Kakegurui is a hit gambling anime/manga franchise that takes place in the private Hyakkou high school, where the sons and daughters of society's elite are taught how to risk it all in high-stakes games of chance. This school also has a rigid hierarchy and time-honored traditions, but the new girl, Jabami Yumeko, aims to change all that.
Yumeko is a wild hedonist, and in Hyakkou, she's like a bull in a china shop, much to the student council's dismay. Yumeko gambles not for wealth or status but for the borderline erotic thrill of it, and to her, gambling is something to be enjoyed on a raw and primal level. Kakegurui represents this with its smartly executed fan service, and that helps set it apart from other gaming anime shows.
The Primal Ecstasy Of Gambling In Kakeguri
The story of Kakegrui both reinforces and subverts its native shonen demographic in remarkable ways. The series has a fierce shonen-style rivalry between Yumeko and Mary and features a protagonist who takes on one challenger after another, but this is no ordinary shonen title, even where the fan service is concerned. In titles such as Fairy Tail and Sword Art Online, the fan service is just a way to draw in more viewers and give them what they want, but Kakegurui adds far more meaning to its fan service. In fact, the series' deepest messages would lose their bite if the series had no fan service based on the attractive heroine Yumeko.
Kakegurui establishes Yumeko as a hedonistic, impulsive and emotionally engaged heroine who gambles for the thrill of it, not for riches or status, and that subverts the concept of a gambler protagonist. Many gambler heroes are trying to get out of debt or earn money for a project, and for them, gambling is a means to an end. For Yumeko, gambling is the end goal, and it's all because of the sheer pleasure of risking her money in games of chance. Win or lose, Yumeko is chasing a high, and it's like a drug or even erotic to her. Kakegurui toys with the R-rating by portraying gambling as something akin to sexual pleasure, even something orgasmic to Yumeko -- something not often seen in gambling stories.
In Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji, as an opposing example, the male lead gambles only to escape debt. For him, it's a stressful business of numbers and risks, and not at all fun but rather a necessary evil. Yumeko feels otherwise, and the fan service makes this abundantly clear. The fan service in Kakegurui can serve its traditional purpose, but along the way, it also vividly shows just how pleasurable and even orgasmic gambling is to her. After all, Kakekgurui is noted for its intense drama and exaggerated facial expressions -- a far cry from a dry game of poker where everyone maintains their poker faces while counting cards. Gambling is a carnal pleasure for students like Yumeko, and only through fan service can Kakegurui truly drive that point home.
How Food Wars! Mirrors Kakegurui's Fan Service
Most anime shows use fan service for gratuitous pleasure for viewers, but a few titles aside from Kakegurui use it in a more meaningful way, and the culinary anime Food Wars! is one of them. First-time viewers might be baffled or even turned off by the series' flamboyant fan service, but Food Wars!, like Kakegurui, is smart about it.
In Food Wars!, the classic shonen lesson is that cooking is more meaningful when the chef cooks for the happiness of those they love rather than for prestige or to show off. That's the lesson Soma learned from his parents, and Erina learned it later when trying to impress her mother at the BLUE tournament. Love really is the secret ingredient, and when a dish is truly complete, it will satisfy the diner on the deepest and most intimate level, thus leading to gratuitous but meaningful fan service -- and for male and female characters alike.
This series does more than just undress its female characters to appeal to shonen fans -- like Kakegurui, Food Wars! understands that a job well done should speak to someone on a deep, primal and wordless level -- one best represented by sexual pleasure, crude as it may be. It's not the tamest idea, but it's a universal one that any anime fan can understand.
