LIAR GAME

The game required Nao to draw a card from a bag. There is a 50% chance that the card she initially picks is either a joker card or a two-back card. If she draws a joker card face-up (visible while being drawn), she must return it to the bag and draw again. Since a joker card is equally likely to appear face-up or face-down, there is a 50% chance that a drawn joker will be returned and a 50% chance that it will be drawn properly (face-down, without being returned). In contrast, a two-back card cannot be considered face-up or face-down because both sides are identical, so it never needs to be returned to the bag. Therefore, considering only successful draws that do not require a redraw, Nao had a 1/3 chance of properly drawing a joker card without returning it to the bag.

So to think about this Lets say each card has side A and side B, and we call the joker face card side A So you have Double back side side A Double Back side B Joker side A - joker Joker side B When you take a card out of the back it can be in one of 4 states above. But If Joker side A is ever pulled, it goes back into the bag. So Joker side A is never a valid pull. This means you can pull Double Face Side A Double Face Side B Joker Side B 2 of these states are a loss 1 side is a win I.e 33% chance to win

Reduce the game to a problem of drawing the Joker or the Double-Back. Half the times it's the Joker (when it's face-up), it has to go back into the bag and the game just skips to the next round. This cuts down the actual endgame states where someone wins. From the original situation I had above where there are only two events, drawing the Joker or the Double-Back, half the Joker situations (where it's face-up) are cut out. This leaves only three end of game states where someone wins, two of those belong to the Double-Back and only one belongs to the Joker.

I haven’t read the manga, so I’m just predicting based on what I understood. The condition is that the payment has to be made before the tenth vote (after she gets her 10 votes). If she fails to pay all of them, she will be penalized 100M for each M-ticket she used, which obviously won’t happen. So she/Akiyama will probably force all of them to buy points from her for 70M, or maybe more, since if they don’t, they risk losing. That way, the money would basically balance out, since she originally bought 10 points from all of them for 70M each.

It’s explained in the show, but to summarize. The rules of the game is that Nao draws a card from the bag. If it’s “face up” it gets returned to the bag and she redraws. The trick is that since the double back card is always “face down” it never gets returned. Mathematically. Here are the possible results of each draw: Card is face down, is joker. Point for Nao. Card is face down, is double face. Point for Fukunaga. Card is face up, is joker. No points, redraw. Card is “face up”, is the other side of the double face card. Point for fukunaga. Since 1 possibility results in redraw, it basically means there is only 3 actual results, the joker 1/3 of the time and either side of the double faced card, 2/3rds of the time.

Even if she didn't think of the strategy herself, the fact that she lied convincingly to so many people is a huge step forward. I would've loved to see the 'coaching' scene from Akiyama! Then again, perhaps he simply told her "Just ask like your usual self, the honest, clueless idiot; They'll never suspect you have something up your sleeves!" But she may be taking a liking to deception and all, because in that last scene with Fukunaga, she seemed Kaguyaesque in her 'Oooh, but you said the odds were 50%, so there's nothing weird about me winning this one right?'

Yeah I was checking his MAL page, and that man is a real genius all his works involve complex maths and strategies after this anime I will definitely check out his others works(hopefully some of them also have anime adaptations) but still during the start of this season I decided to watch Liar game because I read about it a little on Reddit plus checked the MAL rating of the manga (around 8.24 which were surprisingly high for a manga from the early 2000s, people really heavily criticize old mangas and anime on MAL for some reason) and immediately decided that I will watch this show to the end even if it gets boring in the middle (which it hasn't for me) overall as of now an easy 8-8.5/10

It’s pretty incredible how these games upfront come off as just normal games with some extra steps, and you’d think you win like normally. Then Akiyama would step in and wag his finger at you and go “nah it’s a completely different game and this is how you win actually”. Then as the games go on and everyone knows the proper strategy he’d pull another one from his sleeve and go “sike, this is how you ACTUALLY actually win”.

I could probably breeze through round 1, depending on my opponent, and round 2 I might be able to come up with a similar strategy if I though a while about it (though probably wouldn’t be able to go through with it). In this round I’d be able to avoid being tricked by Fukanaga, but wouldn’t be able to come up with Akiyamas strategy. Next round and beyond (from what I remember) I’d be clueless. No idea how the author managed to both come up with interesting and complicated games AND solve them in realistic ways. It’s insane.

