Character of the Month of November: Yumeko Jabami

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen!  I’m back from my Thanksgiving vacation with turkey and a cold, but am ready to wrap up Novembflix with Character of the Month.  This time around, my choice was unique in that the show she’s from was good, but not one that I gushed over.  It seemed foolish of me not to consider her though, especially given how much praise I gave her when I first reviewed the show she was in.  Well, enough beating around the bush and let’s talk about this month’s Character of the Month of November: Yumeko Jabami from Kakegurui!

At Hyakkaou Private Academy, gambling is the name of the game.  However, the students take things to a whole new level.  Thanks to the current student council, a hierarchy is set in place that can make, break, or even predict how your life will be if you don’t know how to play the game (or just be lucky).  In some cases, students are pretty much stripped of their basic human rights and treated as servants, or “house pets” as they’re referred to in the series.  That all changes when Yumeko Jabami transfers to this hostile school and changes everything.  A compulisive gambler who loves the thrills of gambling in general, Yumeko challenges those who are daring enough to go against her.  In fact, Yumeko is probably crazier than anyone else in the school.  Still, it’s probably what it needs to shake things up in an already cruel world.

As I stated in my review on Kakegurui, Yumeko is definitely one of the best parts of the entire series.  She could care less about how the system at Hyakkaou works and simply wants to gamble.  All that matters to her is just playing the game.  You could put this chick through anything and she’ll take it with a crazed look on her face that’ll have anyone creeped out.  One of the best examples that I can think of is when Yumeko accumulates so much debt that she herself becomes a “house pet.”  When students come up to mock her and call her Mittens, she gets into character and starts acting like a cat.  This creeps the students out but certainly got my mouth to drop to see how far she goes.  In a way, Yumeko almost serves as this reflection of how messed up the entire school is.  And when people see this reflection, they’re freaked out, if not terrified by it.  And going back to what I said in my review two weeks back, Yumeko could really care less about Hyakkaou’s hierarchy in place.  All she wants to do is gamble.  She doesn’t care if she’s at the top or a house pet, as long as she can gamble, she’s happy as an erotic clam.  Think about the underlying message in that.  Sure, while I certainly don’t recommend that you gamble and am not saying that having a gambling addiction is a good thing, but you could take this attitude that Yumeko has and see at as a way of showing that you can be yourself in a corrupt world and even challenge the norms that are in place.  Again, this message is a bit warped in that Yumeko has a gambling addiction (seriously, honey, you need to see a shrink), but the good intentions of it are still there.  Sure, Yumeko maybe a bat-crap crazy gambler, but there’s certainly a lot we can learn from her.  So play on and play those cards right, Yumeko Jabami, cause you’re Hanime on Anime’s Character of the Month of November!

December won’t bring any special events, but please keep in mind that it will be short as I take two weeks off for the Christmas holiday as well as to pick Character of the Year, and maybe experiment with a few things on Hanime on Anime.  Still, stay tuned next week for your regularly scheduled review!

-Hanime on Anime