From the moment the first episode aired,
you guys have been asking me to cover Kakegurui's opening,
and I really can't blame you.
This Sayo Yamamoto–directed opening is a wild, bombastic, psycho-sexual trip,
not to mention packed to the brim with manga references.
It manages to encapsulate the first SIX volumes of the manga into just a minute and a half,
giving JoJo and Mob Psycho 100 a run for their money.
Obviously, that means this video is going to contain manga spoilers,
but if you want to get caught up in a hurry,
BookWalker, Kadokawa's manga and light novel e-book store,
is releasing this manga simultaneously in English as it comes out in Japan.
Forty-page chapters are just two bucks a pop,
and by using the promo code "basement" for a 600-yen discount,
you can get the first volume for just over a dollar.
By the way, if you're a fan of No Game No Life,
then you're gonna want to stick around till the end of this video
to find out how using the promo code "basement" on BookWalker
could win you a beautiful No Game No Life poster OR a gorgeous PVC figurine of Shiro.
But for now, without further ado, let's get into analyzing things.
Kakegurui's opening kicks off–literally–with the legs of three different girls doing a little dance
in front of a trippy background.
Through the science of zettai ryouiki analysis, we can determine that these are Yumeko, Mary-chan,
and Kirari Momobami, the student council president.
Let's get the elephant in the room–or should I say the fish?–out of the way immediately.
All of the fish and fruits floating around in the background of the opening are also references,
specifically to Kirari's perception of Hyakkaou Private Academy.
At multiple points, the student council president refers to the school as both her personal Garden of Eden
and a private aquarium full of exotic fish that she gets to watch devour each other,
which goes a long way toward explaining all of the dinner table imagery in this OP as well.
On a pair of these tables, we see Mary and Kirari laid out and ready to be eaten,
which Yumeko looks all too eager to do.
This series is known for its ahego expressions–that would be sex faces, for the uninitiated–
so it's good to see that they kept those in the opening as well.
Before we move on, I just want to pause for a second to appreciate the way that this OP uses its titles.
Having them fall in and out of places chaotically and twitch erratically along with the music
is a nice touch that adds to the crazy atmosphere of this OP.
On top of that, the animation of Yumeko dancing between the tables is really slick–
which it should be, 'cause they use it twice–
and it gives you an immediate sense of her playful and incurably hedonistic personality.
As she dances off-screen, we jump to the title, overlaid with a pair of suggestive outstretched legs.
This OP has a real thing for conflating the pleasures of gambling, eating, and sex.
Speaking of sex, from the title, we jump to an up-skirt shot of Saotome Mary
using Ryouta, who is her pet at the start of the story, as a chair.
Gigguk wanted me to provide an in-depth analysis of this shot in particular, if you know what I mean ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
but I think the meaning is actually pretty obvious.
This shot connects the concept of gambling, once again, to titillation,
as does this next highly suggestive between-the-legs shot of Yumeko looking at Mary.
In just about any film, this kind of shot typically suggests two things:
first, that the person with the legs is in a position of power over the person between them,
and secondly, that they're about to fuck.
... Which they kind of do, as long as you consider gambling to be sex, which Yumeko certainly does.
And Yumeko is certainly in a position of power here, considering that she plays Mary for the entire game
without her realizing it's happening.
Something really interesting about this shot is that Mary is framed underneath
one of the arches that surround them, while Yumeko stands between two other arches, her head uncovered.
These arches show up around every major character in this OP, and they're quite the interesting symbol.
Arches are frequently seen at the entrances to casinos, so they have an entrenched association with gambling.
But traditionally, they also represent divine protection of the people underneath them,
which is why they're frequently used in weddings.
All of the antagonists are framed under an arch made from their gambling implements of choice,
symbolizing the protection they gain from cheating with those implements.
The first time we see Yumeko, she's standing without that protection, showing her willingness
to take true risks where other people don't.
Yumeko picks out one of the rock-paper-scissors cards from the first game that she plays against Mary.
Ryouta knows that Mary is cheating and gives Yumeko a worried look,
but Mary socks him on the back of the head to keep him in line.
As we pan up to her face, we briefly see her glancing deviously at her own hand
before giving more of an innocent look to the camera, again confirming that she's cheating.
Next up, we see Itsuki kissing Yumeko's foot, specifically her toenail,
which is just dense with double meaning.
Firstly, the more obvious meaning is that Itsuki collects other people's nails
and gambles Yumeko for the right to rip hers off her fingers,
which would be pretty fucked up if she actually did it.
Unfortunately for Itsuki, she loses this match, which eventually leads to the second meaning of this shot:
Later in the story, during the idol showdown arc, Itsuki ends up switching sides from the student council
and pledging her allegiance to Yumeko,
hoping that she'll overthrow the council president and take over the school.
Itsuki eventually puts her life on the line for Yumeko over a hand of poker,
which makes this positioning very appropriate.
This also gives extra meaning to the double arch of cards behind the two of them,
which you'd initially think is simply a symbolic representation of the two decks of rigged cards
that Itsuki uses in her memory game.
