A more loosely adapted Chinese live-action film, titled Animal World, starring Li Yifeng and Michael Douglas, premiered in June 2018.

Three years after graduating high school and moving to Tokyo in search of employment, Kaiji Itō struggles to secure steady work.

Consumed by despair, he spends his days in his apartment, indulging in petty pranks, gambling, alcohol, and cigarettes, while obsessing over his financial woes.

His life takes a dramatic turn when he is visited by Yūji Endō, a loan shark seeking repayment of a debt Kaiji had co-signed for a former co-worker.

Endō presents Kaiji with a choice: either repay the debt over ten years or gamble aboard the ship Espoir (French for 'hope') for one night to settle it.

After emerging as the sole survivor of the event, Kaiji seeks to avenge the fallen participants by entering a new gambling match, "E-Card", organized by the shady financing corporation, Teiai Group.

He encounters Kōtarō Sakazaki, a indebted man who informs him of a high-stakes pachinko game called "the Bog", located at a Teiai-owned casino.

Despite the game being rigged by Seiya Ichijō, the casino manager, to prevent payouts, Kaiji devises a strategy to beat the Bog, and in collaboration with Sakazaki and Endō, they win over ¥700 million.

The titular character is drawn "sharper": he has an angular face, pointy chin and sharp nose, making it difficult to freehand draw him.

[14][11][13] He also uses visual metaphors, like making Kaiji jump a large crevice or drawing him into a rushing torrent of water, to express the uneasy atmosphere.

[16] The manga portrayals people's psychology in extreme situations, and the characters deal with betrayal and elaborate cons, desperately looking for ways to win.

[a] It is divided into six parts: In March 2024, Fukumoto revealed that Tobaku Datenroku Kaiji: 24 Oku Dasshutsu-hen would end soon, and that the following arc would be the last one of the series.

'One Day Outing Foreman'), written by Hagiwara and illustrated by Motomu Uehara and Kazuya Arai,[50] started in Weekly Young Magazine on December 26, 2016.

[67][c] A scene depicting Kaiji throwing himself into large-stakes gambling by symbolically drawing him into a rushing torrent of water, was replaced due to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which occurred midway through the anime's production (Fukumoto donated 30 million yen (US$360,000) to the quake victims).

[78][79] In December 2021, Sentai Filmworks posted on Twitter a video with their ADR director Kyle Jones "accidentally" teasing that an English dub was in production for the series, with plans for a 2022 release.

[94] The opening theme for Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor is a cover of the Blue Hearts' song "Mirai wa Bokura no te no Naka" (未来は僕らの手の中, lit.

Directed by Toya Sato, starring Tatsuya Fujiwara, Yūsuke Iseya, Yuriko Yoshitaka, Katsuhisa Namase and Teruyuki Kagawa.

[106] Directed by Toya Sato, starring Tatsuya Fujiwara, Nagisa Sekimizu, Mackenyu, Sota Fukushi, Kōtarō Yoshida and Suzuki Matsuo.

[110] A more loosely adapted Chinese live-action movie, Animal World, starring Li Yifeng and Michael Douglas, was released on June 29, 2018, in China and other countries.

[129] Kaiji and Mikoko Sakazaki were featured in a promotional collaboration for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Monster Hunter Frontier G in 2016.

[141][142] Another variety show with the same topic, titled Real Kaiji Grand Prix (リアルカイジGP), was streamed in AbemaTV's AbemaSPECIAL Channel in April 2018.

[161] Michael Toole of Anime News Network praised the narrative of Kaiji, stating that "the series is run through with entertaining lowlifes, odd situations, and intoxicating moments of suspense.

"[3] David Smith of IGN praised the games' rules development and strategies, but said that watching the titular protagonist "trip and fall into obvious traps is more than a little frustrating.

"[167] Chris Beveridge of The Fandom Post wrote, "Kaiji is a pretty fun show in small doses to dig into the wild and weird kinds of things that they come up with for the gambling matches.

"[169] Daryl Surat of Otaku USA, commented that Fukumoto's "exaggerated facial expressions and contortions" of his character's design allows "selling the peaks and valleys of emotion that go with gambling matters of life, death, and big money."

"[170] David Cabrera of Polygon commented about the series' "oppressive" atmosphere and said that Fukumoto "has a gift for presenting the abstract terror of staking one's life on a coin flip, mercilessly wringing every turn for maximum suspense and crawling all the way into his characters’ heads as they contemplate the unthinkable."

He added that Kaiji himself is the key to make the series engaging and wrote, "he's cowardly, quick to tears, and the moment he gets comfortable he's guaranteed to screw everything up.

They added, "Kaiji's flaws make him an unlikely but sympathetic protagonist, which helps build the tension as he's forced into increasingly desperate gambles and drawn out psychological battles.

You want him to win, to be redeemed, and to actually learn his lesson, but this show has too much to say about class, privilege and the self-destructive nature of hope to make his road to redemption easy.

[174][175] South Korean film director and writer Hwang Dong-hyuk mentioned that Kaiji served as an inspiration for the 2021 television series Squid Game.