Well, yeah, after the fourth and fifth rounds with so little votes, I'm not surprised Nao is convinced she's going to lose. It really does seem absolutely hopeless. Oh yeah, I'm SURE Fukunaga would suggest a "fair" game where Nao has a chance to get Fukunaga's vote. Fukunaga clearly has time to kill and wouldn't mind giving Nao an opportunity to earn a lifeline. Even if Fukunaga is clearly in control of the situation and never broke a sweat ONCE during what was basically Nao's last hope. So to the surprise of probably no one, Nao lost and owes 30 million yen to Fukunaga. The THIRD time Nao, come on! Clearly Nao can't do anything without Akiyama, so thank goodness he swooped into save her and give her a chest to cry into and the solution to all her problems. To beat a conwowman, you need to BECOME a conwoman and beat them at their own game. I love how Fukunaga thinks she's got this in the bag but then Nao turns the table and is cheering for herself while acting...kind of adorably smug at the same time! Take that Fukunaga! But even if Nao got 10 votes for Fukunaga, that's not going to change how precarious her situation is right now. But while from all appearances she seems to be a doomed, hopeless, Heroine with no chance...that's just what she (and Akiyama) want you to think! Help her Kikuzawa, you're her only hope! She's willing to pay you and assure you of her loyalty in the next round if you give 10 of your votes to her! And I mean, this is Nao Kanzaki! She's so pure, sincere, honest, and empathetic! You can totally believe in her the way she believes in you. Which makes it all the more satisfying when Nao gets 10 VOTES FROM EVERY OTHER PLAYER AND TAKES THE BOARD! She conned everyone! All with that pleasant, unassuming, smile of hers! It's a whole new paradigm for Downsizing, and it's Nao's game to stand on top!

What an accomplishment! Nao managed to turn her gullibility in her favour. They thought she's so dumb she couldn't have possibly have a scheme, and only found out when it's all too late. She's also a young, fairly attractive woman so she could charm most of them, who're men. Had she been a bloke, I reckon she'd have a tougher time convincing them. When Nao told Kikuzawa about the other revival rounds and the loser-with-highest-votes rule, I thought that was a deus ex machina since we've got no hints of that beforehand. Then it turned out she completely pulled it out of her arse. While Akiyama was the chef behind the schemes, Nao's the one who served it to the customers. She did quite well in masking her true intentions, especially for someone who's pretty much an open book.

I was actually in the process of rage-quitting when the card game was proposed. I was coming here to go "no fucking person is this stupid, this has been a waste of a season, fuck this" When I saw someone here make a comment about how "wow she's willing to lie now???" So I stuck it out. I'm still not 100% sold on the show. The characters don't really have any personalities or chemistry and most of them are unlikeable. But hey, I'll give it a few more episodes.

It's not unrealistic unfortunately, people play three card monte or the cup game on the streets all the time. The infuriating thing is I know people like this and instead of trusting their friends and family that something is a scam they keep falling for dumb things. You would think if someone literally scammed Nao several times already she might think that they're going to try and cheat her again but nope. She not only could not do the math but she also did not learn from getting stung by the scorpion over and over again.

I don't think it's that unrealistic in the moment the rules are explained to you (putting myself in Nao's shoes here). The rule about "If the pulled out card is already face up, we re-do the round" is very sneaky, because it makes sense logically. We can't flip the card if it's already face up, so obviously we'd have to re-do it. Once you list out all the outcomes, it becomes clear that it's not a fair game. But in the moment, I think it's reasonable to get tricked and go along with it.

The problem with writing super genius characters is that it's very difficult to write someone way smarter than yourself. You can work backwards from the solution but even then it's way more difficult to create a natural process to arrive at that solution when it's not something you could've come up with yourself. So far the author seems to have largely side-stepped that problem by sticking to fairly straightforward schemes and just always putting Akiyama next to Nao. It's like showing how fast someone is by making them race a tree.

I agree that the Minority Rule twists weren't easy to sus out. I roughly followed the Fukunaga plan. The money thing in the beginning was harder, too. I just arrived at "trick the guy to give you money." I thought it was going to be pretending to be a home security company after the harassment started. I have heard that the later parts of the series get intense, so I'm keeping an optimistic eye towards it.

