Blah blah blah, Trillion Game is great, blah blah. You know my views at this point – I’ve come to love this show. And this was another great episode to be sure. But I want to start this week with Tsuda Kenjirou. I find it absolutely hilarious that this guy is so huge as a seiyuu that anime can’t contain him. He’s playing Kunugi in both the Trillion Game anime and live-action drama (and it’s interesting to note the differences in his performance). Seriously, this guy is the nitrogen of Japanese actors.
Kunugi is one of two new power players (Shirotora Akari – played by Lynn – is the other) introduced this week. And Trillion Game has something of that Golden Kamuy quality to it – the one where even the secondary characters are written as if they’re the protagonists of their own series. That leaves you with a cast full of larger than life figures who are never boring to watch, and the narrative never loses momentum even as it shifts among them.
Kunugi and Akari are the key cogs in the machine Haru decides to build around news. Like social gaming and celebrity representation, he doesn’t give a fig about the act itself. It’s the game he cares about, and he’s decided that news is the next piece on the board he needs to deploy against Kirihime. In her comprehensive swallowing up of Tokyo’s TV streaming rights she ignored Kawara TV, a second-rate station with terrible entertainment options no one watches. But they have a decent news division and Shirotora Akari is ranked as the #10 presenter (seriously, Japan ranks everything) despite being on such a lowly channel.
Kawara is a pretty common entity in corporate Japan. Doomed to mediocrity by the change-averse old men who run it in grey and uninspired fashion. Haru’s courtship of Kawara is really a master class in his limitless bag of deceit. He puts on a different face for every object of desire – the board, Akari, news producer Kunugi. He offers the board a sweetheart deal only drudges like them could turn down – they prefer to remain in the 20th Century. Haru’s next stage is to make it clear Trillion TV is looking elsewhere, which the competent news team at Kawara will quickly get wind of (along with his terms). And because they are competent, they’ll be pissed that their bosses turned those terms down.
Akari and Kunugi are both forces of nature – like Hebijima – in totally different ways. But they complement and respect each other, despite Kunugi’s tsundere protestations. Akari truly is the white tiger of news. She’s relentlessly earnest and idealistic, seemingly incapable of deceit. She runs to cover a news story with the cliched toast in her mouth, and goes on camera with jam on her cheek. But when the camera is on she’s smooth and professional (and reassuring). Kunugi is cynical and acerbic and sees the implications in everything. But he’s razor-sharp and looks past the obvious in ways that serve his effectiveness as a newsman.
It definitely happens that people like this wind up working for companies they’re way too good for. And people like Haru do get billionaire-wealthy by being able to spot them. He wins over Akari by appealing to her essential nature, then seduces Kunugi by appealing to his. As conservative and dull as the president of Kawara is, he’s not stupid. The way Haru wins him over is by proving he’s able to win over Kunugi and Shirotora, who never agree on anything. But Prez realises that to do this, Haru must be a skilled master of duplicity. He therefore insists Haru come clean on his real reason for wanting Kawara as a partner, not the BS one he’s been peddling the others. And he agrees, because he knows if he doesn’t those employees too good for him will take their talents elsewhere.
There is something of a recurring theme to all Haru and Gaku’s exploits so far – starting with Haru’s “acquisition” of Gaku himself. Kedouin, Hebijima (even Sakura-chan), Akari, Kunugi. Of all the skills needed to play the trillion game and build a colossus in business, none is more important than the ability to spot – and procure – elite talent. And of all Haru’s superpowers this may be the most elemental. He’s a genius at reading people (that bit about a second reason implying a lie is so perceptive), but then at winning them over to his cause. This is why Kirihime fascinates him so much, I think – she’s the ultimate challenge in this respect, because he has nothing with which to lure her except himself.
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