During the poker game against Kaede, though, their intertwined fates are put up as collateral,
with the cards being the only thing that can protect them.
We zoom away from the pair through the opera goggles of Yuriko and into her culture club's gambling den.
The arch behind her encircles the rigged sword roulette board that she uses to build up her club's coppers.
With a wicked smile and an equally wicked twang of the bass,
we zoom out to see Yuriko's dealer holding her dice cup,
as well as Umaru's stand-in Runa playing games and eating snacks in her kigurumi over in the corner.
The forest of trees behind Yuriko, picked almost bare save for a handful of ripe fruits,
is a visual metaphor for the way that she's amassed wealth
by cheating the people who come to gamble with her.
Following this, we cut to Midari, the head of the beautification committee,
holding a revolver to the head of some faceless girl who's been strung up upside down.
This is something that happens after the debt meeting that's currently happening in the anime,
which the OP skips over because it's only really interested in showing us the student council,
not the minor villain of that arc.
The arch above her is inlaid with the symbol cards used to play the ESP game that she plays against Yumeko,
while the lattice behind her is reminiscent of the grid that they actually play that game on.
While the upside-down girl's face is replaced with a strawberry,
it's pretty easy to tell from the way that she's dressed that she's actually also Midari.
So when Midari splatters her head with the revolver—
which is totally okay to show on TV because, you know, it's a strawberry—
it actually shows us her near-suicidal fetish for putting herself in danger
rather than any sort of violent impulses.
The stage that we see next and the arch of d-10s around Yumemi
are both references to the idol competition that she holds to take down Yumeko,
with the d-10s being used to decide which idol contest they'll play next.
Both of these shots are mostly just straightforward references, but she sure looks cute, don't she?
Kaede seems nonplussed by her cuteness as he sits in the back of the auditorium
between Runa and the vice-president, both of whom have had their heads replaced with limes.
This could be a reference to the fact that the president is secretly wearing the vice-president's mask
as a disguise in this scene, while Runa secretly betrayed Yumemi's plans behind the scenes.
Kaede is also sitting underneath an arch of limes and playing cards,
which are colour negative because the poker game that he plays with them allows for the lowest hand to win
instead of the highest hand.
Pulling out, we see Mary looking back at Kaede. She's framed alone in the audience
because she, as a non-member of the fan club, is the random element
that throws a wrench into Yumemi and Kaede's plans.
Next, we see a beautifully-animated shot of Yumeko and Yumemi dancing together,
which syncs up perfectly with the music and represents a key plot point:
Yumemi and Yumeko teaming up against Kaede after their competition.
Also, it must be said that Idol!Yumeko is bae.
The next shot of student council secretary Sayaka falling into water followed by President Kirari
seems like a straightforward yuri-bait shot on the surface,
and they totally are in lesbians with each other in the show, but there's more to it than that.
It's actually a reference to the end of the Tower of Doors arc,
where Sayaka jumps off the tower as part of losing her bet and the president jumps after her.
Once they hit the crash mat, hidden under the field at the foot of the tower,
the president licks a bloody bruise on Sayaka's forehead, pretty much exactly like she does here.
This has led a lot of manga readers to suspect that the anime will go all the way to the end of volume six,
which would be a nice, conclusive place to end the series, but also kind of crazy,
since that would mean covering eighteen 40-page chapters in the next eight episodes of the show.
However, it COULD end a lot earlier, since the next shot of all of the girls indulging in cocktails,
while Midari indulges in her mock suicide,
contains an image of Mary and Itsuki sharing a glass
that's very similar to a panel from chapter 42 of the manga,
which came out right before the show started airing.
Now, that may not be a reference at all, but if it is, the show obviously isn't going to go that far,
and it may not get as far as the character shots sneakily summarized either.
Though, as we're about to see, it probably will.
Now, as for the drinking shot itself, it's pretty simple and it mainly serves
just to give us a cute, creative snapshot of the alliances that form over the course of the story
and build up to the confrontation between Yumeko and the president.
Following this, we see Yumeko running excitedly to eat something, with the exact same animation they used
at the start of the OP.
Only, this time, it's herself on the table. She climbs up to dig in with another one of those ultra-suggestive
between-the-legs shots that we mentioned earlier, and then buries her face in her own breasts.
This shot demonstrates that Yumeko's all-consuming need to gamble is at once
self-destructive AND self-gratifying, and is maybe the best masturbation metaphor I've ever seen,
especially from a show that's not afraid to put the real thing onscreen.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Yumeko might be replaced by the president and vice-president
in a later revision of this OP as well, once it's revealed that the two of them are twins.
This is a perfect place to put that plot twist.
Next up, it's a nervous Ryouta's turn on the table as almost all of the girls we've seen previously line up
to take a bite of him.
This neatly sums up his position at the start of the story as everyone's whipping boy,
and the mixing of gambling cards and poker chips with the food on the table is a nice little touch.
Their meal is interrupted as Yumeko crawls across the table to devour Ryouta herself,
and several of them seem to be upset that she is taking him away, most notably Mary.
