After Kaiji's showdown with Chairman Hyoudou at the Starside Hotel, he's forced into labour at an underground mine. With his meagre daily wage, he'll be working for decades to repay his debt unless he does something about his miserable situation.
Kaiji decides to wager his earnings in an underground dice game for a ticket to get out of the mine for a limited period of time. But even if he surfaces, he only has one chance to win it big: by challenging the unbeatable pachinko machine nicknamed "The Bog."
The 2nd part of the Kaiji series.
13 Volumes (Complete)
(-17)(-142)(-698)(-1591)
The second Kaiji series! This one was quite different than the first, which featured invented games and had a strong emphasis on trust, betrayal and sacrifice within the context of multiplayer games. The games in this series are real and it's about a single player finding ways to defeat a game that's rigged. There's more downtime, comedy and character development of Kaiji in this series, though still plenty of crying. I agree with the other reviewer in that some of the pacing is off, namely the The Bog arc - it was just way too long with way too many panels of a ball sliding towards a hole only to be turned away at the last second. Still loved the manga though.
The problem with Kaiji (and, indeed, most of Fukumoto Nobuyuki's manga except Tobaku Haouden Rei) is not the plot, the characterisation or the twists. Even the ending is quite satisfactory compared to most series. The major flaw in his work is the pacing: it's the very definition of "slow and plodding," and while that would be no big deal in, say, a slice-of-life series, it's a serious issue in a manga that relies on keeping the reader in suspense in order to retain their interest. With how it is here, where a six-volume story is dragged out over thirteen volumes, I reached a point where even though the twists were clever, I felt no awe when they were revealed: only relief that my long wait was finally over. And I'm quite a patient woman, so I can only imagine what the other readers felt.
Personally, I can and will put up with it because this is just the kind of plotline I love (clever but not invincible MC, no romance, very plot-focused storyline with minimum emotion that nevertheless makes what little emotional scenes there are all the more impactful) and I'm interested in seeing where Kaiji ends up (provided the mangaka ever actually finishes the series), but if you're impatient and/or short-tempered, do your blood pressure a favour and steer clear -- not just of Tobaku Hakairoku Kaiji but the saga as a whole.
The mangaka should take lessons in pacing from Kaitani Shinobu. (And could possibly return the favour by teaching the latter how to write a proper ending ^_^)
... Last updated 10 years ago
