Kakegurui Twin Part 1 Episodes 1-3

One year before Yumeko Jabami would grace it’s halls, Hyakkaaou Academy welcomes Mary Saotome.  She knows this is a school where futures are made, where the students have a chance to shape the history of the nation.  What she doesn’t know is that social statuses are determined not by grades or good attendance…but through gambling.  Those who wins are on the levels of Gods at Hyakkaou.  Those who lose are designated lowest of the low, treated as servants or worse.  Mary is determined to not become the latter and teams up with a former school friend to take on those who lord over this school with a sadistic grip.  In a school full of hopeless losers, Mary will do whatever it takes to become, and stay, a Winner.

Welcome to a Gundam Anime Corner New Years’s Special Event.  Originally I had intended to look at Kakegurui Twin back in September until I decided to slot in the Fullmetal Alchemist Sequels (smart move that was).  Finding an open slot in 2023 for a two part review proved to be tough and then I realized, I did have a place I could look at this criminally brief series.  So, Dear Readers, you’re getting the first half of Kakegurui Twin today and tomorrow, we ring in 2023 with the conclusion, neat idea right?  Anyway, let’s get into this long delayed review, shall we?
 
While it looks like we’ll have to wait a lot longer for a Third Season of Kakegurui, we have a short intro season of Kakegurui Twin to sate our taste for beautiful crazy girls obsessed with getting turned on by the thrill of gambling.  This time, everyones favorite dangerous Waifu, Yumeko, is sitting things out and instead we’re focusing on the rise of her self proclaimed bestie, Mary.  I like this idea and always believed that Mary could carry her own story.  Making it a prequel certainly opens a bunch of questions but I’m hoping they can be answered before the finale…although.  Considering this ONA is only 6 episodes, I don’t know what the overall plan for this story could be and there are problems right out of the gate.  It does manage to recover but it makes me wonder why an Anime adaptation would be shortchanged like this.  There’s plenty of ground to cover in Mary’s origin story, so why rush things?
 
This is one of those rare instances where I’m glad I started reading the Manga before the Anime came out.  Normally I wouldn’t make many comparisons between the two mediums in a review, unless it was one of my Anime to Manga or Manga to Anime specials.  But in this case it bears mentioning because the first episode of Kakegurui Twin is easily the weakest, acting less like a proper premiere and more like a mini Compilation Episode. Through the narraration of new character Tsuzura, and a needlessly cartoonish Animation montage, we get the bullet points version of Mary’s arrival to Hyakkaou Academy and her very first gamble at the school, as well as how Mary and Tsuzura know on another.  This should be a pretty epic moment in this Anime, the arrival of one of the most important characters in the entire franchise…and it’s basically breezed over for no reason other than to get the ball rolling on this very short season.  It robs the viewers of showing us Mary’s first exposure to the chaotic and toxic environment of Hyakkaou’s messed up class system and her desire to not become one of the hundreds of House Pets.  Her motivation to save Tsuzura from her own House Pet status feels unearned as well because, again, we skipped over those very first meetings that are pivotal to getting Mary’s story going properly.  Like I said, the other episodes do a better job at not skipping anything but this is a terrible way to kick off a highly anticipated adaptation of a Manga.
 
It's also not helping things that a lot of scenes in this show have an odd animation choice, mainly that a lot of it is tinging certain colors.  The color green permeated the premiere so much I thought that Mary was somehow stuck inside The Matrix (for those who may not have noticed, in The Matrix there’s a slight Green Hue whenever characters are in the digital world).  Yeah the original series uses a lot of red for Yumeko when she goes crazy with her lust for gambling but the animation is much more balanced.  Kakegurui Twin is much more vibrant with its color choices when it really doesn’t need to be.  As I said, the original series looks pretty damn good and I don’t see why it couldn’t just be replicated here.  I suppose from a stylistic point of view it helps both Anime stand out from one another but still it’s distracting at best and annoying at worst.
 
