FEATURE: Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog: "Akagi"

 

What's “Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog”?

 

Picking a new anime to watch may not be as difficult as mastering the game of mahjong, but it can still prove tricky with so many titles to choose from. “Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog” is here to help. Each week we provide additional info and cultural context to help anime fans decide whether or not they'd like to take an unknown series for a test drive.

 

 

What's Akagi?

 

Akagi is a 2005 TV anime with direction by Yuzo Sato and animation by Madhouse. The series is based on Nobuyuki Fukumoto's gambling manga of the same name, which is serialized in Takeshobo's Kindai Mahjong magazine. Crunchyroll describes the series as follows:

 

 

Tokyo, 1958. A man seriously gambles at a mahjong parlor. He's playing against members of the Ryuzaki yakuza clan. If he loses, he must pay his debt through his own life insurance – truly a game of life and death. With his own existence at stake, he can only play passively, and the game comes to a head. Suddenly, a mysterious boy appears. His name is Akagi, a thirteen-year-old kid. The man senses a strong aura around the youth and decides to have Akagi substitute for him in the next round.

 

 

This actually only describes the first story arc of the Akagi TV anime, which features a total of three major confrontations in the life of Shigeru Akagi, a “genius who descends into the darkness”.

 

In the second story arc, Akagi confronts an impostor attempting to steal his identity and a seemingly harmless low-level yakuza who is actually a master grifter.

 

In the third story arc, Akagi goes head to head with Iwao Washizu, the “monster of the Showa Era”, a deranged multimillionaire whose personal brand of mahjong comes with a murderous, vampiric twist.

 

 

Even A Monkey Can Play Mahjong?

 

While the above exchange (from Koji Aihara and Kentaro Takekuma's landmark instructional tome Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga) applies to drawing mahjong manga, the same sentiment applies to watching mahjong anime. You don't need to know a thing about mahjong to enjoy Akagi, because at any given moment a helpful narrator will explain the significance of the player's hands and the state of the game.

 

 

The characters in Akagi play a Japanese variant of mahjong known as “richi” mahjong, where players attempt to assemble hands of matching and sequential tiles while at the same time trying to avoid discarding tiles that play into their opponents' hands. Declaring “richi” means a player is one tile away from a winning hand, a state known as “tenpai”.

 

 

When in “tenpai” a player can win by drawing the tile they need (“tsumo”) or by claiming the winning tile when another player discards it (“ron”). Winning hands are determined by a complex rubric of “yaku” (rankings somewhat similar to winning poker hands) that award points according to a schedule called "han", which are further modified by “dora” (a multiplier which adds "han" value to a hand). It's really complicated.

 

 

L'appel Du Vide.

 

The phrase “l'appel du vide” (French for “the call of the void”) refers to the state of flirting with self-destructive behavior, and this concept is strongly embodied in Shigeru Akagi, the protagonist of the series. Akagi is a pariah and an anti-hero whose extreme genius drives him to participate in increasingly risky activities (“chicken races”, high-stakes mahjong, picking random street fights, etc.) in an attempt to alleviate his sense of dissatisfaction and malaise.

 

 

Head Games.

 

Because the bulk of Akagi involves groups of men crowding around a mahjong table, the series relies more on psychological tension than physical action. Akagi in particular is a master at cornering and destroying his enemies from a mental and emotional standpoint, determining their weaknesses by careful observation of how they play, how they cheat, and even how they respond to seemingly random factors such as the luck of the draw.

 

 

The Washizu Arc.

 

Fully half of the Akagi TV anime is devoted to a single night of mahjong in which Shigeru Akagi and Iwao Washizu attempt to destroy one another using the game as a medium. If it seems a bit excessive to spend 13 episodes on only 6 matches, consider that this same story arc spanned 20 years (!) of publication, beginning in 1997 and only concluding recently in Japan.

 

 

The Game Goes On.

 

Crunchyroll currently streams Akagi in 72 territories worldwide. The series is available in the original Japanese language with subtitles in English, Latin American Spanish, and Portuguese. Although no official English language version of the original Akagi manga is available in North America, Crunchyroll does stream the 2015 live-action Akagi TV drama if you need more mahjong in your life.

 

 

Nobuyuki Fukumoto's specialty is exploring the psychological landscapes of gamblers through his bizarre art-style, and Akagi is probably his most pure and unadulterated example of this. If you're in the mood for a hard-boiled, suspenseful drama filled with smoky gambling dens, nail-biting tension, and morally ambiguous characters consider giving Akagi a try.

 

 

Is there a series in Crunchyroll's catalog that you think needs some more love and attention? Please send in your suggestions via e-mail to cruisingcrunchy@gmail.com or post a Tweet to @gooberzilla. Your pick could inspire the next installment of “Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog”!

 

Paul Chapman is the host of The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast and GME! Anime Fun Time.