The 8 Best Anime About Gambling

Gambling involves risk and carefully planning your next moves. Some anime like Kakegurui and Kaiji show how powerful can be this theme when applied correctly.

This listicle will also include shows where gambling is implicit or indirect like it happens with sports or high-stake challenges.

We won’t include unrelated works just because they show some random scene about gambling.

We ranked the anime according to our personal experience and knowledge. Expect changes in the future as new shows are released.

8. C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control

This short anime revolves around Kimimaro Yoga. He’s a 19-year-old orphan who lives in a Japan that is going through a financial crisis causing high rates of unemployment, crime, and suicide.

One day he meets Masakaki, a mysterious man in a top hat who offers him large amounts of money in exchange for his future being held as collateral.

Despite the confusing and shady proposal, Kimimaro accepts the invitation to the Financial District.

There he finds out that accepting the money makes him an Entre, people who get summoned once a week to compete against each other, betting their money in battles known as Deals.

Every Entre is paired with an Asset a creature who somehow personifies their futures. Kimimaro is paired with Mashu, a horned girl who can throw fire-based attacks and battles for him in these Deals.

The premise is interesting and an obvious attempt to critique the modern world and its greed.

The gambling nature of these fights where the protagonist puts his literal future on the line is a very high-stake game that everybody is forced to play in a society focused solely on profit.

7. Death Parade

Death Parade is a short 12-episode anime that blends the tension of death games with an interest in the occult and mystery.

When on Earth two people die at the same time they must be judged, and they are sent to liminal spaces, such as the Quindecim bar.

On the surface, a simple bartender called Decim is the judge, whose job it is to decide whether to send souls to reincarnation or to the eternal void.

In the death game, players take turns, remembering during the games both their identities and the reasons for their deaths.

It can be considered a gambling anime because the two people being judged are competing against each other and trying to avoid eternal damnation.

6. Saki

This anime revolves around a high-school freshman named Saki Miyanaga, whose family was obsessed with mahjong and would force her to play. This leads her to hate the game and not want anything to do with it.

Things change when her friend Kyoutarou Suga drags her to the school’s mahjong club. In fact, she meets Nodoka Haramura, the champion of the previous year’s national middle school mahjong championship.

As she starts playing Saki starts to hide her talent but the club’s president notices her and puts her in a condition where she ends up revealing how much she is gifted.

Saki ends up joining the club and, along with her friends, starts to train to win the nationals. She comes around and starts loving mahjong again.

This is the story of how the protagonist can overcome her traumas with the help of people who care about her. It’s not a gambling anime per se but it is focused on the traditional game of mahjong.

5. Mahjong Legend Akagi

The story is set in the ’50s and starts with a compulsive gambler called Nangou who’s playing for his life in a game of mahjong against the mafia after having accrued a massive debt with them.

When all hope seems lost a boy storms into the parlor. His name is Shigeru Akagi and he’s on the run from the police.

The desperate Nangou hands the game over to Akagi and everybody is blown away by his talent as he proceed to win the game and save Nangou’s life.

Over the years Akagi makes a name for himself and manages to defeat many yakuza members, including Iwao Washizu, a famous figure in the Japanese criminal underworld.

The plot explains how Akagi becomes a mahjong legend and a respected figure in the gambling world despite being just a kid.

4. Legendary Gambler Tetsuya

This anime aired in the early 2000s is set in 1947 Japan and revolves around a young guy named Tetsuya.

He spends his time in mahjong parlors where he shows off his skills by annihilating his opponents and gaining money.

He considers himself a true talent in the game but soon he makes the acquaintance of Boushu.

He is a master in the game of mahjong and gives a lessons to our protagonist, who finds out that he is not the unbeatable player he thought he was.

Legendary Gambler Tetsuya is a little bit dated, but it is still an enjoyable anime, especially if you’re interested in gambling and the game of mahjong, which plays a large role in the show.

3. Kakegurui: Compulsive Gambler

The plot revolves around the Hyakkaou Private Academy, a private school whose pupils include children of wealthy and world-famous personalities.

The academy initially appears to be just another school, where students are instructed in ordinary subjects such as history and languages.

However, overnight, students learn the art of gambling and money manipulation, betting their infinite fortunes and gambling them against each other to gain influence within the school.

The main character Yumeko is a naive girl who has just transferred in but soon discovers her enormous talent in gaming. She turns out to be a genius gambler and this will create many problems for other students who exert their influence on the school and try to stop her.

The story puts a fun spin on the world of gambling and it becomes more frightening as you get invested with the characters and the stakes rise.

2. One Outs

The main character Toua Tokuchi is a baseball prodigy and he keeps gambling and winning on these games of One-Outs where he is an absolute master.

He doesn’t have any affection for the sport and sees it as an easy way to get a quick buck.

This is until he meets the professional player Hiromichi Kojima who beats him at his game and forces him to join his team, the Saikyou Saitama Lycaons.

After many negotiations, he will sign a weird contract.

Toua will earn five million yen, but making any mistake on the pitch will cost him fifty million. This is the ultimate gamble for Toua because it ties his career to flawless performances in every game he plays.

Toua made a name for himself by gambling on his skills and now he has gone professional. But he has no intention of changing the line of thinking that brought him there in the first place.

1. Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor

A gambling anime about the story of Kaiji, a poor young man facing an enormous debt.

Anything related to chance has to do with probability and to even trying to figure things out, the main character shows a great deal of intelligence and mental strength.

Kaiji: Ultime Survivor is all about numbers and probabilities but that’s not all. Game Theory plays a crucial role as well because gambling is heavily influenced by decision-making and possible outcomes.

In plain English, Game Theory is about decisions and analyzing strategies. This anime is more of psychological warfare, where everything matters and decisions cannot be rushed.

Kaji is an ordinary man who is forced to collect all of his skills and mental strength from the situation he has put himself into.

The anime does a great job of making you sympathize and grow attached to a very flawed man that is just trying to save himself at this point.