Did Kaiji Escape?

Spoilers for the manga of Kaiji, up to the most very recent chapter, which is chapter 312 of the Kaiji part 6.

As of now Teiai have Kaiji cornered. He is trapped in his mums apartment complex, watched at all exits, with no possible way of escape. However something that I, and a couple of the commentators on mangadex noticed (I don’t comment by the way, just read the comments) was a way that Kaiji could have escaped and I’m going to look at that idea in detail now.

People think that the man on the left in the bikers helmet could be kaiji. So let’s assess the information.

Teiai have a list of all the residents that they think live in Kaiji’s mum’s apartment complex. This has been built over 9 days of constant surveillance. So in order to escape without Teiai noticing he needs to disguise himself, and this is the only possibility.

So let’s see what happens when this man in a helmet leaves.

1st wide shot

He walks across the road to the bike shed.

2nd wide shot

Yet conveniently at the same time, a person dressed in the same disguise kaiji wore exits from that apartment complex, to cause a distraction so that they can’t check that Kaiji is underneath that mask.

It can be seen on the right that the man is getting his bike ready to leave.

But this isn’t Kaiji, it’s someone else, and they test that and check. But hold on, there was no one who looked like this EVER seen in the 9 days of observation, surely it’s not a coincidence that someone is wearing this outfit at the same time as Kaiji? It also happens at just the right time for Kaiji to escape.

The thing is, this person comes out of the same block that Kaiji comes out of, you can look at the wide shot to see that this person isn’t walking across the path. So since this person isn’t recognised it’s pretty safe to assume that he has traded places with Kaiji.

And this is the thing that seals it for me, the definitive proof that Kaiji has swapped places with this person. It is virtually the same clothes! But look, at the bags, the bags are different.

However if you look at the picture here

The biker has the same bag as Kaiji here! Wait it’s not actually that similar, but it’s close enough that it doesn’t discount the theory completely.

Then also in the picture of this man that Teiai has he wears his bag on the other side, so at the very least theirs a difference.

Then after all of this we see…

3rd wide shot

The bike is already on it’s way without being checked.

At the very least the biker should have been checked, but this gives me a very strong impression that Kaiji got away with it.

Fukumoto pays such attention to detail here with the continuity, with the only thing at question being whether or not the bike would actually fast enough to escape the first wide shot by the time the second wide shot takes place.

So I’m prepared to say, after looking at all this information, that Kaiji did indeed escape. Or Fukumoto’s pulling some serious BS and messing with us.