Kaiji

Tobaku Mokushiroku Kaiji (賭博黙示録カイジ, Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji), also known as Ultimate Survivor Kaiji, is a Japanese gambling manga series. It was written by Nobuyuki Fukumoto and published by Kodansha in Young Magazine, and had won the Kodansha Manga Award. The first part of the manga (13 volumes), was adapted as a 26-episode anime television series called Suffering Outcast Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor (逆境無頼カイジ Ultimate Survivor, Gyakkyō Burai Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor), which aired on October 2007. A second anime series based on the second arc of the manga, entitled Suffering Outcast Kaiji: Maverick Arc (逆境無頼カイジ 破戒録篇, Gyakkyō Burai Kaiji: Hakairoku-hen) premiered April 5, 2011 and ran until September 27, 2011.

A live-action 'Kaiji' movie was released October 10, 2009 in Japan with Tatsuya Fujiwara playing the role of Kaiji.

Plot
After graduating from high school in 1996 in Japan, Itō Kaiji moves to Tokyo to get a job, but he fails to find steady employment because the country is mired in its first recession since World War II. Depressed, he festers in his apartment, biding his time with cheap pranks, gambling, liquor and cigarettes. Kaiji is always thinking about money and his perpetual poverty frequently brings him to tears.