Sorry, your comment has been removed. This belongs in the Source Material Corner at the top of this thread. In discussion threads for currently airing anime, discussions about source material, spin-offs, author comments and unadapted content must be posted there. Any comparison to the source material no matter how minor belongs there. Your comment was NOT removed for spoilers; it was removed for discussion of the source material outside of the Source Material Corner . Questions? Reply to this message, send a modmail , or leave a comment in the meta thread . Don't know the rules? Read them here .

NOW things are getting spicy. With all the votes in her hand and EVERYONE's votes being absolutely locked in Nao now holds the ABSOLUTE RIGHT to decide who loses. So unless i am assuming things wrong she can just go to EVERY single person except Fukunaga and say to them ''erase my 70 mil debt to you or otherwise i will make you lose and you will be +100 mil in debt'' and have them do it and then after doing it with everyone she will just use her remaining votes and extra votes in a manner where she will still be in the lead but will give the others just enough so Fukunaga alone will lose. EASY

Maybe i am stupid but i don't think she can make all 8 lose without baiting multiple of them to get some votes from her first. Here is why. She has 5 votes to distribute. There are 3 people with 40 votes, rest 41. For EVERYONE except herself to lose she needs to first give 3 votes to the 40 votes so they will be equalized with the rest. But that means she still has 2 votes that she has to give to someone and that someone would not lose. So unless she baits 6 people to get 1 vote from her so she can give the other 2 her remaining 2 votes one each or bait 7 to get 2 votes from her so she can give 2 to the remaining one, one person has to win alongside her but that WON'T do because even if 7 whole people loses it reduces her winnings to 350 so she ends up 350 million in debt (unless she teams up with the said fellow winner to have them erase her debt to them and have them give her 250 million of their earning so Nao would only have 600 million debt and 600 million to pay it while the fellow person gets +100 million, or in another scenario +100 million for Nao if she gets the person to not only erase the debt but give all 350 million of their earnings to her, there are a lot of different ways to go about it) So i am not saying she cannot bait people to buy votes from her that way but she cannot do that just by deciding so, she either has to bait 6 or 7 people to buy exact amount of votes from her and not get any votes from ANYONE else at all or she has to team up with one specific person and have them erase her debt and get a huge amount of their winnings to pay for the penalty. But in ALL of these cases the moment someone else bites the bullet a becomes the sole loser all of it goes down the drain so it is a risky plan and probably not worth doing. Plus as incredible as that sounds i doubt it fits Nao's character to send all 8 people with debt when only Fukunaga is the actual snake and the rest is just afraid of losing. I think it is more fitting to make only Fukunaga lose since Fukunaga just cannot be trusted at this point and just make the remaining people invalidate her debt so she advances to the next round with no more debt while the rest except Fukunaga at least gets 7.5 million to ease their debt a bit

Well I've read the manga, so I know what exactly Nao will do. But get this, Nao doesn't even have to try getting those extra money. The fact is that, by making everyone loses, she'll make money and everyone else will shoulder at least 100m debt for real. This is the most surefire and effortless way to win. And yes, technically she can increase her winnings more by selling inadequate votes from them. Everyone else don't have a choice. They have to plead Nao for everything, and Nao doesn't even have any incentive to help them. On the contrary, she can swindle them even deeper, like your theory. So let the week of theory-crafting begin!

Don't spoil me but what i pointed out is literally that she cannot make EVERYONE else lose just like that. She needs to make more moves to able to do it and even then it can be countered She has 5 votes that she needs to distribute. With 3 40 vote people 3 of that goes to make them equal to 41 with the rest. But that leaves 2 vote she has to give to someone else so unless she either teams up with the person she is giving those votes to and have them both erase her debt to them and give her at least 250 million of their total earning of 350 million each after they both win, or tricking either 6 people to buy exactly 1 vote each or 7 people to buy 2 vote each and then distributing her remaining 2 votes to the two/one people/person that she did not give votes to she CANNOT break even as not everyone would lose. And in EVERY single one of these strategies there is a huge hole which is that if ANYONE realizes that is her plan they can simply decide on a single person to lose by convincing them that if they are all gonna lose might as well one person alone should lose and they will give money to this person to compensate since it is better for EVERY SINGLE people involved that way rather than everyone being 100 million in dept, and in such a case then that whole plan falls apart and Nao ends up in EXTREME debt. It is too risky. Which is why i proposed that the logical move is just to have everyone erase her debt and making Fukunaga lose, it CANNOT be countered since no one has any reason to refuse.

