Upamanyu Biswas
Netflix’s ‘Bet’ follows Yumeko Kawamoto, a high school student with a talent for gambling who arrives at the prestigious St. Dominic’s Prep school to disrupt the hierarchical structure from within. Unbeknownst to the others, Yumeko is on a personal revenge mission to find answers to her parents’ murder. However, the mystery proves to be complicated when the protagonist discovers deep and dark secrets surrounding the school’s past. For instance, her parents were part of a hidden gambling club known as Kakegurui, where they came into contact with friends who went on to become influential people themselves. To that end, the school and its various halls and corridors become ground zero for the tense conflict driving the narrative and the masked truths refusing to come to light.
St. Dominic’s Prep is a Fictional School With a Murky Past
As ‘Bet’ is inspired by Homura Kawamoto’s ‘Kakegurui’ manga series, a large chunk of the narrative follows the storylines, characters, and events laid down in the source material. To that end, the St. Dominic’s Prep school can be seen as a stand-in for the fictional Hyakkaou Private Academy, the institute at the center of the manga. The show takes cues from Kawamoto’s work while also reimagining certain aspects of the narrative to fit more in line with an English-speaking audience. As such, even though many of the school’s inner dynamics are seemingly identical between the source material and the Netflix show, cultural aspects have been reframed to appeal to a broader audience. Therefore, it is more common to see Western and Eastern students in St. Dominic’s school, which is different from the primarily Japanese population in Hyakkaou.
Intriguingly, filming for the show takes place in Toronto, Ontario, specifically at the University of Toronto Scarborough campus. Thus, the production team utilized real-life destinations as a backdrop for the school at the center of everything. Additionally, the interior scenes may have been filmed in a studio environment, offering greater flexibility and versatility with filmmaking choices. For the most part, season 1 emphasizes St. Dominic’s massively, showcasing its different halls and corridors in a similar manner to how other prominent fictional schools have been depicted in popular films. One can see the connection between St. Dominic’s Prep and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from the ‘Harry Potter’ franchise, especially regarding secrets. However, the former is more about gambling rather than magic.
Kakegurui Club Expands the Lore and Scope of the Main Mystery
Like St. Dominic’s Prep, the Kakegurui Club is a fictional creation by Mangaka Homura Kawamoto. As per the show’s depiction, the club is a clandestine spot where influential student council members met in the past to conduct their gambling activities away from prying eyes. These individuals later became prominent members of society and board members of St. Dominic’s. Meanwhile, the manga portrays the Kakegurui Club as the Hyakkaou Private Academy student council itself. The club is used as the primary organization through which power is exerted on the masses to follow the long-lived tradition of gambling within the school and the competitive aspects built into it. Things like leaderboard rankings and house pet contracts are common between both the source material and the Netflix show.
The word “Kakegurui” means “compulsive gambler” or “gambling madness” in Japanese, an apt moniker for the organization. We learn in the series that St. Dominic’s has a ruthless streak of making students compete with one another in a highly stratified society where the elite are granted huge privileges while the bottom feeders suffer the most. To that end, the Kakegurui Club and its operation are vital to how things work out, even though its location remains a secret for much of the show’s narrative. Later, Yumeko discovers a huge conspiracy relating to the club and how it leads back to the murder of her parents. While she is busy finding the truth, she has to engage in numerous mind games and battles in the club’s headquarters to climb up the ranks, showcasing its importance in the narrative.
Read More: Do Riri and Mary End Up Together in Bet?
