Kakegurui××
賭ケグルイ××
- Drama
- Mystery
- Suspense
- High Stakes Game
- Psychological
- School
- Strategy Game
- Episodes
- 12
- Duration
- 24 min per ep
- Aired
- Jan 9, 2019 to Mar 27, 2019
- Status
- Finished Airing
Synopsis
Yumeko Jabami’s rising notoriety coincides with a weakening student council, prompting Kirari Momobami to upend the power structure at Hyakkao Private Academy. She declares a 30-day election for the next president: every student starts with a single chip, and whoever amasses the most by the deadline will claim the presidency—along with leadership of the Momobami clan.
The announcement sends the Momobami branch families into motion, bringing eleven transfer students to the academy, each determined to seize control. Armed with their own specialized skills, they enter a ruthless contest of strategy and high-stakes games where winning chips is only part of the risk.
Otaku Consensus
Kakegurui×× lands as a knowingly excessive second season: MAPPA’s direction sells the games through grotesque close-ups, saturated color, and the much-discussed glowing-eye intensity that fans remember more than any rule sheet. The 30-day election structure gives the season sharper momentum than a simple rematch tour, but the most persistent criticism remains intact: viewers who want airtight gambling logic and restrained character writing often find the story predictable, ridiculous, or driven more by sensation than strategy.
Why You Should Watch
Watch Kakegurui×× if you want gambling anime as psychological theater rather than a tutorial in probability. It scratches the same itch as Kaiji’s pressure-cooker wagers, but swaps working-class desperation for aristocratic cruelty, idol-pageant theatrics, and a cast that treats humiliation as social currency. The appeal is MAPPA turning every bet into a facial-expression arms race: dilated pupils, predatory smiles, color shifts, and edits that make a classroom feel like a casino floor. If you bounced off slower strategy shows because they over-explain mechanics, this season keeps the pace vicious and performative; if you need grounded game theory, its excess will test you. Best fit: viewers who want suspense, school politics, and anti-heroine energy without moral hand-holding.
Key Characters
- YYumeko Jabami(VA: Saori Hayami)
Yumeko remains fascinating because her calm elegance and ecstatic risk addiction make her feel less like a protagonist to root for than a force that exposes everyone else’s fear.
- MMary Saotome(VA: Minami Tanaka)
Mary is the fan-favorite counterweight: proud, reactive, and visibly strategic in ways that make her victories and losses feel more human than Yumeko’s near-mythic composure.
- RRyouta Suzui(VA: Tatsuya Tokutake)
Ryouta functions as the audience’s pressure gauge, grounding the spectacle by reacting to dangers that the gamblers around him treat as entertainment.
What Makes It Stand Out
- 1
MAPPA’s visual identity for this season is built around distortion rather than realism: extreme facial acting, glossy eyes, and sharp color design turn emotional tells into the real battlefield.
- 2
The season uses a 12-episode, election-style structure with chips as political currency, giving the gambling format a leaderboard rhythm instead of a purely episodic win-loss cycle.
- 3
Yasuko Kobayashi handles series composition, a key role for a season that has to juggle many new challengers while keeping Yumeko, Mary, and Ryouta central to the viewer’s perspective.
- 4
The cast profile is unusually specific for a mainstream school suspense anime: AniList tags it as Female Protagonist at 85%, Primarily Female Cast at 83%, and Primarily Teen Cast at 80%, which reflects how heavily the show’s power games are driven by young women.
- 5
Its reception profile is polarized in a telling way: a very high MAL popularity rank of #263 sits beside a more moderate 7.18 score, matching the split between viewers who binge it for spectacle and critics who object to its narrative logic.
Fun Facts & Trivia
- Fun fact 1
- Kakegurui×× aired as a compact winter 2019 season, running 12 episodes from January 9 to March 27, 2019.
- Fun fact 2
- The anime credits Homura Kawamoto for the original story and Tooru Naomura for the original character design, while Manabu Akita adapted the character designs for animation.
- Fun fact 3
- The season is co-directed by Yuuichirou Hayashi and Kiyoshi Matsuda, with Haruka Matsuda as art director and Toshiki Amata on art design, underscoring how much of the show’s identity comes from production styling.
- Fun fact 4
- AniList’s tag spread captures the show’s tonal extremity: Gambling is rated at 98%, but Death Game at 63%, Slavery at 60%, and Villainess at 60% show how far the series pushes beyond ordinary school-club competition.
- Fun fact 5
- Across web reactions, one of the most repeated compliments is not a plot twist but a visual detail: the animation’s glowing eyes became a shorthand for the series’ heightened, predatory mood.
Studios
- MAPPA