all of them has 100m debt from previous round. Combined with this round, there's no way 8 of them can make an alliance of "don't buy anything from Nao" and "make 1 of them lose but we pay everything to them". Quickest way for them to be safe is to buy Nao's last 2 votes for extraordinary price. Who's gonna guarantee that none of them will offer everything they have, including their winnings from this round, for that precious 2 votes? And they only have 1 hour to decide: get an additional 100m debt, postpone the debt by paying everything for Nao's 2 votes, form an alliance, etc etc? Remind you we both spend too many minutes for this game theory, while everyone in the story has only 1 hour to decide. This is high pressure situation for everyone. In most realistic scenarios, buyers will come to Nao and she will definitely be in green.

''there's no way 8 of them can make an alliance of "don't buy anything from Nao" and "make 1 of them lose but we pay everything to them'' i only said this as a countermeasure to your claim of Nao can make EVERY single one of them lose at the same which i retorted that she cannot do it all by herself, she needs to either make alliance with one person or sell the exact same amount of votes to nearly all the rest and in all of these cases any sort of alliance or any other vote exchange that occurs independently from Nao completely shatters this plan as the loser count drops all the way to 1 and Nao is left with extreme dept. So i said it is safer to just buy them all off and make Fukunaga lose

Sorry, your comment has been removed. Your comment contains spoilers for unadapted content outside of the Source Material Corner. Spoilers for the show must be placed in the source material corner and must be properly tagged . The spoiler syntax is: [Spoiler source] >!Spoiler goes here! This comes with a minimum 8 Day suspension . Questions? Reply to this message, send a modmail , or leave a comment in the meta thread . Don't know the rules? Read them here .

But I don't understand something. Unless I missed something important, shouldn't Nao's 1st 70M check only be valid? Shouldn't the rest of the contracts be voided? The rule is that you need to follow all contracts (or hit the 100m penalty); It doesn't mean you have to make valid contracts. I'm pretty sure she could sign a contract about giving someone 1 trillion $. Only, she would not be able to fulfill it, and thus would take the penalty. She WILL need to pay fulfill all these contracts (which, as is, is impossible), but now that she's in the lead, she can make new contracts; What I think she'll be doing, is threaten them all with a loss (by fueling votes into everyone EXCEPT them)... And the only way out would be for them to sign a contract to make sure they get some votes, in exchange of giving back that 70m. Or I suppose they could rely on chance (she can only make 1 of them lose) but would they take the risk? 7 players (excluding Fukunaga) so they'd have 1/7 chance of losing big. Might be in their best interest to just bite the bullet and give back the 70m!

It said in the contract that they are not allowed to speak to anyone else about the details of the 70 mil deal. If that didn't exist, the natural solution would just be for everyone to wait until the next vote and Nao would have to pay the 100 mil penalty for all the M-Tickets. So my thinking is, now they can't collude with eachother or ask others for details on their deals. They can only assume that Nao made similar deals with everyone but they don't know that. I think the uncertainty will force them to make new deals with Nao. Maybe they will all start lashing out and have to pay the 100 mil penalty for breaking the contract lol. That would clear the 70 mil that Nao owes each of them with 30 mil from each player to spare. I don't know if the votes they gave her would be returned if she fails to pay them. My personal assumption is that they would.

Once again Nao out here with the big brain move to play a game of chance against Fukunaga, a proven cheat and a fucking snake. Friggin Einstein really thought it was gonna be a fair game too. Unbelievable. Thankfully, Akiyama showed up just in time to bail her ass out. Again. She really can’t do shit without him. Because of him, Nao’s not only got one over Fukunaga but she’s got everyone’s nuts in a vice too. As a wise man once said, “well well well, how the turntables.” lol

Once again Nao out here with the big brain move to play a game of chance against Fukunaga, a proven cheat and a fucking snake. Friggin Einstein really thought it was gonna be a fair game too Akiyama needs to either Spend 5 years teaching her game theory, possible ways to scam people, calculate probability/statistics and common tricks you can stumble upon, etc.. Or tell her "The next time someone offers you a deal and I'm not here, SAY NO!"

As akiyama mentioned the odds of Nao winning is like 6%. fukunaga had a 94% chance of winning so the odds are overwhelmingly in their favor. fukunaga doesnt need to perform any other tricks unless Nao was extremely lucky. even then fukunaga could challenge Nao again to gain more money or the votes back. Nao is gullilbe enough to fall for it. especially since she believed it was a 50/50 chance contest.

