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.

To me it was easy to watch, although the episode length for twin is longer than kakegurui. We've learned more about mary's backround since it focuses on her character more, before yumeko became (one of, since ryota is there) the main character, before she exchanged schools. We earned the chance to see mary's true intellect, and other than that, her soft spot even. It adds up to her character, i'm glad we got to see more of her!

I thought a series without Jumeko Jabami wasn't a good idea, but i have to give credit to the potential Mary Saotome has as a character.

There are only 6 episodes, but I think somehow I enoyed this more than the original version. My question is how this is gonna fit the main series? I'm intrigued.

So this anime is the prequel it's a spin-off of the kakegurui anime I already gave you the review you can read it then after seeing the series I was very anxious to see this other anime too So this has increased I don't know for how long that moment when Yumeko wrote to him atschool So I saw myself and I didn't like a problem at all that this really has a lot of problems for example that this anime didn't really serve the story of the original anime at all and then this one focuses on the character of Mary but here it doesn't really have itsame charm in the previous guide series I really found a lot of boasters and then here there was a really big continuity error because before Mary always said that she didn't have any friends and instead here a character named Tsuzura appears who she always try toalways appreciate Mary but in the original anime the character of Tsuzura didn't even exist and she wasn't even dominated by Mary and then this anime doesn't really have a real plot there's only people who just gamble and don't there were really some very beautiful moments in The Only Onepositive thing about this anime and that it only has 6 episodes and then this series doesn't really add anything that should be the story of kakegurui it was just a waste of time it's much better than not following this anime and I hope they decide to create the season 3 original series But meI tell myself because they are really obsessed with creating these useless Anime to conclude the vote 5.

It might not be Kakegurui, but it still feels like a nice prologue to the main story when everything was a little simpler. The characters are nice, but Mary obviously has the spotlight (I don't personally care too much for the other characters). The animation is decent, and there are still very clever moments and the story isn't bad at all. There are a lot less cliched moments than I thought after seeing the review, as the show really has great moments.

Now, regarding the weird faces and overly erotic visuals from the original kakegurui. This show has nearly none of that; however, it still has the atmosphere of the original, so I didn't find myself disappointed due to the lack of weird faces at all. In my opinion, Mary Saotome makes up for all the negatives in this show.

I'd say only the first episode was a little rushed, but after that it's really just a decent show that doesn't deserve the hate. I don't usually like reviewing, but after watching the show and seeing all the hate it was getting I felt like it wasn't getting the justice it needs. Watch it! It's a perfectly decent spinoff.