Box office

During the opening weekend, Kaiji: Final Game ranked at second at the Japanese box office, earning ¥362 million ($3.29 million), and earned ¥616 million ($5.60 million) from January 10–13.^[10] The film stayed at second in its third weekend and earned an additional ¥198,153,400 ($1.81 million).^[11] The film dropped to fourth in its fourth weekend, and earned ¥120,022,950 ($1.10 million).^[12] The film dropped from eighth to tenth in its sixth weekend and earned ¥35,480,750 ($323,000).^[13] It was the eighth highest grossing film of 2020, earning ¥2.06 billion ($21 million) at the box office that year.^[14][15] It also grossed $14,608 in Vietnam.^[16]

Critical reception

Marcus Goh of Yahoo! Style gave the film a 3.5 out of 5 score. Goh commented that the film's start is strong, showing the dire straits that Kaiji has fallen into and considered it as a "mild political commentary on the labour market in Japan". He praised the first game showed in the film, the Tower of Babel, but stated that the rest of the games are "lacklustre in execution", and although he said that the variety of gambling challenges captures the spirit of the original manga series, the film imports some elements from the original work that "don't work so well with actual human actors". Goh concluded: "Kaiji: Final Game echoes the spirit of the manga and anime well by staying true to the elements that made it popular. It does hew a little too closely though, resulting in segments that look awkward when translated to a live-action movie. Nevertheless, fans will be pleased to see another Kaiji film on the big screen".^[17]

Tay Yek Keak of Today in his review of Kaiji: Final Game, considered it as "quite enjoyably fascinating and intellectually stimulating", due that in this third installment "the ambition has grown much bigger. National-size bigger, in fact." Keak mentioned that Fujiwara in his role as Kaiji looks exactly as he was in the first film, and that the only thing that shows that 11 years have passed since the first film is that the "main winner-takes-all game here is more sedentary and less energetic." Keak ultimately added that "it's protracted, it's filled with the outlandish clichés which Japanese flicks love to indulge in and it may seem like a juvenile plaything to the uninitiated. But I like the dark financial apocalypse proposed here which is quite grimly thrilling just to ponder on".^[18]