Kaiji: Story, Cast and Series Facts

Story and premise

Itou Kaiji is a bum who steals car emblems and slashes tires on what seems to be a regular basis. This routine changes one day when he is paid a visit by a man in a trench-coat. Once the two get talking, it seems that the visitor (Calling himself Endou) is a debt collector. The reason for his visit is an unpaid loan which kaiji had previously co-signed for a work-mate (Furuhata Takeshi). The original loan was 30000 yen and once Takeshi had disappeared, the loan then fell on Kaiji. Kaiji is then told of a way to clear the interest compounded debt (which stood at 3,850,000 yen), which involved getting on a boat with others in his position. Once on the boat the debtors would then have to gamble with loaned money, which would end with a few winning, and others getting into deeper debt and having to work to pay of their debts. After some coercing kaiji accepts a position on the boat, in or...

Series details

• Title: Kaiji
• Format: Animation
• Language: Japanese
• Genres: Drama, Anime, Thriller
• Premiere date: 2007-10-02
• Final broadcast date listed: 2011-09-27
• Status in TVmaze: Ended
• Network listed by TVmaze: NTV
• Network country: Japan
• Typical episode runtime: 30 minutes
• TVmaze community rating: 7.3/10
• TVMaze ID: 12713
• IMDb ID: tt1202625
• TVDB ID: 81234

Cast and credited roles

• Masato Hagiwara — Kaiji Itou
• Masane Tsukayama — Hyoudou Kazutaka
• Naoya Uchida — Yuuji Endou

Seasons in the TVmaze catalogue

• Season 1: premiered 2007-10-02; final listed air date 2008-04-01; episode order: 26.
• Season 2: premiered 2011-04-05; final listed air date 2011-09-27; episode order: 26.

Source and licence

Adapted from Kaiji on TVmaze. The synopsis is reproduced as plain text; catalogue facts, cast and season records are selected and reformatted. This adapted text is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, following the TVmaze API licence. Network and web-channel credits identify the service listed in this source; they do not establish current streaming availability.