At any point in history, has a man ever been more wrong than in my recent review of Trillion Game's manga? I rated it four out of five and remarked, “I love it.” I highly anticipated the anime version and quite enjoyed the first few episodes. The problem is, soon after, I grew to despise the main character, Haru, and his “most selfish man in the world” schtick. By episode thirteen, we're only halfway through the series, and it could be that writer Riichirō Inagaki (Dr. Stone) is playing a subversive long game but I worry that the plan is to play this ridiculous monetary acquisition farce completely straight.

Trillion Game is an absurd rags-to-riches story where the company's success hinges on Haru's unpredictable and wild swings for the fences, as he makes seemingly insane decisions that lack any logical sense. As the story progresses, these gambles become increasingly outlandish and strain on all storytelling credulity. Our main viewpoint character, Gaku, narrates his story from some point in the future when he's an already successful businessman, looking fondly back on his time with Haru. Gaku's not privy to Haru's mercurial plans, so we get little insight into what makes him tick. That makes him more of a plot device than a character. He's got that in common with Dr. Stone's similarly irritating Senku.

Haru's plans so far have included setting up a fake AI website to sell bespoke flower bouquets, defrauding investors to cough up cash for a non-existent mobile game made by a fictional game designer, and somehow engineering a hostile takeover of a media company using little but lies and manipulation. He's not a good guy, and his sole motivation is material wealth pursuit, regardless of who he steps on during his ascent. In that regard, he's presumably just like every other sociopathic CEO who climbed the corporate ladder, leaving little but desolation in their wake.

Look, I'm a fairly stereotypical Scottish socialist who works in the state-funded National Health Service. A deep mistrust, bordering on visceral disgust, towards obscenely rich capitalist businessmen has been drummed into me ever since my mother fed me Irn Bru in my baby bottle. Haru is, what we not-so-affectionately call such folks in Scotland, a “scunner.” It's my honest belief that billionaires are a moral atrocity, their very existence a blight on humanity. No human being deserves to control such vast quantities of cash at the expense of their fellow man. The higher a man's bank balance, the sicker, the more putrescent their soul. And Haru wants to be a trillionaire. What possible good could that do anyone? Does he want to use that cash to improve the world? Fix poverty? Cure hunger? No, he thinks it would be cool to be the one to hoard that many liquid assets first. I can't empathize with such a monster.

In our modern world, billionaires distort society to become richer at the expense of those without the means to better their existence. They build their vast capital on the sweat and tears of everyone below them, funneling value upwards away from workers in a disgusting pyramid of avarice and wage theft. Author Inagaki asks us to find entertainment in the story of a man who wants to be the most viciously successful corporate shark of them all. I say, “No thanks.”

With the most recent episode showing an apparent rift forming between Haru and Gaku, I have some hope that Inagaki might invert things in the second half. Still, the story hasn't hinted at any such deeper meaning. It's hard to say what the “Trillion Game” company even does, other than existing as an empty shell purely to further Haru's ambition. Hey – maybe it's a documentary, and this kind of nonsense is exactly how people get rich, via manipulation and dodgy finance.

Aside from the flimsy, unbelievable story held together by wildly improbable twists, Trillion Game isn't the best-looking show either. Manga artist Ryōichi Ikegami is legendary for his work on such incredibly influential manga as Crying Freeman and Sanctuary. Still, his weirdly semi-realistic style makes for a strange mix with Inagaki's unhinged storytelling. His character designs don't translate all that well to anime; everyone looks a bit off. I always found Ikegami's attempts at visual humor awkward, and that's the case here, writ large.

In terms of pure brainless entertainment, Trillion Game is certainly not boring, and viewers without deep-seated political and moral objections may find a lot to enjoy here, with the show's larger-than-life characters and unpredictable plotting. It doesn't feature the best animation, and the presentation is fairly bland, but it's far from the worst-looking show of the season. I intend to stick with Trillion Game partly out of curiosity to see if Inagaki pulls out the mother of all twists, making Haru a closet Marxist or something, but mainly because I'm obligated to finish it for review purposes. I'd honestly rather invest my time elsewhere.