Kakegurui drama: episode one recap

 Start Date: January 14/16 as it aired on both the MBS and TBS networks

Theme song: "Strawberry Feels" by BIGMAMA    Director: Tsutomu Hanabusa

 Listed the characters this way for the "Re:Mind" drama and thought it's be a good idea to do it once again. Above is a promo for the first episode and if there is one for each show will be posting it. This series reminds me so much of 'Liar Game' and there aren't many dramas better than that one, lets get to the characters and think these are the only ones that will be featured. Have the character descriptions though some may be blank for now as we haven't met all of them yet.

Minami Habe as Yumeko Jabami.... transfer student who is addicted to gambling

 Aoi Morikawa as Mary Saotome.... The evilist of students who gets severely humbled

Mahiro Takasugi as Ryota Suzui.... wimpy guy who befriends Yumeko

Ruka Matsuda as Itsuki Sumeragi.... Richest student at Hyakkaou Academy

Taishi Nakagawa as Kaeda Manyuda....

Natsume Mito as Runa Yomozuki....

Kiyo Matsumoto as Nanami Tsubomi....

Natsumi Okamoto as Yuriko Nishinotoin....

Yuma Yamato as Jun Kiwatari.... school bully

Yurika Nakamura as Sayaka Igarashi....

Miki Yanagi as Midari Ikishima....

 And those are the eleven major characters who will be appearing in the series, through two episodes we've only met five of them. As the recaps go on will be adding to their bio's but the top three will be easily be on the screen more than any of the other characters, with that let's get to the first recap.

 In Japanese the word Kakegurui means compulsive and/or addicted gambler, if you enjoy doing that activity there's no doubt you need to watch this drama. The setting is at a high school and it's unknown if there will be any scenes outside of it but it doesn't appear so. The high school is the very exclusive Hyakkaou Private Academy which has been in existence for 122 years. Only the most wealthy and privileged students are allowed to attend the academy which has a dark tradition.

 That's gambling and all of the activities outside of the classroom revolve around it. There's many casino like parlors set up around the school along with the private rooms to gamble in. It's not for fun and games either as the students are rather ruthless and show no mercy to the the losers of a match. The 'Queen of Evilness' if you want to call her that is Mary Saotome who has never lost any kind of gambling game. 

 Losing to her comes with a hefty price tag as the games usually involve huge amounts of money, 1.2 million yen was the amount in the first game which equals about $11,400 USD. Even though the students come from wealthy families they don't always have the funds to pay when they lose to her so until you pay off the debt  you become Mary's 'pet'. For males it's becoming a Doggy, for females it a Kitty and when you become one of those it means you're her slave and have to do what she orders.

 Mary is a very compelling character, true she's very cruel but she's such a fun character to watch but her fortunes will change in the next show. She has the second biggest female role in the show next to someone we'll be meeting shortly. The biggest male part belongs to Ryota who is in a pair of the above screenshots. He made the huge mistake of playing Mary in a game of poker, though he had a full house he lost to her.... royal straight flush!!!!

 Ryota didn't have the 100,000 yen he lost to settle the the debt with so he's now her house pet or doggy. He's kind of a wimpy character who gets bullied by others at the school, especially Jun in this first show and it's the only time we've seen that character through two episodes. Life is going well for Mary at Hyakkaou as she keeps winning games and her stable of house pets is growing.

 Mary's life was about to change drastically as in her first class of the day there was an announcement. A new transfer student has joined her class, that student is Yumeko Jabami who appears to be such a cute and sweet gal. Immediately Mary introduces herself and casually brings up the question of gambling to Yumeko who seems interested in playing against Mary.

 The first game between the two have them each starting off with 1.2 million yen each. As you can see above the contest is called 'Ballot Rock-Paper-Scissors' which was a game created by Mary. Besides them there's thirty students in the 'gambling den', they each put a slip of paper into the boxes that have the image of a rock, paper or scissor. Each of the contestants is allowed to draw three slips of paper out with no clue on what will appear on them, you could pull three of one kind.

 Yumeko started off the betting rather timidly betting just two chips, each are worth ten thousand yen. To her delight she bested Mary in the first round and now the chip count stands at 122-118 in her favor. Becoming a bit more daring Yumeko increases the ante to 500,000 yen or 50 chips. With each new round the thirty students need to secretly vote again with the players getting three new pieces of paper but as we learn it's not entirely a secret vote.

 To Yumeko's dismay she loses the bigger bet, won't show every face off as there were also a few ties. There was a third round in which Yumeko won the paltry sum of two chips again but she feels that she now has the hang of the game. With that erroneous thought she says all in for the next round as Yumeko bets all 74 chips she has left. But just like the previous time when Yumeko wagered a huge amount the showdown didn't go her way as Mary bested her and cleaned her out of the every single yen she had.

 You can see Mary above, that was her comment to Yumeko who wanted to continue playing. She asked Mary if she could get... ten million yen more in chips!!!! That's close to $95,000 USD and Mary thought Yumeko was out of her mind. Perhaps she was as she gave a short spiel to everyone in the room about the joy and pitfalls of gambling, Yumeko says that she's a bit addicted to the thrill of it and asks Mary if she's too chicken to play another round.

 With that threat hanging over her Mary agrees to play for that huge amount of money, everyone hopes Yumeko knows what she's doing as her life at school could be over on the first day. Secretly though Mary was shaking in her boots as she was petrified of what would happen if she lost. During this whole time Ryota had been pleading with Yumeko to stop with her gambling, the pair have become friendly rather quickly but Yumeko ignores his advice.

 After Yumeko's bizarre spiel Mary has one of her own when she told Yumeko she has no chance of winning as the thirty voters in the room are under her control. All have lost to Mary and are in debt to her along with being her house pets. Mary has told them how to vote so she knows how many of each symbol are in the ballot box, with that knowledge she can deduce what piece of paper to face off with. But that still didn't deter Yumeko who says let's play but the outcome won't be known until the second episode as this one came to it's conclusion.

 An episode is just 24 minutes long but quite a bit did happen in this show, the recap was a bit longer than future ones as there was much background info to start off with. As mentioned in the beginning this series truly reminds me of the 'Liar Game' drama which is a compliment. Just like LG the scenes are stretched out a bit to build the intensity and there's also some eerie music when that's happening. To see what the outcome for this second game is check out the next post which has the recap for the second episode.