It's probability aka maths. There're 4 outcomes, Joker up, joker down, the double-backed card twice right? and Nao only wins 1/4 of the time (Joker down), if joker is up it's a draw and the otehr two times it's a win For Fukunaga (2/4). So her (Fukunaga) odds of winning in a single round were 2:1. Since it works multiplicatively for all 10 rounds it gave her about 94% chance of winning 10 rounds in total. I've not actually confirmed the maths on this though but it does make sense.

The trick is that when Fukunaga says "when you flip the card, it's 50/50, it'll either be the Joker or the other side of the double face" she is telling the truth, it's just it's very easy to lie with statistics. Remember, she says if you draw the face-up Joker, it's hardly fair, so they'll just do it again. This means you only move to the flipping part of the game if you draw a back-face. There are three back-faces in the game. One for the joker, and two for the other card! There's a 1/4th chance of drawing the Joker face-up and redoing it. There's a 3/4th chance of drawing a back-face card and moving to results. Of that 3/4ths, it's twice as likely to be the double-backed card! It literally has twice as many back-faces. So when you flip the card, it will "either be the back face or the Joker", but it won't be 50/50 odds. I think this is the start of Nao not being completely stupid. Yes, she trusts Fukunaga again, but she will literally lose if she doesn't gamble. And if even casual viewers of the anime don't understand how Fukunaga rigged the card game, then who can blame Nao for not realizing it in the heat of the moment? At last: Liar Game's game theory has gotten complicated enough that Nao's befuddlement is only natural.

[Because I can't resist, imagine me doing my best Akiyama] Hmm, for example, have you heard of card counting? Do you know why blackjack players do it? (Um... it's supposed to give them an advantage, right?) Yup, a full 1% advantage. (Ehhh! Only 1%?!) Haha, yeah, that's right. The exact figure depends on the source you check, but it really is only that small. It's all you need... Normally, people say of Western Gambling, "the House always wins" - it's because the Casino itself normally has a 1% advantage over the players. Some gamblers win big, but most people lose more than they gain, so the casino makes a profit. (Why is a 1% difference so big?) It's because the card counters, or the Casino, are playing all night. Take a small advantage and multiply it over many games, and it adds up. Fukunaga's 2/3rds edge is actually pretty massive, and playing it first to 10 wins... you only end up with a 6% chance to win.

It's worth noting in hindsight, the true slipup for Fukunaga was making Nao aware (although I imagine Akiyama would've probably sussed that out anyways) that players could trade votes they already "own" using the M-Tickets, not just their future votes. The entire premise Fukunaga was presenting Nao with to convince her it was *impossible* for her to win relied on the idea you could only earn votes from the voting phases. As soon as she offers Nao 30 votes from her stock, that illusion is totally shattered. Ofc Nao didn't notice at first... but hey, I didn't immediately either because I can be a bit slow on the uptake lol. As soon as Nao relayed that deal to Akiyama, I'd imagine the solution to her situation woulda been extremely obvious to him tho.

THE QUESTION WE'VE ALL BEEN ASKING ALL SEASON LONG! Is that a dare? I'm pretty sure she can! Oh damn, this COMPLETELY changes the dynamics of the game! If the votes are 'locked' on a person, then Nao would be on the clock (every round makes her win less and less likely even if she (Akiyama) comes up with a strategy))... But if you can trade votes, it's a lot more chaotic/uncertain! You'll probably be at minus 50 votes if you try, given your track record. Seriously, I think Akiyama should tell her "Whatever someone offers you, don't even try to assess the offer, just say no!". Yeah, right! I think I did a few similar logical riddles (with cards, balls, etc..) so this one was easy to figure out! Of course it's not 50-50, it's 1/3 because 2 out of the 3 possible options are 'bad'. And if it was 1/3 to win it wouldn't be SO bad, but it's 1/3 per draw, which means the odds of winning over a 10 draw game is 7.6% (if my math is right)... I guess my math isn't right hah. (Or their math isn't right)! Ah well, same ballpark! Imagine if she lost on the first round by pure chance hah. 6% isn't nothing! That felt very Kaguyaesque, the way she acted and all! Ah, marking cards! I thought she would try a card trick like pulling both at once or something! 'Not losing is not enough', because she would not be able to pay everyone... But with these votes she can DECIDE who loses, by shipping votes to everyone else... So I'm guessing a new contract is on the way, and she'll have people agree to break their previous contract (or give her back the money, same thing) in exchange of her NOT making them lose (Making Fukunaga lose instead)!

