Double Memory
Jabami and Suzui have now become friends and Suzui continues to fill Jabami in on the details of the school. Apparently, the school encourages gambling in order to teach their students to excel in higher positions of power, working on their traits of taking risks, observance, and all of that. It’s really a bit of a stretch but it’s supposed to help their students, and considering how Japan is obsessed with pushing their students, it sort of makes sense. It’s extreme though. And of course this is to also whittle down the weak and the weak end up being “livestock”, which we see happens to Mary as she is called Mike. Male “livestock” are all Pochi and the females “Mike” and they’re literally treated like animals and slaves. They constantly get bullied and degraded and things only became worse for the unlucky when the student council president, Momobami, came around. It’s an awful system and I can’t believe a school like this that promotes abuse both mental and physical is still open. The caste system is terrible, where those lowest of the low have a difficult time getting back up, and those that are up there stay there. I wouldn’t want to compare it to real life caste systems, such as the one in India, because in this school it is possible to bring someone down.
And that happens with Sumeragi when Jabami has her way with her. It turns out that gambling can happen even during lunch time, and a girl named Sumeragi make a ruckus that catches Jabami’s attention and she ends up playing a game with her. The game they play is something Sumeragi made up called “Double Memory”, where the two players have to match two of the same cards, both the number and the suit. Usually it would just be the number but Sumeragi raises the stakes by adding in the suit so there is only one pair for each card. Finding a pair among two card decks is difficult, but having to remember where the cards are placed, what number and suit, sounds almost impossible. In the first round Jabami loses and she begs Sumeragi to have another match with her. The bet was huge at 20,000,000 yen that Sumeragi actually loaned to her so they could play. However in the second match, Sumeragi asks for something different: her nails.
I had some serious Higurashi flashbacks when she admitted that the nails she collected were actual human nails. On top of degradation and mental abuse, there’s actual physical abuse in the ripping out of nails! Though Suzui did say those types of bets were rare but it was disturbing to say the least. However, Jabami had nothing to worry about as her “desperate” act made her win the second match by figuring out Sumeragi’s cheat off the marks on her personal card deck. Just like the first episode the match was intense, there was cheating, crazy faces, and a crazy Jabami. Could be a fun but frustrating game without the betting involved.
Life and Death
Jabami continues challenging student council members, but this time things don’t go the usual way. I think it would be boring if Jabami won every single gambling game, wouldn’t it? The next opponent is a girl (who looks like a grown woman) called Nishinotouin and we find as she drowned Mary even deeper into debt. And even though Mary was a bitch, I honestly feel so bad for her. Her status that she had before is practically a dream now and the rest of her time in the school is going to be complete hell with insults and crippling debt. Mary had taken part in a game against Yuriko where students are allowed to gamble against a student council member in hopes of making a comeback but unfortunately things did not go her way. But figuring out the cheat, Jabami is right to say that Yuriko is the worst of the worst.
This was probably my favorite episode so far just because of Jabami roasting the hell out of Yuriko. That entire scene of her making fun of her name, calling her a bitch, and pouting because of the money amount was just so entertaining to watch. This is the first time we’ve seen her provoke her opponent so she could see through their cheating, and I’d like to see more of it. She’s adorable and malicious at the same time, I love it! However, while she found out the cheating method with the magnets, in the end Jabami still lost and found herself in extreme debt but she wasn’t too worried about it even though she found her desk completely vandalized the next day and her Mike name tag. I find it interesting that the girls that treated her nicely before made fun of her, since that could easily happen to them. But, again, Jabami is best girl, she takes her new identity in stride and…
does that. And gets the girls off her back. And while also accepting her new name, she’s decided that she wants to gamble against the student council president after meeting her. And it looks like that’s going to happen soon based on the ending. I’m not sure what Momobami is planning with having files of both Jabami and Mary but something big is going to happen soon.
The show continues to give us what we expect. This is going to sound weird but this show kind of reminds me of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure because they both share the yelling, over the topness, and the figuring out the cheating/secret of the opponent. Particularly the episode in Stardust Crusaders where Jotaro played against D’Arby in poker and he had to figure out the cheating or else his soul would be taken, the same with Terrence D’Arby and his cheating in his video games (his doll collection and Sumeragi’s nail collection is another similarity). This is basically Jojo’s but with the gender ratio switched. Mind blown.