But like I said, things do get better after the first episode.  I’ll be very curious to see how Mary begins her transition into the more accepting of Hyakkaou’s sadistic culture in the original series.  Here, she is still the larger than life dreamer but she’s also more of an idealist.  She doesn’t just want what’s best for herself but also the best for Tsuzura, who’s head over heels in love with Mary, even calling her a “Prince” that has come to her rescue.  Tsuzura is a special kind of innocent we haven’t seen much of in either Kakegurui series.  We’ve seen people scared out of their minds but Tsuzura is far more sad and meek than most.  It’s only because Mary is around that she feels any sense of hope or optimism about rising above her House Pet status.  The last of Mary’s little group of allies is Yukimi and…honestly there isn’t much to say about her really.  She’s another victim of the system who has gravitated to Mary in hopes she can pull her out of despair.  While Tsuzura and Yukimi are keen to cheer and support Mary, I’ll admit, I do miss Yumeko’s devilish prodding in Mary’s ear when it comes to the thrill of the gamble.
 
Luckily, the lack of the lovely psychotic Ms. Jabami is made up for with a whole new assortment of demented that keeps everybody coming back to Kakegurui.  We do get brief cameo appearances from the Student Council we know and either love or hate: Kirari, Sayaka, Runa, Ririka and Yuriko.  Oh and Midari is around too, sporting both of her eyes but still having not lost any of that particular kind of crazy that makes her such a fan favorite.  But the real new star of Kakegurui Twin is easily Sachiko.  Oh boy she’s easily a contender for one of the hottest and most intense characters in either series.  Sachiko stands out from Kirari with her blood red eyes that look like those of a Succubus, and she’s got the body of one too.  She’s a perfect encapsulation of the messed up nature of Hyakkaou’s class system.  At one point she nearly chokes the life out of her personal House Pet/Assistant, Mikura, and Mikura enjoys every minute of it to the point where some spilled water in a scene means something a little bit more that I wont elaborate on.  Sachiko knows she’s a Goddess and isn’t afraid to strike fear into anyone just for a personal thrill.  And her fascination with Mary adds a whole other layer to things.  Everytime Sachiko gets intimately close with her, Mary sees just how bad things can really be at Hyakkou…it’s both scary and very hot at the same time, exactly what Kakegurui does best.
 
Guess I should touch on the other main draw of the series besides the attractive female leads: the Games and Gambling.  Yeahhhh…this is Kakegurui so as usual, the rules and executions go way over my head as always.  But still, seeing the reactions from everyone, whether in victory or defeat, how warped everyones face becomes, that still remains Kakegurui’s most memorable element and there’s plenty of it in Twin as well.  While the game proceedings are still super complex (it’s just something I cant fully grasp, that’s on me), there’s still something gratifying about seeing everyone work out ways to one up each other.  Mary knows how outgunned and outclassed she is, hence she needs to work twice as hard at strategy with cunning her own luck.  While dice games dominated much of this opening half, we did get another unique gambling game with an epic Dating Competition.  It’s no shock this is a thing since we know the Student Council is prone to making Life Plans for it’s students, including who they’ll marry in life.  But to have them risk money on dates, dinners and…ahem sleepovers, yeah that’s pretty messed up, even if some students do walk away happy with their arrangements.  I will say that the end of this set, still in the middle of this competition was a pretty damn good cliffhanger that left Mary in the worst possible position: all alone.  How she comes back to win and somehow get to being the more hard hearted Mary Saotome from the original series, I guess I’ll have to check back and see next week.
 
I have to say, I wish this wasn’t a six episode series.  But much like the parent Anime, I imagine Twin is burning through Manga material pretty quickly…actually more so since it just omitted an entire first episode for no apparent reason.  Honestly, that’s my biggest gripe with Kakegurui Twin so far, more so than the short length.  So can the series somehow put a good pause on an opening season or will I be dissatisfied and glad to put this show in my rear view?  I’m gonna gamble on the former option and see if it pays off when I check out the second half of Kakegurui Twin tomorrow, our first official review of 2023 for the Gundam Anime Corner.  See you then everyone.