Major spoilers for Hyperinflation from volume 2 onward, especially the strategic relationships among Luke, Rejat, and Gresham.
In Hyperinflation, labels such as “enemy” and “ally” become obsolete at remarkable speed.
Shueisha’s own description of volume 2 says that everyone on the slave ship is an enemy, yet Luke’s survival method is to show people the benefit of siding with him.[1]
By volume 5, the official copy says, in effect, yesterday’s friend may be today’s enemy and every usable card should be played.[2]
So factions are not the stable part of this story.
Objectives and incentives are.
The clashes around Luke, Rejat, and Gresham near chapter 10 are one of the first places where that design becomes obvious.
0. Around chapter 10, the real question stops being “Who do I defeat?” and becomes “What payoff structure do I create next?”
Volume 2 contains chapters 6 through 13, including chapter 10, inside the slave-ship sequence.[1]
What makes the section so good is that Luke is not only thinking about the immediate winner.
Rejat is connected to the Empire. Rejat is getting dangerously close to Luke’s secret. Luke begins to realize that Rejat has realized something.
At that point, morality labels no longer solve the problem.
Who helps me reach my objective now?
Who knows what?
Who knows that I know?
What happens if that knowledge becomes visible?
That is why even Gresham, an opponent a moment ago, can return to the board as a usable piece.
Yesterday’s fight matters less than the next alignment of incentives.
1. In this manga, “ally” is not a personality trait; it is a temporary equilibrium
Game theory studies strategic choices in which each player’s outcome depends partly on what others do. In repeated games, future interactions can change the incentives to cooperate or defect.[3]
Hyperinflation often feels like that.
Even if A and B are enemies,
benefit of cooperating now > benefit of eliminating B now
can produce an alliance.
Later, if
benefit of abandoning B > benefit of continued cooperation,
the alliance can disappear.
That does not necessarily mean the characterization changed. The board changed.
Shueisha’s volume 4 description calls the series a rapid counterfeit “tsume-shogi” of reading layer after layer of hidden intent, while volume 5 explicitly invokes yesterday’s friend becoming today’s enemy.[4][2]
The official marketing language is already very close to the structure readers experience.
2. Rejat updates the board while he is speaking — public performance and private calculation run in parallel
Rejat is interesting because he is not merely “smart.”
Even while speaking publicly, he is portrayed as collecting information, reading reactions, and restructuring the next plan.
A more conventional strategy story could separate these tasks:
- give the speech;
- go somewhere private;
- think about the operation.
Rejat seems to do them in parallel.
Surface: move the crowd.
Below that: update the information state.
Below that again: infer how others are currently modeling him.
The speech therefore becomes more than characterization.
It is an observation device, an influence device, and time used to construct the next move.
The frightening part is that the meeting in his head never adjourns.
3. The best battles are not about “knowing”; they are about “knowing that the other side knows”
Luke versus Rejat becomes more interesting when the battlefield moves from secrets to knowledge about knowledge.
For example:
- Rejat suspects Luke’s ability.
- Luke notices Rejat’s suspicion.
- Rejat must estimate whether Luke has noticed.
- Luke must decide what to reveal if revealing that awareness changes Rejat’s next move.
Now the hierarchy of beliefs can matter more than the physical banknotes.
Game theory uses models of incomplete information when players are uncertain about relevant features such as others’ information or incentives; epistemic game theory goes further into beliefs and higher-order beliefs.[5]
There is no need to pretend every manga scene is a formal theorem.
But the sensation of “reading behind the reading behind the reading” comes from exactly this kind of structure.
Having information is different from being believed to have it.
Hyperinflation repeatedly weaponizes that gap.
4. Gresham is untrustworthy — which is exactly why his predictability can be useful
Gresham is not someone a sensible person should trust morally.
Strategically, however, he can be strangely legible.
A large part of his decision process is visible:
Does this make money?
Does this lose money?
How much value can this person, object, or information create?
Gresham still has emotions and preferences; he is not a profit calculator with legs. But profit is an unusually visible axis.
That lets Luke think not:
“Gresham is a good man, so he will help me,”
but:
“I can construct a situation where helping me is better business for Gresham.”
That is a bizarre form of trust.
You do not trust the person. You trust the stability of the incentive.
The terrible merchant can become the easiest negotiating partner to model.
5. Rejat is harder precisely because he is rational — his objective function has more dimensions
Rejat is rational too.
But he is harder to model than Gresham.
Imperial duty. The nature of Luke’s power. Risk to the state. The opponent’s psychology. Information available right now. The long-term question of how Luke should be handled.
There are many variables.
So the contrast looks something like this:
Gresham: one enormous profit axis is relatively visible.
Rejat: several objectives are optimized at the same time.
This is why “Gresham is immoral, therefore Rejat is strategically safer” does not follow.
Moral labels and strategic predictability are different properties.
That separation gives Hyperinflation an unusually concrete feel.
6. Because the reader can see motives, reversals do not feel like retroactive cheating
One of the weakest tricks in a strategy story is:
“Actually, this character knew everything all along. We simply never showed you.”
Hyperinflation usually gives the reader meaningful access to what major players want.
Luke has a goal. Rejat has an imperial role. Gresham is powerfully pulled by profit.
The reader does not have perfect information. But the story gives enough material to ask, “What would this person want next?”
So when alliances reverse, the reaction is less:
“The author invented a new rule,”
and more:
“Yes, given those incentives, of course he moves there.”
And yet the exact move can still be surprising.
You see the objectives. You do not see all the information. Everyone is thinking. Everyone is also thinking about everyone else thinking.
The reader is dragged onto the board.
7. Repeated games, incomplete information, signaling — but the emotional reaction is still “You’re teaming up with HIM now?”
Extract the theory and the series sounds extremely technical:
repeated interaction, cooperation and defection, incomplete information, belief updating, signaling, temporary coalitions, incentive design.
But the actual reading experience is:
“You’re teaming up with that guy NOW?”
“You’re negotiating HERE?”
“Stop building the next operation while giving the speech!”
That is the trick.
The strategy can be sophisticated without constantly presenting itself as sophisticated.
Gresham changes direction when profit appears. Luke turns enemies into counterparties by offering terms. Rejat keeps reading the board while talking.
The theory is hard. The delivery is comedy.
Economics, espionage, bargaining, and psychological warfare are running at once, but the tempo is a gag manga.
That combination keeps the machinery light on its feet.
8. Conclusion — in Hyperinflation, do not trust the word “ally”; trust the current incentives
If you try to memorize a fixed faction chart for Hyperinflation, it breaks quickly.
There is a more stable set of questions:
What does each person want?
What do they fear?
What do they know?
What do they believe everyone else knows?
Once you track those, enemies becoming allies and allies becoming enemies become easier to understand.
Gresham is untrustworthy, but his profit motive is visible. Rejat is rational, but his objectives are layered. Luke reads both and repeatedly converts opponents into resources.
Shueisha’s volume 2 line about showing enemies the merit of siding with Luke is not merely a description of one early arc. It almost reads like the combat system for the entire series.[1]
Relationships move like prices.
Enemy and ally are not identities.
They are equilibria for the current turn.
And when the equilibrium breaks, the next negotiation begins.
References (6)
- Shueisha, Hyperinflation Vol. 2 shueisha.co.jp
- Shueisha, Hyperinflation Vol. 5 shueisha.co.jp
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Game Theory plato.stanford.edu
- Shueisha, Hyperinflation Vol. 4 shueisha.co.jp
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Epistemic Foundations of Game Theory plato.stanford.edu
- Shueisha, Hyperinflation Vol. 3 shueisha.co.jp