I don't know how to feel about Nao going from someone so hopelessly honest to being able to convincingly lie to every single other player. Mind you these are all players who passed the first test (presumably) on their own. The stupidly honest Nao lying so naturally so suddenly when we havent seen even a tiniest bit of attempt for it feels jarring. Her execution regarding lying is wayy too good for someone who might actually have been lying for the first time ever in her life. It feels like too much of a stretch especially given the absolute blunder she did last episode. I was already skeptical about this last week . I feel like writing wise the progression could have been handled much more naturally. Personally I would've liked to see her actually attempting (and failing), getting a bit more accustomed to it each time, at lying until Akiyama comes and them gives her the ultimate assist.

The thing is, thus far Nao has only tried to win each round by legitimate means. If I recall correctly she hasn't even attempted to lie to any players before, so we have no gauge on how good or bad she is at lying because she simply hasn't done it. Akiyama filled her in on a plan that hinged on both lying/being sneaky and playing up her kind/honest nature to put the marks at ease. All she had to do was be herself and follow Akiyama's instructions. It would be hard to screw that up.

Like for example, last episode she could've atleast like asked to see fukunaga ticket before submitting and then have fukunaga deceive her somehow. Or she could've shown a bit more healthy skepticism regarding the Card game today, its not like I expect her to figure out the trick. But I would've liked to see a Nao that was atleast trying to change herself instead of just getting a handout from Akiyama then suddenly becoming a competent liar. But my personal gripes with the writing aside, atleast I feel like the show is gonna get much less frustrating now.

I don't think she was ever bad at lying, she just chose not to do it. Now with no other way out, she made the choice to lie, and she really didn't need to act all that much. Akiyama already did all the BTS work for their plan. She just had to act like she normally does because in this case, she had a huge advantage in that every player in the game knew how stupidly honest and dumb she can be. So it was very easy for them to fall for it. There was also a lot of truth mixed in to what she was saying. Her complementing the players is also just in her nature to do. This really isn't that unreasonable in my opinion.

Finally a 15 minute span went by where I didn't want Nao to get hit by a bus. That's progress. She still had to be bailed out by Akiyama, obviously, but at least she was at least useful to the plan this time instead of just being told to sit in the corner while the adults play. I was really hoping this would finally be the arc where she actually does something on her own, guess that was expecting too much though. I can't help but wonder how much better the show would be if Akiyama was just the protagonist instead and Nao didn't exist, I know that would make it more similar to Kaiji but I feel like it would be a lot more interesting and a lot less frustrating.

It might just be me but it seems like now we're seeing Nao start to actually take to Akiyama's lessens and slowly learn to become as good at conning people as he is. I feel like she's going to be a much different player after this than she was at the start, especially once she makes it to the third round. I mean, she might not be at a point where she can take independent action from Akiyama, but I think she's progressing.

If the show is just Akiyama, I don't think it would work. The reason is because he is too genius that he outmatched everybody if they played normally in the early rounds, and there will be no tension. Nao's role in these early rounds act as handicap to make the game harder for Akiyama, which make the game much more interesting. Maybe in later rounds if there is someone on Akiyama's level, then he can be the main pov. But otherwise, Nao becoming the pov of the viewers make sense. Also, it won't be like Kaiji, since Kaiji is not as consistently genius as Akiyama (which is intentional by the author). Kaiji is more like a mix of Akiyama and Nao imo.

Fuck Fukunaga. But at the same time, shame on Nao for trusting that trickster bitch time and time again. At least Nao finally stuck it to her...and everyone else this time. I'm not sure how owing ever player 70 mil yen works in Nao's favor though... I forget how much she stands to win this time. Glad Akiyama is back on the scene. At least he has a good head on his broad shoulders. Nao was really pissing me off the last 9 episodes. She can't formulate any kind of strategy without Akiyama, yet keeps trying to do it without him anyway. Then when shit hits the fan, she just runs and cries as if that's going to solve anything. She finally started to show some promise at the end of this episode, thank goodness. I hope this trend continues!

