orpheusx9

TL;DR - Starts off great but gets predictable really fast.

The entire series follows a formula:

1. The game goes normally.
2. Things start to go awry, the team's owner (bad guy) uses money to commit underhanded cheating and laughs maniacally because he believes he will finally screw Tokichi (main character) over.
3. One to two episodes are dedicated to Tokichi slowly figuring out what the trick is. The rest of the team is stupid as shit and is largely in the dark most of the time.
4. Tokichi uses the trick against the enemy team and helps his team win back points and/or win. Owner gets angry and screams.
5. Rinse and repeat.

It's fairly entertaining for the first half of the series. But it gets repetitive and predictable.

I think I could've even been okay with repetitive and predictable, because sometimes a winning combo just works. But what really kills it for me is just how goddamn stupid the rest of the team is. Literally, the entire series is just one guy, our MC, versus the world. Everyone else is just a chess piece.

I became visibly irritated several times when the "idiotic" teammates were screaming or upset, totally in the dark about how they're being cheated, or even ruining Tokichi's plans by doing or saying something stupid and revealing the strategy to the enemy.

The main character's voice actor is the same one who voiced Akagi, the serial Mah jong gambler, and aside from nailing the smug attitude, is completely devoid of any other emotion. Although Akagi the anime ends soon enough, the manga it's based off of suffers from a similar problem of rinse-and-repeat, rinse-and-repeat, MC-conquers-all-with-DARING-and-INTELLIGENCE.

At least in Akagi, the MC struggles at occasional moments, but in this series every obstacle is so easily overcome it seems like a joke. I just wish they would have changed it up a bit in the second half and given our MC another dimension other than "smug intellectual."