Gamble Fish

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Alternative Titles

Japanese: GAMBLE FISH

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 19

Chapters: 168

Status: Finished

Published: Feb 1, 2007 to Jul 15, 2010

Genres: Mystery, Ecchi

Themes: Harem, High Stakes Game, Psychological, School, Strategy Game

Demographic: Shounen

Serialization: Shounen Champion (Weekly)

Authors: Yamane, Kazutoshi (Art), Aoyama, Hiromi (Story)

Statistics

Score: 7.21¹ (scored by 7,062 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #5796²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #1264

Members: 15,445

Favorites: 203

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Wikipedia

7.21

Ranked #5796Popularity #1264Members 15,445

MangaShounen Champion (Weekly)Yamane, Kazutoshi (Art), Aoyama, Hiromi (Story)

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Volumes: /19

Chapters: /168

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Synopsis

The story is set at Shishidou, a school attended by rich and elite people. Tom Shirasagi, a gambler, is a mysterious new transfer student who has come from a public school (instead of a prestigious private one) and faces the elitist environment. There, he declares a challenge toward any student and claims he will bring to ruin the whole school through a series of gambling matches. Nobody knows why he has come to that school or what the real motivations behind his actions are.

During any match, Tom shows off all of his unique coolness and ability; he employs a wide range of tricks, both psychological and physical, to ensure his victory. In any game, you will constantly ask how he's planning to win, why he's really doing certain things, and what's really going on. At the end of the matches, the tricks are revealed, and they all work in real life, even if they do require one to be highly skilled or lucky in order to perform them.

The story centers around the various matches he undertakes and the interactions between the various characters, like Mika Shishidou, the beautiful granddaughter of the school headmaster, who is highly intelligent but contemptuous and superb, or Abidani, the vampiric looking dorm superintendent and main villain (for now) in the series, who has a sadistic personality and whose goal is to make Tom leave his school (or to get him killed).

As the story unfolds, more and more about Tom's past is revealed, leading to an unpredictable turn of events.

(Source: MU)

More characters
Characters

Shirasagi, Tomu

Main

Abidani, Reiji

Main

Tsukiyono, Yuka

Main

Kimura, Natsumi

Main

Mizuhara, Kazuki

Main

Omaha, King

Supporting

Hanasaki, Mayo

Supporting

Gokijima

Supporting

Akino, Megumi

Supporting

Shirasagi, Yumeichirou

Supporting

Reviews

Aug 30, 2023

hexashadow13

Recommended

tl;dr: A manga held up mainly by how absurdly it’s games play out but that gets less absurd and thus less interesting over time.

Gamble Fish is a manga about a boy named Tom who begins attending Shishidou Academy. His reasons for attending are completely different from a normal student in that his goal is to dominate the academy through gambling matches. There’s an overarching plot surrounding why he’s doing this that has to do with the conflict between the clan that Tom is a part of, the Shirasagi clan, and the Shishidou clan who runs the academy. The plot also involves him searching for his ... missing father and his rivalry with Abidani, a devilish gambler involved in his disappearance. These plot threads do have a significant presence throughout the manga, however the story flows pretty badly and feels really random. On top of that, the ending is half assed in that it does kind of resolve things, but in a way that leaves a lot still left open. Thus, overall, I would say that the overarching story in this manga is pretty weak.

In terms of characters, there’s also very little depth. The cast is really flat and no one has any sort of character arc. The protagonist is Tom and he’s always good. The overarching antagonist is Abidani and he’s always cartoonishly evil. Tom’s has a male best friend Mizuhara who’s mostly just a pervert that serves as comic relief. And then there’s a host of girls that fall in love with Tom, generally after he beats them in some sort of game. I guess watching them all fall in love with Tom and then act as his groupies is kind of amusing, but there’s no relationship development beyond the moment they fall in love, and there’s not really any romantic fluff either. Thus, regardless of what you’re looking for in terms of characters, I doubt you’ll find it here.

