Anime based on and supporting games are big business and big bets. It costs a lot more to invest in a game, market it and hope it takes off than it does to ‘just’ make an anime.
Success, though, the rewards of the anime promoting the game and the game taking off are incredible. Even a fraction of Pokemon’s success will secure your future.
High Cards doesn’t take that game. Yes, it’s a card battler of an anime, but it sticks with Poker and playing cards, and it stays closer to what people already likely have at home.
It may just be a coincidence, but I wonder how much of that risk versus reward is visible in High Card’s promotional poster. At the top are battlers with swords, money and success, and they look posh and elegant, even those covered in blood.
On the bottom, working hard while others live in luxury, someone wields a mop and not a sword.
The series is due out in 2023, although we don’t yet know where/if in the West it’ll go.
Kadokawa is involved, which is a sign that it could, and “High Card” often appears in English, and that’s another sign.
The publisher also has plenty to say about the show, noting;
After discovering that his orphanage was on the brink of closing due to financial stress, Finn, who was living freely on the streets, set out for a casino with the aim of making a fortune. However, nothing could have prepared Finn for the nightmare that was awaiting him. Once there, Finn encountered a car chase and bloody shootout caused by a man’s “lucky” card.
Finn will eventually learn what the shootout was about. The world order can be controlled by a set of 52 X-Playing cards with the power to bestow different superhuman powers and abilities to the ones that possess them. With these cards, people can access the hidden power of the “buddy” that can be found within themselves.
There is a secret group of players called High Card, who have been directly ordered by the king of Fourland to collect the cards that have been scattered throughout the kingdom, while moonlighting as employees of the luxury car maker Pinochle. Scouted to become the group’s fifth member, Finn soon joins the players on a dangerous mission to find these cards.
“All you need in life are manners, dignity, and the will to bet on your own life.”
However, Who’s Who, the rival car maker obsessed with defeating Pinochle, and the Klondikes, the infamous Mafia family, stand in the way of the gang.
A frenzied battle amongst these card obsessed players, fueled by justice, desire, and revenge, is about to begin!
Are you ready?
It’s Showdown!!
Via Anime News Network.
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