The South Korean survival drama Squid Game became an instant hit upon its September 2021 release on Netflix. Its stark depiction of the realities of being trapped in poverty and exploited by the rich has earned it a strong fan following.
Weighed down by insurmountable debt, protagonist Seong Gi-hun is invited to compete with hundreds of other impoverished people in a series of games. Losing means instant death, but winning will earn them the money they need to fix their lives. The show's battle royale premise and its themes of class conflict are shared by several popular anime.
Gyakkyou Burai Kaiji
In one of the best survival drama shows, Kaiji Itou is buried in debt. He is offered the chance to change his luck on board the Espoir cruise ship, where he will gamble for his life on games such as Rock, Paper, Scissors with other men who are (literally and figuratively) in the same boat. Soon, he is taking on the wealthy group for whose entertainment these events are arranged.
Gi-hun's debt problem is exacerbated by his attempts to get rich quick gambling on horse races, which backfire and leave him worse off than before. Likewise, Kaiji's affinity for gambling gets him into as much trouble as it solves: in the episode "The Future Is In Our Hands...", Kaiji reveals that he near-immediately lost the money he won playing pachinko...on more pachinko games.
Kakegurui
As explained by Ryouta Suzui in the episode "A Woman Named Yumeko Jabami," the students of Hyakkaou Private Academy are not judged by athletic or academic ability, but by how good they are at gambling. Being the children of the rich, this is the perfect training ground for them to not only learn how to handle money but to ruthlessly take advantage of others. Any student who falls into debt is branded a "house pet," utterly at the other students' mercy.
Gi-hun and several other players have sold their bodies away, to have their organs harvested if they cannot pay back their debts. If a "house pet" cannot pay back their debt, their lives are forfeit and will be run by the student council's plans, up to and including marrying and having children at their direction.
Btooom!
Though unreliable and struggling, it is clear from the start that Gi-hun is a kind man trying to do his best for the people he loves, especially his mother. Ryouta Sakamoto, however, loves nothing but the multiplayer online game Btooom!, which involves fighting with bombs and collecting chips. He is the top-ranked player in Japan with an ego to match, in the episode "START" screaming at his mother for wanting him to get a job.
When Ryouta is abducted and placed on a mysterious island with several other players, he must put his money where his mouth is if he wants to survive. The company behind the game, Tyrannos Japan, has created a real-life game of Btooom! where the bombs are live and collecting enough chips is the only way to escape.
Battle Game In 5 Seconds
While the players of Squid Game are familiar with their games, having played them as children, Akira Shiroyanagi has gameplay down to a science. Bored with the real world and preferring to focus on playing games, Akira is quite pleased to find himself abducted and forced to play in a survival game for the entertainment of its mysterious host, Mion.
He is similar to Cho Sang-woo, Gi-hun's old friend, in his intelligent and analytical approach to the game and his arrogant attitude towards other players. While he has not gone so far as to backstab his own allies like Sang-woo does, he considers himself above them and will happily manipulate them.
Death Parade
In Death Parade, the stakes are even higher than the usual deadly game, as befits one of the best dark anime. Since the players are already dead, it isn't their lives they must play for, but the fate of their souls. Based on their performance, Decim the Arbiter will decide whether to let them reincarnate into a new life or banish their souls to eternal nothingness.
Games such as darts, ten-pin bowling, and air hockey, are chosen by roulette. Different pairs of people who died at the same time are brought in to play. The episode "Death Seven Darts" features a married couple who died in a car crash, and whose gradually revealed actions in life determine their final destinations.
Future Diary
Speaking of higher-than-usual stakes, the players of Future Diary's survival game have been summoned by God himself to compete, as he is dying and must find a replacement. Armed with personalized Diaries (cell phones that predict the future), twelve candidates must fight to the death, and the last one standing will become the new God.
Like the Front Man and other guards, Deus ex Machina (as God is known here) is very serious about all players having a fair shot and refuses to interfere in the game, making his the least interesting character arc in Future Diary. His assistant Mur Mur has no qualms about favoring certain players to make the game more interesting, hiding her true malice behind a cheerful and innocent appearance, much like Squid Game's true host Oh Il-nam creates a false persona to befriend Gi-hun.
Kengan Ashura
Battle royales aren't the only kind of survival game. Gladiator games are a blood sport dating back centuries, and in the world of Kengan Ashura, they are how corporate deals are carried out and disputes are solved. Each CEO selects a fighter to represent them and lets them loose on each other in vicious one-on-one Kengan matches.
Ohma Tokita, a powerful martial artist who lives only to fight, allies with the Nogi Group. On their behalf, he is entered into the Kengan Association's Life-or-Death Tournament, in which the CEO behind the winning fighter gets to choose the association's next chairman. Tokita and several other combatants beat each other bloody in the arena for the benefit of their corporate handlers.
Danganronpa: The Animation
In this animated adaptation of the first game in the Danganronpa series, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Makoto Naegi arrives for his first day at Hope's Peak Academy excited, only to find himself locked in with fourteen other students and informed that if any of them want to escape, they must kill another student and get away with it.
The academy's headmaster has a lot in common with the host of Squid Game's survival game. Monokuma and Oh Il-nam both created their game because they find the idea of pushing people to their physical and mental limits to be quality entertainment. Both get directly involved in the games, Monokuma to torment the students further and Il-nam to have fun participating.
Tower of God
Based on the webcomic by Lee Jong Hui, Tower of God depicts the struggles of the many candidates eligible to enter the titular tower and climb it, seeking the power, riches, and glory that reaching the top will bring them. One candidate, a boy named Bam, is an uninvited Irregular. His only reason for braving the Tower is to reunite with his only friend Rachel, one of the great anime characters who is ruined by just one scene.
Like Squid Game's players, all challengers face the deadly tests of the Tower by choice. But many are pressed by dire circumstances that they believe climbing it will fix, such as Khun, who was estranged from his family, and Anaak, who wishes to avenge her murdered parents.
Darwin's Game
When high school student Kaname Sudou gets an invite from a friend to join a strange new mobile app called Darwin's Game, he thinks nothing of accepting. But he soon finds that it's more than just a game: its enemies hunt him in real life, his friend is already dead, and he must learn fast to avoid being killed himself.
Winning battles and events earns players points, which can be converted into cash, making successful players extremely rich. In the episode "Gemstone Mine," Kaname redeems the ten points he won in his very first battle for one million yen (about $8,700). As in Squid Game, if players don't initially have the stomach for killing, the lure of so much money convinces them to keep going.