So each new episode of Kaiji, from like ep 18 onwards, has been giving me stronger and longer lasting heart attacks with every cliffhanger. The pacing is so well done in this series, that if someone told me last year, "This time next year, one of two series you'll be following will involve a man trying to beat the unbeatable pachinko machine," I would have laughed until Coke shot out my nose, even if I wasn't drinking any.
But it's a fantastic series. Unbearably manly, a great deal of tension, but also a lot of smarts. Kaiji achieves the impossible not through oh-so-convenient happenstances or some bullshit tech we never heard of. He thinks shit through, with surprisingly plausible results.
Furthermore, even though we're at ep 22 - and four episodes away from our conclusion - where everything is a stand-off between Our Hero and The Villian, we really don't know how it's going to turn out. Kaiji is a good guy, but he also has piss poor luck and a way of digging himself into a deeper hole in an effort to get out of the one he's already in. This, and the pacing, make for some great suspense.
Oh, and the final 30 seconds, where a live-action Japanese woman recites quotes from Kaiji as if she were reading poetry, well, that's just the cherry on top.
