Kakegurui Twin

Kakegurui has always been known for two things: Mentally deranged high schoolers' gambling and outstanding opening/ending credits. The half-baked prequel series, Kakegurui Twin, only has one of those things.

Unfortunately, the opening is a generic instrumental song with awkwardly lifeless visuals. If you enjoyed Kakegurui's first two seasons for its ridiculous characters, disturbing facial expressions, and idiotic games, Twin might scratch that itch. Instead of following Yumeko and her generic male companion (I do not remember his name), this short spin-off series focuses on Mary Saotome's origin at Hyakkou academy. Upon enrolling, a naiive Mary allies with Tsuzura, a friendly girl with no gambling skills. Both immediately become in debt, conned, and forced into the role of "House-pet" (AKA Kakegurui's bondage-inspired penalty for broke students). The dynamic duo leads a refreshing hybrid sitcom, "Gambling Apocalypse x 2 Broke Girls" as they attempt to rise in the school's ranking. It's a lazy rehash of the first season's plot.

There's a handful of side characters-mostly girls only distinguishable by candy-colored hair and the number of times the camera zooms in on their breasts. The few male characters, one-dimensional perverts at best, are motivated by their desire to win against and/or date the girls. The guys bet for girls, like a more NTR version of Rent-a-Girlfriend, whereas the girls bet for cash. Each gamble is laced with the series' patented horniness-if that annoys you, don't even bother watching Twin because it's more like a fanservice OVA stretched thin rather than a standalone spin-off. Twin's most noticeable difference from the anime is its aesthetics. Over-saturated lighting and high-contrast color-grading make it feel like you're tripping on psychedelics. Those effects look fabulous in the colorful posters; in the anime, it's a cheap attempt at covering lackluster art and mediocre animation. MAPPA's entire production appears rushed, and with zero impressive animation cuts, it's clear the studio was on a time constraint.

Twin sucks as a spin-off to Kakegurui because the author wrote the original manga with zero thought for a prequel. You could easily watch Twin without seeing the first two seasons. The original story, themes, and characters are irrelevant. Six episodes pass, and almost nothing new is learned about Mary (partially because that'd risk messing up the continuity). The new characters are gone and forgotten by the end. At least it makes no pretense of complex characters, unlike the main anime. The ending teased a sequel (which I'll watch like the fool I am), so perhaps they'll explain how dozens of characters disappeared. Even the mysterious student council is barely referenced-wasting the opportunity to develop the enigmatic members. However, there's not much you could do to fix the original's flaws. Almost every problem in the first two seasons-lack of logic, no stakes, shallow characterization, etc.-applies to this one, so go read AndoCommando's reviews if you want an in-depth analysis.

Kakegurui was ironically entertaining in its own schlocky way. Twin was just phoned in Netflix fodder. The over-the-top personalities, unhinged mannerisms, and over-exaggerated voice acting of the first two seasons are nowhere to be found. It's as if someone fed Kakegurui to Netflix's algorithm and removed all the trashy charm. Thank god this was only a mere 6 episodes. I don't think I would've survived anymore.