At the high-class Hyakkaou Private Academy, students from Japan’s highest and wealthiest statuses climb the social ladder with their gambling abilities. The best earn popularity and connections with powerful people, while those that end up in debt become slaves or “house pets” and are bullied mercilessly by the rest of the student body. Those that don’t pay off their debts to the student council before they graduate receive Life Schedules that dictate what their future will be and who they will marry, meaning that they pay off their debts with their very lives. However, there’s one girl that gamble for the thrill of it instead of riches or popularity and begins to cause discord for the student council and their control over the school.
Yumeko Jabami is the new and beautiful transfer student with a powerful and manic obsession for high-stakes gambling and risk-taking. She revels in the insanity of gambling and despises games where the outcome is predetermined and manipulated in a player’s favor. Yumeko turns the tables on her opponents by discovering their cheating strategies and using her own knowledge of gambling to win the game. On her first day, she’s challenged by top gambler, Mary Satome, in an improvised game of rock-paper-scissors. Through this game, she meets Ryota Suzui, who had become a house pet himself after losing against Mary. Despite objections from Ryota, Yumeko accepts and shocks everyone when she deduced Mary’s cheating strategy and causes her to go into debt, becoming a housepet herself. After her victory over Mary, the Student Council President makes it her goal to stop Yumeko from destroying the system she created and taking away her power in the school.
Kakegurui has been made into both an anime series as well as a live-action drama with the first seasons being available on Netflix. Both versions of the show are entertaining to watch, but my personal recommendation as to be the anime version. The actors in the live-action drama bring about the personalities of their respective characters amazingly, but the anime gets to the plot points faster and is more entertaining overall. The opening song of the introduction itself makes you want to get up and dance, and the voice actors for the Japanese dub give life to the characters as well.
I highly recommend watching this show if you’re having an anime night with friends or just are in need of some gambling tips and tricks!