Me brainded rite now but...
I finally finished Liar Game. I found all the episodes except the last (three-hour long) one on veoh or other before the subbers forbade everybody from sticking it in the normal channels. So, back alley ways, back alley ways...
Liar Game takes ordinary people (I must applaud the makers of the show for finding ordinary looking people to play the majority of the players. Really, only Matsuda Shota and Toda Erika, as the leads, were particularly pleasant to look at. They're gorgeous-- I wish they'd been paired off. :( There's also the creepy Liar Game killer woman who looks sexless and robotic. She does not count as normal... omg, I just checked her profile and she plays Elize in the Nodame Cantabile live action. Dang.) and sticks them in a sadistic game where they must trick each other out of money. Toda Erika plays Kanzaki Nao who is naively innocent about everything. Obviously, she shouldn't be in the game as circumstances would likely crush her under foot or suck out her soul. So she enlists a genius swindler named Akiyama Shinichi (Matsuda Shota) to help her out. Yeah, sometimes they pointlessly amp up the drama, and they enlisted some pretty psychotic people to laugh their frickin' heads off in that insane annoying way (I have not forgotten the konoko.) but the twists are generally good, and I'm about to read too deep into the ending.
I'm pretty sure they used game theory to come up with solutions, although I don't know that much about game theory really. (They use a psychologist as their consultant, which still works because game theory does have a lot of psychology in it.) Kanzaki Nao's speech about how to achieve universal happiness within a game that dredges up the most base survival instincts reminded me a bit of the prisoner dilemma, which I will now call up from the wiki. In sum, there are two prisoners who are interrogated separately and given two choices: they can (A) keep quiet or (B) betray the other. If they both choose (A), their sentence is 6 months. If they both pick (B), their sentence is 5 years. But if one prisoner chooses (A) and the other chooses (B) one of them will go to jail for 10 years and the other will go scot free. The dilemma is that the prisoners do not know what the other will choose. From an individual's perspective, (B) is better than (A) because (B) is the only one that has the chance of getting off scot free. But, as said above, if both choose (B), they both get 5 years to sit in jail and regret that they should've both picked (A). And that is how Kanzaki Nao promises happiness to the hapless people trapped in the game: let's all pick (A), which in her situation means gaining no money and losing no money. It involves a lot of trust, since Liar Game is played with a few more people than two. And the strategy isn't going to be very effective with a few people defecting.
It is, basically, the tight rope work of humanity at play. The show, not being economics insane like I am, framed it as a fight between doubting cynicism and trust and altruism. It reminds me sadly of the economic tenet, in which EVERYBODY acts out of their own self interest. That's why economics is lacking, though I suppose I should ease up since they're working on it. Or at least they should be.
I love the shot in the opening with Toda Erika in her red dress on the black couch, with Matsuda Shota looking like he has a bad temper sitting on the red couch. It has such a Little Red and the Big Bad Wolf feel. :)
Liar Game takes ordinary people (I must applaud the makers of the show for finding ordinary looking people to play the majority of the players. Really, only Matsuda Shota and Toda Erika, as the leads, were particularly pleasant to look at. They're gorgeous-- I wish they'd been paired off. :( There's also the creepy Liar Game killer woman who looks sexless and robotic. She does not count as normal... omg, I just checked her profile and she plays Elize in the Nodame Cantabile live action. Dang.) and sticks them in a sadistic game where they must trick each other out of money. Toda Erika plays Kanzaki Nao who is naively innocent about everything. Obviously, she shouldn't be in the game as circumstances would likely crush her under foot or suck out her soul. So she enlists a genius swindler named Akiyama Shinichi (Matsuda Shota) to help her out. Yeah, sometimes they pointlessly amp up the drama, and they enlisted some pretty psychotic people to laugh their frickin' heads off in that insane annoying way (I have not forgotten the konoko.) but the twists are generally good, and I'm about to read too deep into the ending.
I'm pretty sure they used game theory to come up with solutions, although I don't know that much about game theory really. (They use a psychologist as their consultant, which still works because game theory does have a lot of psychology in it.) Kanzaki Nao's speech about how to achieve universal happiness within a game that dredges up the most base survival instincts reminded me a bit of the prisoner dilemma, which I will now call up from the wiki. In sum, there are two prisoners who are interrogated separately and given two choices: they can (A) keep quiet or (B) betray the other. If they both choose (A), their sentence is 6 months. If they both pick (B), their sentence is 5 years. But if one prisoner chooses (A) and the other chooses (B) one of them will go to jail for 10 years and the other will go scot free. The dilemma is that the prisoners do not know what the other will choose. From an individual's perspective, (B) is better than (A) because (B) is the only one that has the chance of getting off scot free. But, as said above, if both choose (B), they both get 5 years to sit in jail and regret that they should've both picked (A). And that is how Kanzaki Nao promises happiness to the hapless people trapped in the game: let's all pick (A), which in her situation means gaining no money and losing no money. It involves a lot of trust, since Liar Game is played with a few more people than two. And the strategy isn't going to be very effective with a few people defecting.
It is, basically, the tight rope work of humanity at play. The show, not being economics insane like I am, framed it as a fight between doubting cynicism and trust and altruism. It reminds me sadly of the economic tenet, in which EVERYBODY acts out of their own self interest. That's why economics is lacking, though I suppose I should ease up since they're working on it. Or at least they should be.
I love the shot in the opening with Toda Erika in her red dress on the black couch, with Matsuda Shota looking like he has a bad temper sitting on the red couch. It has such a Little Red and the Big Bad Wolf feel. :)