Bet, Netflix’s attempt to create a decent show based on an anime, is a failure. When the trailer for the series was released, I did not find myself excited for the show. I hoped that Bet would pleasantly surprise me, but unfortunately, Bet produced a disjointed, sloppy narrative with flat characters that does not capture the spirit of Kakegurui.

Disjointed, Sloppy Narrative

I know anime adaptations can come off as corny, but there’s a right way to do it and a horrendous way to do so. This adaptation has no forethought and operates with the structural integrity of a dry noodle. 

Right from the beginning, we get the impression that our lead, Yumeko, is not like other girls. She has a gambling problem that leads to her expulsion from a generic high school. This leads her guardian to enroll her into St. Dominics, a school known amongst the elite to create the biggest monsters in the world, and she fits right in.

Yumeko is on a mission to figure out who murdered her parents and to avenge them. However, Yumeko operates based on vibes. As the audience, we do not know who murdered her parents, and neither does Yumeko. Her knowledge about her parents’ murderers comes down to one photo they took in high school and a weird blemish. At the beginning of the show, she meets a man with a weird blemish and immediately becomes hellbent on murdering this man, believing that the man murdered her parents. She’s later found sitting in the school’s library in broad daylight, building a bomb. While she fails with her plan, the entire story arc is childish. 

The rest of the series follows a similar pattern. A lot of the narrative points are based on vibes with little thought.

Flat Characters

The entire cast falls flat and only operates within the plot’s immediate actions. 

Yumeko remains consistent throughout the show. However, her two personality traits are gambling and her knee-jerk reaction to murder anyone she suspects of her parents’ death.

Ryan, who is introduced as Yumeko’s biggest simp, remains her biggest simp throughout the entire show. He has no personality outside of Yumeko. Everything he does is to get on Yumeko’s good side, even after she was ready to sleep with him to let a close ally of hers win a bet that he was going to lose his virginity. Yes, that was the plot of one of the episodes. Ryan’s motivation is to follow Yumeko like a love-struck puppy without challenging her or doing anything to help himself.

However, the biggest issue is Suki. They are one of the members of St. Dominic’s student council, and what I call the mandatory “hello fellow kids” hire. Suki is a caricature of the average Gen Alpha social media influencer. They present as a genderfluid icon who uses a TikTok-esque app to connect with the masses. They have a nasty habit of using Gen Alpha slang like they’re trying to meet a quota to stay relevant with the younger generation. 

Bet tries very hard to be edgy and hip. I would not be surprised if Simon Berry went into Chat GPT and generated this slop.

The Cameo that Came Out of Nowhere 

Throughout the show, there were a lot of figures in animal mascot costumes. It’s unclear what purpose they served besides menacingly looming in the background. However, near the end of the season, one of the leads gets into a fist fight with a beaver mascot. The beaver’s head flew off and revealed WWE Superstar, Seth “Freakin’” Rollins. 

I have two questions: Seth, how much did they pay you? Was it worth it? 

The One Thing They Did Right

Near the end of the season, Bet introduces a game from Kakegurui, the Finger Cutting Guillotine. In the anime, this game was played between Yumeko, Midari (Dori in Bet), and Erimi Mushibami. In Bet, this is a game played between Mary and Yumeko at the student council president’s behest. 

Mary and Yumeko spent the duration of the game laughing through the adrenaline rushes, as they cut the strings holding up the guillotine that looms over their fingers. The stakes were high, and as a fan of the original show, Bet did a great job at capturing the unhinged nature of Mary and Yumeko’s relationship in the source material. 

Unfortunately, this was short-lived. Immediately after the game, the show reverted to its edgy, campy, and disjointed nonsense. The biggest issue I have with this is that I sat through seven full episodes of this sloppy narrative before getting this one good thing. 

Overall Verdict

Save yourself. Don’t watch Bet. Please watch the original anime or the Japanese live-action adaptation, which are both on Netflix.