Kaiji the Gambler: The Manga That Inspired Squid Game

Death games have recently gained popularity, thanks to successful works such as The Hunger Games and Battle Royale, as well as video games such as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Apex Legends. This article compares one of the genre’s most recent entrants, Squid Game, to one of its forerunners, the famous manga Kaiji the Gambler.

What Is A Death Game?

Death game horror and thriller films generally involve forced participation in a game with terrible repercussions for failure, sometimes terminating in death. This subgenre was once only popular among a small but committed fanbase due to its horror and gore aspects, which also connected with the popularity of gambling in Japan. However, newer, less explicit entries, such as the ones mentioned above, have gained worldwide prominence, widening the genre’s appeal and making it more accessible to a wider audience.

Squid Game’s Popularity Has Renewed Interest In Its Source

The worldwide success of Squid Game on Netflix exposed audiences to the brutal world of the show’s fictional universe, but many may not know that the series was inspired by the manga Kaiji the Gambler, which is even bloodier than the show. Squid Game follows the story of Seong Gi-hun, a poor South Korean man who sees an opportunity to escape his debt and become wealthy by participating in a series of contests along with 455 other desperate individuals, leading to the deaths of many of the participants. It’s worth noting that Kaiji the Gambler, a manga that has been a classic in the genre for years, explores a similar theme and has gained a new audience in recent times.

The Plot Of The Classic Manga

Despite being published decades before the Netflix series, Kaiji, by Nobuyuki Fukumoto, has a striking resemblance to Squid Game. Kaiji Ito, the protagonist of a Japanese manga series that premiered in 1996, is a high school dropout who decides to make a new life for himself in Japan. Kaiji spends his days drinking, gambling, and vandalizing automobiles since he can’t find work and is fed up with the world.

Endo, a debt collector, shows up two years later to retrieve money from Kaiji, who seems to have squandered his life and is threatened by massive debts to dangerous loan sharks. The collector gives Kaiji a decision to make: either spend the next decade working off the loan or gamble away the debt in one night on a boat.

The dishonest Endo, however, is not really anticipating Kaiji to return from the trip since he knows that while Kaiji will have the opportunity to gain enormous sums of money, the means by which he’ll do this are more likely to get him killed. On the boat, Kaiji is required to take part in a number of activities, including the childish Rock, Paper, and Scissors. He has the opportunity to play the next game if he wins, but a defeat results in a bloody demise.

The Similarities Between The Manga And The Show

While both the stories of Seong and Kaiji follow the classic beats of the “death game” genre, just what is it that makes these two in particular so similar to each other and not, say, Hunger Games?

Let’s start by pointing out that the two main protagonists are gamblers who spent their lives trying to make fast money only to wind up at the mercy of aggressive debt collectors. They both have to choose numbers for their games before they understand what they are, debating the advantages and disadvantages of going early or late. Later in both games, players must travel a perilous path without dying within a certain period of time.

The fact that both games are watched live by wealthy individuals who wager on players winning or losing like animals is another connection, though it is also present in other works of the genre. Keiji and Seong soon begin disputing the necessity and morality of shoving off players in front of them, and last but not least, both of the major protagonists end up making the ultimate sacrifice.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Squid Game’s creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, provided more reason for the parallels between his show and Kaiji: The Gambler. Dong-hyuk revealed his obsession with video game comics by naming titles like “Liar Game,” “Kaiji,” and “Battle Royale.” The creator of Squid Game basically acknowledged that, although Kaiji wasn’t the only source of inspiration, it did have a role in shaping the final product.

Final Thoughts

While both Kaiji the Gambler and The Squid Game share many of the standard elements of the death game subgenre, the more specific parallels between the two cannot be ignored, and the producer of The Squid Game has openly acknowledged that he was inspired by Kaiji’s tragedy. It’s important to note that this in no way detracts from the fact that both works are excellent in their own right and that Kaiji the Gambler is a terrific manga that any lover of the genre should read.