Kakegurui is based upon the manga series and the first season is 12 episodes long. It starts off with showing off Suzui Ryota, who attends Hyakkaou Private Academy. This is a middle and high school for the kids of the extremely wealth and influential members of Japan. As a result of this, the culture has warped to one where the hierarchy is determined by gambling.
Students of the academy will gamble against each other, using large sums of money, for social status. The losers are left in heavy debt and if you cannot repay the debt, then their status will drop to "house pets". House pets are bullied and mocked relentlessly without remorse and rarely able to improve their status enough to get out of it. Suzui was one such house pet before Jabami Yumeko arrived. The gambling system is overseen by the student council, who all gained their positions via their gambling skills or money.
Yumeko is a transfer student and she is the protagonist of the story. She revels in the feeling of the high stakes of gambling and the very real risk of losing everything. In short, she is crazy and is a huge gambling addict. However, she is clever with extremely good memory and a knack of deciphering the rules of the games to use it to her advantage. Yumeko challenges higher and higher ranking students, all the way up to the members of the student council.
It was during the games that Yumeko plays that you come to realize that the games are not your typical casino games. These games are original designs or usually a modification of an existing game with a twist. The participants usually cheat with the system being that they are only penalized if they are caught. Yumeko will usually figure out how her opponent has cheated and uses this to her advantage to win. Through this, we see that everyone at the school is crazy. The student council sees Yumeko as a large threat and takes measures to shut her down.
We soon see the amounts gambled to the tune of millions and billions of yet, and this is considering that the participants are all students. Soon after, it transcends money and they gamble for a lot more, such as their future and their lives. The biggest advantage of Kakegurui is that despite the games being quite simple to understand, it is because they are so simple that intrigues you on how they would cheat and how Yumeko would overcome that. Before each game, the rules are quickly explained to the characters and viewers and by using modified versions of existing games, it adds a brand new dynamic and strategy which is engrossing.
There are some really tense moments where you truly do not know what would happen because you don't know how Yumeko would react. She goes against expectations at times, opting to lose instead of going for the win. Yumeko herself knows the rules of the school and when to manipulate it to her advantage to force the student council members to gamble against her. Despite the calculations and analysis from other characters, Yumeko just enjoys the process of gambling and could care less about what she loses, or gaining power over the school like the student council has.
Yumeko's lack of rational motivations leads to some wonderful scenes where she has crushed her opponent so utterly. The season has a strong ending but the end result is predictable. There are obvious uses of CG in scenes which detract a lot. Characters also make ugly faces to show their crazy and demented side. Overall, Kakegurui does glorify gambling to a degree since the main character encourages the act of taking risks to win. However, as a drama it is filled with tension with genuine clever moments during the games.
------------------------------------------------
For other anime reviews, have a look at this page.