She said it herself! But I'm impressed now. She has the same doe eyed, woe is me acting skills she used to deal with all the other men there. With Akiyama's tutelage, she is now able to convincingly do the dirty work, even despite the initial hesitation that goes against every fiber of her personality. Let us embrace how far she has come and hopefully how much further she will go moving forward! Also, wanted to add that the flipping of the last Joker giving Nao the win gave me Season 0 of the Yu-Gi-Oh! King of Games vibes.

As soon as I heard the rules of the card game, I could see the catch, that because drawing the Joker face up is a do-over, there's a 2/3 chance that the face down card would be the misprint and only a 1/3 chance it would be the Joker. Definitely favors Fukunaga over the long run, unless Nao gets incredibly lucky. Come on, Nao, this isn't even a matter of honesty or trickery, it's a matter of pure probability math! Oh good, Akiyama explained it to Nao and she Got It before he had to give her all the details. And Nao finally learned how to lie! Even if the entire plan was still Akiyama's. Okay, Nao really learned how to lie! I kinda wish she'd come up with a plan on her own, but that was pretty cold how she sounded so innocent and nonchalant about telling them that she got 10 votes from each of them.

Sorry, your comment has been removed. Your comment contains spoilers for unadapted content outside of the Source Material Corner. Spoilers for the show must be placed in the source material corner and must be properly tagged . The spoiler syntax is: [Spoiler source] >!Spoiler goes here! This comes with a minimum 8 Day suspension . Questions? Reply to this message, send a modmail , or leave a comment in the meta thread . Don't know the rules? Read them here .

Enjoyed this episode. I read the manga quite a while ago so I don’t remember a lot of details at all so seeing it again in animated from is quite nice. I think it helps a lot in explaining Nao’s apparent sudden ability to lie is that a lot of what she said is “true” like Fukunaga being ahead and having taken 30m from her earlier and that she would want to help other people. And that part about their votes being sellable and they were still safe makes sense. Combined with her stupid honesty that people knew and I think it didn’t take that much convincing for people to believe her.

It was definitely satisfying to see nao do something,now for the game I did wonder last time if they can switch votes or not,guess they can And also fukunaga disappointed me when he didn't check the card inside the bag,like he was suspicious of the joker but not the other card? really expected more from him,that strategy was also such a gamble on akiyama's part too cause I feel like most people would definitely check both cards And the others just continue to forget that this is called "liar game" there dumbasses trusted that nao can move to round 3 with 20 votes?nobody bothered confirming with officials whether that is possible or not?(that could be possible but still they just blindly trusted her) also tho even if nao got all their votes, isn't she in huge debt now?she must have promised quite a lot of money to everyone if not the same amount as she did to blondie(70m) How is she even gonna pay lol

for the bathroom scene where Nao was making deals, it didn't really matter to them whether Nao was telling the truth about the liar game's revival round rule, as long as she was offering 70 million yen for 10 votes enshrined with the M ticket contract (which was all upside for them, while sacrificing nothing since Nao would in all likelihood remain in last place with only one round left). All the lie of the Liar Game rule did was give them a believable story of why Nao would offer the contract. Why else would she be offering so much free money? I don't think they cared once the contract was formed. But yes, Nao has to figure out a way to pay out and fulfill her end of the bargain. She's still in a situation.

have akiyama get a temp loan for her outside of it to cover then profit? I am sure akiyama has got that covered if not, why would he stipulate that in the contract. Who knows how his big brain works. forgot about that. a lot of details to keep track of for this one. Or maybe write another m ticket overriding that contract saying if you agree to forgo any previous debts with this m ticket owner in exchange for a tie or something.

There is one thing I find unrealistic about this and that is how did Nao manage to talk to everybody and convince them? How come at least 2 dudes were not hanging out together during the game and Nao coming and offering a deal to one and then having to call on the other would raise suspicions, right? I just find things too convenient. Yes the contract said the participants should not talk about the deal to someone else, but as I said, Nao calling every single participant to the bathroom would raise suspicions.

Might be me overestimating myself but I feel like yeah,my first instinct when they played the game again was just that u could mark the card with something (which is not that hard to figure out we have seen it happen in many card games) so I would try to look at both cards to see if nao is cheating or not But ig bcs akiyama is aware of how fukunaga as a person is and how he will he react,he went through with this,after all bro was a psychology student,he definitely has a good read on fukunaga

You'd think people would check both cards, but at that point in a high stress situation, the concept of that card being marked slips people's minds. Because the joker keeps coming up when it shouldn't, the actual marked card fades into the background because the brain hyper focuses on the untouched joker. (Also, it's taking advantage of the blind spot that games of this sort usually use more than one card, in which case marking a card other than the one you want to draw doesn't do anything.)