Ryouta doesn't look to happy about this either, but as she starts digging in, she instead loosens his tie,
which seems to be more than a little sexually gratifying for the both of them, especially Yumeko,
who likes it so much that she explodes into bubbles. This shot highlights Ryouta's sexual attraction
to Yumeko, as well as the way that she encourages him to loosen up and take more risks as the series goes on.
And the way that she disappears right of this moment of release mirrors how the president whisks her away
to the Tower of Doors right as Ryouta realizes that he has feelings for her.
Right after this, we see the president bemusedly watching Yumeko's bubbles ascend in a spiral,
representing the ascent of the spiral staircase that she takes up the Tower of Doors,
which does lend a lot of credence to the idea that the anime might end at that point.
The last little vignette shows Yumeko dancing with the president, and both of them seem to be really enjoying it.
Ultimately, both characters are incorrigible gamblers
who delight in the simple thrill of risk for themselves and others,
and they really just want to gamble with each other for the fun of it,
not for any particular vendetta or sense of animosity
... we know of yet.
Although, that won't stop them from destroying each other in the process.
In the final shots, the president whispers something seductively into Yumeko's ear,
probably a proposal for the Tower of Doors gamble,
and Yumeko seems to be REALLY into it.
We end on a repeat of the dancing feet that kicked off the OP, only this time,
one pair vanishes in a puff of bubbles.
Since both Yumeko and the president wear identical socks, it's left up to our interpretation
who those feet belong to, just as it's uncertain which of them will end up destroying the other
at the end of the story.
It's also uncertain whether those feet that cut in between them are still Mary's.
They could also be Sayaka's, since she also wears knee socks,
which is another hint that the anime could end on her confrontation with Yumeko at the Tower of Doors.
I hope that they don't rush to that point, though, as the series's strongest point so far has been
its impeccable pacing. Regardless of where the anime goes, though,
it's remarkable how much of the story they managed to sneak into this OP,
all while making it look cool, trippy, and exciting.
This is a strong contender for the Best OP of the Year so far.
I just wish that the story itself actually lived up to the OP's hype.
Now, I don't think that Kakegurui is a bad show, or a bad manga, for that matter.
Like I said, I read the whole thing for this video on BookWalker,
and as a quirky, hyper-sexual high school dramedy, it was a good read.
I enjoyed it a lot.
It's just that other anime handily beat it at the whole actual gambling thing.
Shows like Kaiji and No Game No Life are just better at making game strategies exciting
and creating high stakes.
That's a topic for another video, but speaking of No Game No Life,
it's available on the BookWalker store as well, and from now until August 8th,
they're celebrating the release of the feature film prequel No Game No Life Zero,
as well as the English launch of volume six, with a giveaway for anyone who buys one of the light novels.
Up for grabs are a $100 PVC figurine from Aquamarine of Shiro in a swimsuit
and ten exclusive posters of Jibril and Shuvi from the film.
And if you use the coupon code "basement" at checkout for a 600-yen discount,
not only will you be able to enter this contest for just two bucks,
not only will you be able to pick up where the anime left off and start reading the light novels;
you'll also be given the extra chance to win one of two more No Game No Life posters
that BookWalker is giving away exclusively to viewers of Mother's Basement.
Now, bear in mind that that coupon will only work for accounts that have been created
within the last few months and will only work once.
But obviously, if you're creating a new BookWalker account for the sake of entering the contest,
you don't have to worry about those restrictions at all.
It's also worth noting that you'll be entered to win one of those posters if you use that coupon
to buy ANY book on the store that costs more than 600 yen before August 8th.
Now, with that said, a bunch of Kodansha manga, including Chihayafuru, Great Teacher Onizuka,
Tsurezure Children, Altair, and Giant Killing,
are on sale for 620 yen a pop, which means that you can get any one of those for the equivalent of fifteen cents
AND win a poster. That is a crazy deal.
Or if you buy volume six of No Game No Life, you can get that poster
as a beautiful 1920×1200 desktop wallpaper, ready to be blown up with Waifu 2x for your 4K screen enjoyment.
No matter what you buy, though, remember that even if you lose,
you get to read whatever manga or light novel you buy, which is exactly the kind of win–win gamble
that would probably bore Yumeko Jabami to tears.
How's that for a return segway?
Let me know in the comments below which girl from Kakegurui is your favourite,
or, if that's not your jam, what other OPs you'd like to see me cover, beause I'm about to get back on the
"What's in an OP?" train in a big way, now that I've settled into my new place.
And while you're down there, you should know that it is NOT a gamble to hit the subscribe button.
You are guaranteed to get great videos about anime and sometimes video games
sent to your inbox every single week.
If you're itching to see more of me now and you want to hear me talk about another Sayo Yamamoto production,
you should check out my discussion of how Yuri on Ice could potentially be improved right up here.
Or if you're interested in more money-related schemes, then you should check out this comparison
between the first volume of Spice and Wolf's light novel and the anime.
If this is the last I see of you today, though, I'm Geoff Thew, professional shitbag,
signing out from my mother's basement.