It is all and fun and games until losing the game also means losing your fingernails and toenails!
Creative Staff
Story: Homura Kawamoto
Art: Toru Naomura
Translation: Matthew Alberts
What They Say
Hyakkaou Private Academy. An institution for the privileged with a very peculiar curriculum. You see, when you’re the sons and daughters of the wealthiest of the wealthy, it’s not athletic prowess or book smarts that keep you ahead. It’s reading your opponent-the art of the deal. What better way to hone those skills than with a rigorous curriculum of gambling?
At Hyakkaou Private Academy, the winners live like kings, and the losers are put through the wringer. But when Yumeko Jabami enrolls, she’s gonna teach these kids what a high roller really looks like!
The Review! (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Technical:
This is large format release from Yen Press and just a great looking book. The front cover has the color minimalist style that I like; with just black, white, red and gray. This depiction of the main character highlights both her mad eyes she displays when she gambles and her fingernails, which plays into a major bet during a gambling session. The printing is good throughout with pages aligned correctly and solid blacks with no smudging. However, my one complaint is the poor font choice for the notes about the various games played in this volume and the letter from the author. That font is very small and very thin, making it extremely difficult to read.
The artist’s style is to be expected from the most common styles seen in an older shonen or seinen series. The characters are depicted realistically with normal body proportions and avoidance of SD depictions for the sake of comedy, and plenty of screen tone shading. However, there are dramatic scenes where a character’s face can be greatly expressive to show their demented cheerfulness or sheer panic at their situation. These scenes remind me a lot of the Higurashi series. Overall, I find the art very appealing.
Content:
Hyakkaou Private Academy isn’t just the home of rich kids, it is also the home of woefully addicted gamblers. This academy has a long history of student gambling, and teachers don’t appear to care about it. Much different than a normal school where gambling isn’t allowed. But where things get even more unique is the massive sums of money these students gamble with. These kids gamble with sums of money that normal people would never even consider or be able to bet with. If loser can’t pay their debts, they are forced to be the slaves of the other class men. All girls are called “Mittens” and all boys are “Fido”. All of this manages to create a caste system in a group of people that are accustomed to being at the top of society.
This academy is run as a sort of gambling house and customer system. The Student Council acts as the house with the regular students as the customers. As with all gambling houses, there is plenty of cheating going on to make sure the house has the advantage. Where most of us never understand or see how the House is cheating, the new transfer student Yumeko is amazingly smart. Yumeko quickly makes a splash on campus by handing one of the better student gamblers a crushing defeat.
This quickly puts Yumeko to the forefront of the student council members. When that happens, Yumeko finds herself in games with big stakes and more than just money on the line. But the crazy part is, Yumeko isn’t only smart enough to read her opponents and figure out how they are cheating, but she also loves it. The bigger and crazier the bet, the more excited Yumeko gets. Combine that with her apparent access to a LOT of money, and Yumeko is an incredibly mysterious character. But can she hope to stand up against the student council, the best gamblers on campus?
In Summary:
Kakegurui is ultimately a story about spoiled rich kids. Not something terribly interesting to read about, under normal circumstances. However, these rich kids attend a school with a long history of gambling among the student body. Through this history, there has been time to modify existing well-known games and even create completely new games. Additional uniqueness comes from the fact that the kids gamble stupendously large amounts of money. Then, if anyone can’t pay their debt, they are treated like slaves and forced to do the menial bidding of their classmates. The entry of a new transfer student to this school should be turned off or frightened by it all, but that is not the case with this protagonist, Yumeko. The real background remains a mystery, but her penchant for gambling with big pots and her apparent brilliance are something to behold.
This first volume is a lot of fun with some great art, and I look forward to the next.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A-
Age Rating: Older Tean
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: July 18, 2017
MSRP: $15.00