I think I figured out Nao's, or rather, Akiyama's plan for the last round. She got enough points that she not only has enough to survive the game, she has enough to guarantee that anyone she chooses will lose. The rest of the players' normal votes are guaranteed by contract for the last round, and no one has any spares to give to each other if they themselves want to survive. All she would have to do is give away her spare points so that the player who doesn't give her 70mil is in the minority. She wouldn't actually have to do this of course, because the mere threat should be enough to make the rest of the players comply. The key is in the phrasing of the clause of payment. It specifies that the 70mil is to be paid out at any time in the last round. So, that gives her leeway to extort 70mil out of each player, then pay each of them back with their own money, and then set up the votes so Player X has the least. This plan could backfire if all of the other players collude and decide to stand firm, in which case Nao would be left paying out 70mil to each of them since she can't force all of them to lose. The remaining 8 players could agree that whoever falls victim to Nao's extortion should she choose to pull the trigger would receive 5 mil from each of the other 7, leaving the person who drops out at +5, Player X at +30, each of the 7 at +65, and Nao at -590. I wonder what plan they have to counter this strategy. Maybe just appealing to each of them that Player X is the original bad guy who they all wanted out? Player X is also the scariest player among them considering she managed to completely take control of the game in the first round, so maybe via game theory the other players would want to get Player X out regardless of any potential financial benefit to them?

When I started watching this anime I wondered if I had seen part of the manga, cuz in my memory only has the scene of losing on the cards and marked the double sided card, and I have no memory of what happened before, then this episode I saw the card scene. Plus the anime doesn't seem to have enough funds, near the end of this episode when Nao was shown with the background of votes, her eyes were drawn too wide apart.

Nope because everyone has 41 votes. The moment someone sells a single vote they are now in 40 votes thus is the confirmed loser so no one else would have any reason to buy anymore at that point, so for everyone else other than Noa selling of one vote has to be done in secret but after the shit Nao just pulled no heckin way people will ever risk buying/selling votes without making sure what other deals are active otherwise it could just be revealed that everyone else have bought two votes each or something and they would still lose. ONLY Nao can sell votes without risking losing or the rest of the people not needing to buy anymore because she has simply too much extra votes Edit: I noticed that some people have 40 votes still so there is that but it doesn't matter in my opinion. 41 vote people won't bother buying yet and the maximum amount of people 41 vote can sell to is 2, after that they would be in losing position so even the remaining 40 votes won't buy anymore

''But they could just sell promise to buy votes after someone else buys votes'' i don't quite understand what you mean by that, please do explain in detail. ''se is trying to do next episode'' is it though ? In my theory she can just go to everyone except Fukunaga and say ''write me a ticket that declares you forfeit my debt to you or i will make one of you lose, wanna try your chances'' or can go them 1on1 to threaten them with losing if they do not write that ticket, in either case NONE of them have any reason to deny and potentially lose and go into a greater debt and since they would know Fukunaga would lose if they do which they have no reason to prevent since they have a bone to pick with Fukunaga too so it is a good no risk deal to accept. As a result Fukunaga would lose and Nao would get rid of all her debts If i were to think of a counter measure all of them can give like 15 mil each to one person for them to purposefully lose or something but is it even required ? Cause in the thing that i said the only thing they would forfeit would be their 70 mill from Nao that they are NOT getting anyway since Nao cannot pay it back. Plus the scenario i said requires everyone to have a GREATER DEBT then they started on cause with having to pay back the initial 100 mil and already having paid 5 mil to Fukunaga they can only pay 7.5 mill EACH before getting into greater dept than they started on, there are 9 players, so there can be 6 players not counting Nao, a willing loser that will be paid to lose and Fukunaga so even if all the remaining 6 give their 7.5 to the chosen loser and then Fukunaga gives her full 12.5 and the 35 she gained it is 92.5, they do not have money to pay someone else to be a loser without increasing their own debt, they can increase their debt 1-2 mil but why bother at that point ? They can just forfeit Nao's debt to them, it is easier and still leaves them with a 7.5 mil gained on top of Fukunaga losing which they would not be against to