creates flaws in his character that shouldnt be there. I am not saying he can't lose, I am saying there's always some easy to see insight that he misses right at the beginning of every game for the sake of covering that bullet point in the game theory.

I mean, yeah, he's never playing the same game twice, so he has to learn the basics each time over and over again. It'd only be natural for him to miss things that should be obvious simply because he has his hands full just trying catch up to his more experienced opponent. Sure the games themselves aren't particularly complicated, but the tricks and mind-games that go on take different forms every time.

Maybe I'm just bad at this, but I definitely don't have an easy time predicting what's going to happen. Yeah it's easy to say that he'll monetarily probably never make it out on top, but guessing whether he'll "win" a game is a bit harder for me, and on an emotional level, the victory is more important than how much money he gets. Like I couldn't have predicted how the end of the Pachinko arc went down, Part 3 could've just as easily ended with Kaiji back in more debt, and Part 4 didn't even involve him directly so it was anyone's guess. 

It doesn't actually matter if Kaiji gets it or not.  If he does, he lives to fight another day.  If he doesn't, he has about a fourth of a second to lament missing it before it doesn't actually matter.

But being flip floppy is a common human nature.
Him being sometimes have gdlk reads and some time not is one of the "realistic" aspec of his character.

Flip floppy works for opinions. But for "character", especially one that is written in a way which you'd expect them to develop some traits after all this time, shouldn't flip flop around gambling.

Thats the flip flop I have issue with. Hes a gambling addict. Hes not a god, but hes not trash newbie either. Yet the writing of the author has to take you through the entire game, from newbie status to godlike skill level, and he uses Kaiji as the tool to bring you through that, at the expense of Kaiji's character. Kaiji isn't a inexperienced gambler at this point, but the writing strategy creates flaws in his character that shouldnt be there. I am not saying he can't lose, I am saying there's always some easy to see insight that he misses right at the beginning of every game for the sake of covering that bullet point in the game theory.

The biggest weakness I have with Kaiji is that his character, while way more realistic than many manga characters, is flip floppy. Sometimes he shows incredible foresight and strategy (thanks to the author's experience). Other times he simply fails to consider the most simple bluff strategies. I don't know if this is a weakness in the author's writing but its character inconsistency. For a gambler like Kaiji who's sucked all his life but is addicted to gambling, he should be able to cover the basics at the very least. 

But being flip floppy is a common human nature.
Him being sometimes have gdlk reads and some time not is one of the "realistic" aspec of his character.

This chapter, i refuse to believe the events which are currently taking place in this.

Kaiji is more realistic but Akagi's break down of how he plays around gambles and sets the other player up is not "less realistic". Its just that there is no question Akagi will win. The question is "how does he win?"

In Kaiji, we know this guy is never going to have any money. So every time he GETS money he will LOSE it. The only time he wins is if he challenges the final boss with NO money. So its not that different from Akagi in that you know what the pattern/outcome will be, its how the gamble is made which is the interesting part. And that's why Salvation game is so weak compared to like The Bog, which is a god damn pachinko machine. 

Also in Akagi you rarely ever see his thought process. And he doesn't always explain what hes doing so a 3rd party has to do it for him: narrator, or the cop, or the yakuza guy, etc. But in Kaiji, yeah you see his thought process as he goes along for better or worse. But this takes away some of the tension away from the story because the mysteriousness of the gambling is lessened when Kaiji simply tells the reader what he thinks. The ebb and flow of the story pattern is really recognizable. That's why you have entire chapters devoted to Kaiji overreacting to something and then the narrator hints at a turnaround.

Overall though, I dont think "realistic" is a huge deal for either of them. These mangas are more about "how it happens" not "how it ends". 

The biggest weakness I have with Kaiji is that his character, while way more realistic than many manga characters, is flip floppy. Sometimes he shows incredible foresight and strategy (thanks to the author's experience). Other times he simply fails to consider the most simple bluff strategies. I don't know if this is a weakness in the author's writing but its character inconsistency. For a gambler like Kaiji who's sucked all his life but is addicted to gambling, he should be able to cover the basics at the very least. Especially consider his entire story so far where he comes up with smart ways to beat the gamble, yet we are guarenteed that every single new game will be a moment where he overlooks simple aspects of it. Perhaps this is all because the author is motivated to story board the manga in a way where every aspect of his game is explored, from the simplest interactions to the most complex  ones (towards the end). So its inevitable that Kaiji will "fall" for certain things. 

And its that pattern that makes Kaiji less thrilling in someways than the known outcome Akagi has who covers it all without fail. 

Wtf if Akagi was playing this the chairman would be dead and none of this shit would have ever happened. Or Akagi would be killing these bad men left and right with his insane gambles. His dick would probably make the The Bog payout without even needing to go through all that trouble of rigging the machine in Kaiji's favor. 

 

Akagi can never lose. And worse, he always sees through not just the game, but through the opponent. He would have stopped this rich kid's tirade about human nature so easily because hes way smarter than Kaiji. 

 

But alas, this is Kaiji. The opposite of Akagi. Kaiji doesn't have superior gambling instinct. He doesn't have smarts. Hes a loser whos addicted to gambling and barely makes it out of his terrible situations. He lacks every good quality Akagi has even his "good will". Akagi actually helps people with zero reason to. Kaiji struggled even when he saw people dying. 

And that is what makes kaiji more realistic and intersting because you don't know when his gambles are going to fuck up really hard or get a lot of money , while Akagi is a gambling jesus without dying. that can do anything

Wtf if Akagi was playing this the chairman would be dead and none of this shit would have ever happened. Or Akagi would be killing these bad men left and right with his insane gambles. His dick would probably make the The Bog payout without even needing to go through all that trouble of rigging the machine in Kaiji's favor. 

Akagi can never lose. And worse, he always sees through not just the game, but through the opponent. He would have stopped this rich kid's tirade about human nature so easily because hes way smarter than Kaiji. 

But alas, this is Kaiji. The opposite of Akagi. Kaiji doesn't have superior gambling instinct. He doesn't have smarts. Hes a loser whos addicted to gambling and barely makes it out of his terrible situations. He lacks every good quality Akagi has even his "good will". Akagi actually helps people with zero reason to. Kaiji struggled even when he saw people dying.