As such, the main thing holding up the manga is the games, and since the vast majority of the manga is just the series of games that Tom gets involved in, the games do manage to hold up the manga to a degree. The reason it’s only to a degree is because while the games start out reasonably good, I felt they declined over the course of the manga. The first half of the manga could be considered the Academy arc. Here the games involve a lot of cheating and tricks. It gets kind of absurd, in that cheating seems to be perfectly fine as seen in that even when things that are literally impossible to happen without cheating are happening, there’s no penalty to the cheater. Rather, the focus is on Tom trying to figure out how the cheating is happening and coming up with ways to get around that, often by also cheating. It can be quite nonsensical, but it’s pretty fun.

The second half of the manga could be considered the Macau arc. While there’s still a bit of the cheating focused part towards the beginning, when the games fully get into the swing of things the games are much more tightly controlled, so cheating isn’t possible and thus there’s a larger focus on actually playing the games properly. However, the commitment to being absurd doesn’t decrease so instead the focus is on crazy things that are technically allowed, such as throwing dice so hard that the corner gets stuck in the table and thus multiple sides are facing up. This absurdity is still kind of fun, but it’s not as fun as the stuff in the school arc, and the games themselves have never been written all that great in terms of actual logic and strategy, so it’s a decline.

Towards the final stretch it goes even further in focusing even more heavily on the games themselves, essentially mahjong and blackjack, with the only crazy stuff happening being stuff with ridiculous chances consistently being relied on and happening, such as getting blackjack a dozen times in a row. To be honest, this section lacked what made the games in most of the manga fun and was thus just straight up a slog. That combined with how the manga drops the ball on the overarching plot and characters results in the manga overall ending on a pretty low note and not being very satisfying.

I will also note that I really liked the art. It’s certainly really rough in terms of both style and quality so it definitely took some getting used to, but it has a lot of personality and great design work that was used really well so ultimately I enjoyed it quite a bit.

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Jun 3, 2023

Kinglink

Mixed Feelings

I give Gamble Fish an 8. I highly enjoyed it, and it was exactly what I was looking for.

But what? Why do you have mixed feelings if you enjoyed it so much. Well that's that thing, I was recommended this series because I enjoyed the first 50 chapters of Yu-Gi-Oh and really enjoyed the "Let's keep challenging Yugi with strange games and see how he gets his way out of there." That's before the card game became the entire focus of the manga, and before there was really one major game.

And in that way Gamble Fish scratches my itch. ...

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May 26, 2021

_Speed_Racer_

Not Recommended

I went into this manga really excited since it was a well rated gambling manga and finding good gambling manga can be hard sometimes. I however was severely disappointed after completing Gamble Fish. First off the characters are in middle school yet they are drawn in over sexualized ways which just feels creepy especially when you look at the fact that the story doesn't have to be set in middle school. On top of the characters being over sexualized for no reason, a majority of the female characters only exist to have some sex appeal, accomplish very little and then fall in love with the ...

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Poll: Gamble Fish Chapter 51 Discussion ShiroiRyu - Oct 27, 2010	5 replies	by Mcdoclin »» Jan 20, 1:25 AM
Poll: Gamble Fish Chapter 10 Discussion Nick4x - Aug 31, 2009	9 replies	by EGOIST »» Jul 22, 2022 10:26 AM
Gamble Fish Chapter 168 Discussion Stark700 - Sep 29, 2015	18 replies	by aspnet0900 »» Jul 19, 2022 11:32 PM
Poll: Gamble Fish Chapter 36 Discussion Khalid - Apr 3, 2010	13 replies	by G_Nemesis »» Jul 31, 2021 10:11 PM
Poll: Gamble Fish Chapter 102 Discussion Stark700 - Aug 12, 2013	12 replies	by Telmi »» Sep 6, 2018 12:32 AM

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