Gambling School: Twin

KT is a 6 episode short anime series about another menacing, elite HS with yet more sinister offspring of well💰moneyed High-Rollers.

The concept seems Against the Spread, ie. Underwhelming😑 (right?). How it was Dealt to my queue is more mysterious than a Random Number Generator, but watchlist Roulette landed on KT, so it seemed only proper to Play a Round or two🎰

Like a High-Stakes Buy-in, the premise is a bit of a pauser. It's Long Odds that a show featuring a HS that revolves around betting will Pay Off big. You may Speculate: Does KT's S1 Reel in some Beginner's Luck, or does this table have a Low Limit? Once Ep2's Chips are counted, it's clear that logic and🀄strategy are a deck of cards, and the premise, a dealer. KT is not dumbed-down; it has a good hand to play.

Mary Satoame is new to HPA (Hyakkou Private Academy), and Mary is as talented as a card-counting card sharp. She doesn't enter Hyakkou with the Bankroll to be a Whale, nor does she plan to be top gambler, though we can Tell she's curious about how she'll Cut the Deck compared to the school's lauded prodigies.

Her game plan is to survive - alone.

The academy is a Cage in which students get some Action: Payline, Payout Percentage, and sometimes Tapping Out. It's not a place where one Hits the buddy Jackpot. Yet, Mary manages to score 2 teammates without a Wager! It's Better than a Double or Nothing. One day she stumbles into HPA's long forgotten library📚 and Collects her snake-eyes Bonus: 2 unforgettable friends, shiny clean, like a fresh deck of cards. Their bond is not Progressive; it's immediate & sincere, which opens Slots for Free Spins against the disdainful Croupiers & Pit Bosses. The risk, effort, and Toke are shared, with friends, which Chips at the House Edge. In time, they share Hands by turning the library into their own den o' yen💴, aka, a casino.

HPA is a Derby for Platinum Members only. Like William Macy in The Cooler, newbies aren't allowed to 'let it ride' or run Hot; they are kept in the Cold. Along come the frigid snobs, the sadistic mavens, the appealing but calculating Blackjack-of-a-redhead, the nefarious House counsel, and long queues of wildcats, madcats, & housecats, as well as a House Comp of dweebs🃏. It's as if HPA is one big Fruit Machine. They all want to Double-Down on their constant Riffling with Mary's Futures. It's Certain: She's a guessing game. Guess where she'll end up? The malevolence of the jealous, those 2-dimensional Face Cards who do not want Mary passing them on the Track, may be the biggest Risk.

Mary realizes that, while her friends are Railbirds & not gambling savants, they have Skills that are worth so much more: Trustworthiness. Loyalty. Courage. That's 3 aces. The 🎲 are Loaded. Watch how Mary's gonna pull the Blinds off and set things a'tumblin.

It's a slow Tumble at first. Ep1 is a Fold, and Ep2 is an only slightly better hand. From there, the House of Cards begins to take shape. Ep3: more interesting; 4: Calling it pretty darn good; 5: plenty of Juice; and the Cashout episode - Well, it's looking Down-and-Out for Mary and the Librarians (That will be MY indie band. The name is taken)... Is it true that The House Always Wins? Or might Mary have an ace tucked in her thigh-high socks?

KT's animation is like Texas Hold Em: New, exciting twists on an old game. The English speaking dubs are the usual excellence found in anime. 🐰🕳··> As an aside, in anime, the dubs are 100% better (imho) while with foreign live action... Hey! Subtitles are a Whiz in under 90 seconds. When watching dubbed live action, one is starting at a Loss▶ a loss of 1/2 of the performance. You are better off watching cartoons<··🕳🐇.

Sure Thing, there's some better anime out there, but there's also much more that is much worse. KT's 6-chip Wager is easily Better than Breakeven, and Mary is the Queen of Clubs.

〰🖍 IMHO

🎬7 🖋〰 6.5 🎭6 🌞4 🎨7.6 😅2 (no jokers!) 🤔6.7 🔚8.3

Age 15+ cruelty amongst kids. The worst role models are depicted, mild language (Bℹ+ch ×1) Well rounded🎱🎱 girls in micro pleated plaid

👁📺again? - rewatch probability is Low Odds.

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.

More like a spin off from the original seasons. Unlike in the original, the animation style improved by a mile in this but not a fan of this confusing storyline. Apparently its canon which made me confused on the overall storyline of this franchise. The sound/music choices werent as good as the original, i like mary but for me i prefer yumeko due to her obsessions and gambling addict/maniac persona. Recommended.

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!

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.