English Dub Season Review: Kakegurui Twin Season One Part One

Based on the Japanese Manga series, by Homura Kawamoto and illustrated by Kei Saiki. It is both a spin-off/prequel to Kakegurui – Compulsive Gambler, which was written by Kawamoto and illustrated by Tōru Naomura. The series focuses on transfer student Mary Saotome who, after joining Hyakkaou Private Academy, learns about the school’s gambling system and quickly begins to adapt to it, which only causes Mary to succumb to the gambling mania that she comes to be known for… Can a normal girl like Mary make friends and survive debtless through only wit and luck?

The Animation was done by well renowned Animation Studio “MAPPA” and is directed by Kaori Makita, with chief direction by Yuichiro Hayashi, scripts written by Shigeru Murakoshi, character designs handled by Manabu Nii, and music  (along with the instrumental Intro) is composed by Technoboys Pulcraft Green-Fund, while the ending theme song is “Queens Bluff” by Iris.

 The story follows “Mary Saotome” a newbie in Hyakkaou Academy where not a single day passes without someone in the school losing proverbial pieces of themselves. Whether it’s money, virginity, dignity, anything can be a prize, and nothing matters in this school, as long as it’s an end result of gambling.

Throughout the series, Mary’s triumphs along with two of her new friends in some ways feel like boss battles in a video game as her motivations simply come from absolute defiance against these corrupt authority figures within her new school. In short, this is a character who becomes a gambling genius out of pure spite against the power-abusing people who gleefully want to fuck her over. And in her own way, Mary gives a big proverbial middle finger to them just for added measure. Yet Mary as a character never succumbs to the very same petty sadism as the foes she takes down in clever ways. It’s this sense of tempered ruthlessness and emotional body armor similar to Naofumi from Shield Hero that makes Mary such a compelling protagonist with Kira Buckland’s vocal performance killing it in terms of acting ability.

What makes the gambling aspect within this school different levels of fucked up is Not only the lack of teachers or the headmaster turning a blind eye to this bullshit but the fact that the Student council that encourages this behavior is mostly made up of petty & corrupt upper-class mean girls whom up until Mary came to the school, ruled through underhanded means that remained unchecked and unchallenged as they thrived in their elitist classism and cruel tier-systems that treat people who can’t pay their debts like animals called “Housepets” all because “cheating is allowed”, which is clearly the biggest problem here. The reason I mention this is because the show repeats this too. “No one said [insert conveniently contrived loophole in rule], so you lose/win”, that’s the underlying structure of all explanations at the end of every game. Because when you allow cheating, you’re basically distinguishing the characters, not based on how intelligent, or Machiavellian they are, but on how transparently ignorant or underhanded they are. The moment you hear a character’s inner monologue about their strategic plan or scheme as an attempt to hook the viewer, it pretty much tells you why a specific character will end up ridiculed later on, and this is basically what happens throughout this anime and tries to find new ways to top itself.

Overall, this was surprisingly watchable but not perfect. The animation quality and music were nice. And while the weirdness and brutal violence of the mainline series is said to be known for are somewhat downplayed in this prequel in favor of LGBTQ and BDSM undertones here and there, it lacks a proper ending given the post-credits cliffhanger we got in the 6th episode. Due to Netflix’s business model of only releasing half of an anime and releasing the other half at a later date, the same rules seem to apply here. But at the very least, I’m willing to roll the dice to see it when part 2 comes our way.