So I’ve completed Kaiji after a month or two-long hiatus followed by two (or three?) days marathon. After finishing each episode, I’d go over to the MAL discussion boards to see what everyone else thought and their speculations and after hearing what everyone had to say back in episodes 12 or 13, I was thinking I’d end up giving Kaiji a 9. But that definitely wasn’t the case. I have a lot to say but as I want to get this out tonight and am kind of tired, I’m going to be brief instead or everyone who reads this will be even more confused than they normally would D:

Restricted Rocks, Papers, Scissors was a pretty exciting game and I really enjoyed it as a first arc. I have to say, though, that Brave Men’s Road was my favorite, especially the second beam crossing. After the first arc in which every contestant was suspicious of each other, it was nice seeing a change. Ishida’s death was probably the best part of that arc. The E-Card arc came next and while I didn’t like it that much in the beginning, it grew on me as we discovered that Tonegawa was (unsurprisingly) cheating. Tissue-box raffle was the most boring arc in the show. Maybe it was because there had been the epic beam arc and the E-Card arc that had gotten me excited and I had high expectations for the last arc and when it didn’t deliver as well, it lost points. I don’t know. In any case, that last arc and its least exciting aspects lowered the potential score of a 9 to an 8.