Kaiji
Anime Like Dr. Stone
When it comes to anime which focus on battles of wit, few do it as masterfully as Kaiji.
In the midst of Japan’s prolonged recession in the 1990s, a young man named Kaiji struggles to find steady employment and longs for a way to get rich quick. His circumstances don’t become any better when a loan shark reveals he’s on the hook for an outstanding loan he signed off on for his co-worker, and that it will take ten years to repay.
However, the Loan Shark offers him a deal: He’ll get Kaiji aboard the Espoir cruise ship for a night of high stakes gambling, where he can earn enough to clear his debt and shore up an exceptional amount of money for himself besides. However, if he doesn’t make it all back, he’ll owe the Shark even more money.
What follows is a tense battle of strategy, tells and risking everything on luck, all for the sake of getting a better life.
To be sure, Kaiji’s mental warfare is much less wholesome than some of Dr. Stone’s scientific discovery-themed plots. Blood is spilled, motivations are sleezy and most of the characters’ ambitions are self-serving.
And yet, like with Dr. Stone, it’s hard not to get sucked into the mental gymnastics and creative thinking every character engages in. Hours can pass in a blink as viewers try to figure out what crazy scheme the characters will engage in next, and they’ll only become more hooked as a new dilemma emerges.
