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I haven't seen the film, but the manga covers the plot holes you mention (and events occur in a different order). It's also full of plenty of different reasons poor people stay poor. Though it certainly involves evil, evil rich people, the poor characters are portrayed as pathetic, weak, stupid, and treacherous more frequently than they are as heroic. It deals with extremes, and you're obviously supposed to root for the protagonist, but it's not entirely one-sided.

Yeah, I haven't seen the movie either, but once it was revealed that it was going to compress all of Part 1 into a single movie I knew that something was going to suffer in the process.

Part of the reason why the anime & manga work so well is that it takes its time and explains a lot, as well as helping drive the suspense up. For example, the anime takes 9 episodes to do the entire Restricted Rock-Paper-Scissors game; granted, that might have been a little too long, but I wouldn't be surprised if the movie does it in roughly 15 minutes.

I still want to see the movie, but I'm definitely not expecting anything close to how great the anime was. Too bad ANN isn't streaming it anymore via Joost...

i'm a huge fan of the anime &manga, i love the intensity of the situations kaiji found himself in and the games they were forced to play. but i was hesitant to check out the live-action movie and it seems i'll pass it's tough to capture the emotion of the anime&manga. kaiji in the anime had flaws and faced some adversity but in the movie it seems like they made him a one dimensional "poor man's hero". to me the anime was more about kaiji's frame of mind then defeating the "evil" rich people.

yea maybe a live-action tv series would've worked better so they could have time to build up some suspense

That was one of the first anime I watched at my college's anime club. I can still remenber chatting with my friends about all of the insane stuff that happens to Kaiji in the anime.

I would love to own an actual set of restricted Rock/Paper/Scissors cards as well as the other card set that was part of the second half of the anime. That what I would include in my anime collection if I had to choose a merchandise from the anime.

I noticed that the only production credits are for creator Nobuyuki Fukumoto. Come on, guys: this movie isn't his fault!

Not to self-promote or nothin', but I've also reviewed the film. Speaking as a fan, I can say that this movie is still bad if you know and like Kaiji coming in: probably worse.

Anyone know if the rumoured second anime is still in the works? Supposedly the cast confirmed it shortly after the first series ended, but it's been so long since then that I'm guessing it's been cancelled. Had been hoping that publicity surrounding the film would make it worthwhile.