Akagi

Akagi

I like anime that, on some level, teach me something. Bartender taught me about mixed drinks and the stories around different types of alcohol. Hikaru no Go taught me about the game of go. Saint Young Men taught me about Jesus’s blogging history and Buddha’s hair. Super Gals taught me about feminism. Any show that can teach me something makes the show all the more enjoyable. And by watching today’s show, I learned a surprising amount about Mahjong. Hell, I might even be able to play the game. But probably not. Today’s show is a mix of gambling, insanity, and really pointy facial features. It shows you the darkness in all men’s hearts, and how people with silver/grey hair are all crazy apparently. This is Touhai Densetsu Akagi: Yami ni Maiorita Tensai, also known as Akagi.

               Akagi takes place during the 1960’s in japan, which is a really great time period for anime. We follow a young man named Akagi, a genius when it comes to gambling with his life. One fateful night, during a rainstorm, Akagi enters a Mahjong parlor, in which a guy is gambling for his life. If he wins, all of his debts to the Yakuza will be forgiven, but if he loses he will die. Akagi enters the game, being able to see what moves to make to win, when to push and when to hold back, even without ever playing the game before. While he wins, it is not enough for him. He wants to play for his life. Akagi is essentially a character study about the titular character from the perspective of those around him. We very rarely get to see what the character is thinking as he is doing any given crazy gambit, only seeing it through the eyes of the spectators or his opponents in the game. This helps remove the audience from associating Akagi as the hero. Akagi is not the hero of this show. He is a demon in human clothes who only wishes to bring down everyone around him. 

Our hero. Looks like a nice guy.

                The show takes place over three main arcs, each taking place a few years separate from one another. The first is Akagi as a boy, just getting use to the game. It ends with him facing off against a blind Mahjong player who apparently rivals Akagi in terms of skill and insanity. When they first meet, they play a game of Russian roulette, for fun. The blind player actually sets up a decent motif for the series, of people with grey/silver hair. Akagi has the colored hair, as does the blind player, and two other major players in the latter two arcs. Akagi mentions in this arc that he at first believes the blind player is someone like him, a being that Akagi has never seen before. I should explain the main characters character a bit. When I called him a demon, I meant it. He is a genius, that much is repeated multiple times. But he has so little value over his own life that he can gamble it at the turn of a hat. Mind you, that is one of Akagi’s strengths as a character. Because he has so little regard for his own life, he will continue to charge forward, no matter the situation. He is a manipulator, controlling everything his opponents do and making them think it was their idea to begin with. He also cheats, but in Mahjong it is only cheating if you get caught. 

The blind player of arc one.

                The second act begins with someone using Akagi’s name to win at Mahjong, and get big in the underground mafia gambling scene. He even looks like Akagi, enough to fool most people, and even tricking me a bit. They said it had been 5 or so years, probably closer to 4, so I figured they had actually aged the character up a bit. But there was something off about the Fake Akagi’s hair, and then they tell us that he is a fake almost immediately, so yay for me figuring it out! The second arc is mainly about Akagi as a more mature person. He is still risking his life in fights and still has little regard for his own life, but now his intelligence is in full bloom. He manipulates people with the best of them, and blatantly cheats and yet still doesn’t get caught till after. The second arc is the most disappointing to me, because it sets up a really interesting match between the Fake Akagi and Akagi himself. The Fake Akagi was analytical and used probabilities to win his matches instead of blind luck and manipulation of the people around him. They were setting up a fight between two different types of geniuses, the analytical mind and the manipulative mind. Instead, we had that fight done before Akagi was even in the match. The Fake Akagi gets manipulated in losing millions of dollars, well yen but still, and gets flustered and wants to leave. The real Akagi is asked to save the day, and does so in the most dramatic fashion possible. While the Akagi parts were ok, the second arc needed to have the real fight between the Fake and the real, especially because the fake one also had grey/silver hair. The second arc both further sets up and breaks the pattern, that those with silver hair are geniuses and demons and need to fight each other. 

The dude with Saiyan hair is the Fake Akagi. Most underutilized character ever.

The third arc is the best way for this series to go out on, as its main focus is Akagi betting his life to kill his opponent. A rich old man who is pretty crazy bets money against blood, literally, in that the points for Mahjong at paid out directly in either CC’s of blood or cold hard cash. The old man has only 500 million left, mostly because of all the people he has paid off to get away with murdering young men, and Akagi plans, at the request of some people, to win that whole amount, which would leave the old man destitute and virtually dead. Part three has Akagi at his craziest and most manipulative. At multiple times we have moments where Akagi is allowed to reinsert any amount of blood he has lost, but to mess with his opponent he will literally bleed himself to near death. Part three also really exemplifies something I never truly noticed up till then. We almost never hear the inner thoughts of the main character, and instead we only hear what everyone else thinks. It is usually Akagi’s opponents or non-playing friend who we get the inner monologue from. From the non-playing friend, we usually get to see what is the normal or correct move to make in Mahjong. The person behind Akagi is there to tell the audience what is his best play, what tiles to get rid of, and how a normal player would view the game. This is actually pretty helpful to the audience, especially me, so that we know this game does not usually have ridiculous amounts of stupid, leap of faith, gambles. From the opponent we get usually just get to see how they are going to win, but we also get to experience firsthand the psychological attacks that Akagi is dealing out. Everything Akagi does is to manipulate his opponent to better win. Sometimes this is as simple as “accidently” dropping a tile, sometimes it is purposely losing, and sometimes it is burning his own blood. Have I mentioned Akagi is crazy? 

The crazy rich dude from part three. He is a dick.

                The third arc is also very good because it changes the game without changing the game. In part two the characters were playing the same Mahjong as they were in part one, it was just that Akagi was better at it now. In part three, the three fourths of the tiles were clear, so that you were able to see most of your opponent’s hand. This really changes the game, as now manipulation on both parties is all about what non-clear tiles you have, and sometimes relying on blind draws. This effectively gave a new twist on the game, which by part three was getting a bit tiresome. Mahjong is interesting, but you need to change it up every once in a while or it will get stale. Heightening the risk to the main character is a good way to do this, but with Akagi just blindly willing to gamble his life at any given moment, it is hard to raise the stakes unless you change the game. I should also mention the best character in the show, the narrator. The show is constantly being narrated by an omnipresent voice who explains for the audience everything that is going on. This sounds like it could be annoying, but the narrator actually does so much good work that I can’t help but like him. He explains how the game is played, the mindsets of all the characters, motivations and just about everything else. The only thing he doesn’t explain is Akagi, which really lends credence to the whole Akagi is a demon thing. The narrator and Akagi are the only two main characters that show up in every arc, (not counting the dirty cop who could be replaced by probably anybody at times) and it is really only through the narrator that we learn anything about Akagi, though it is all surface material. Through him we know Akagi is a genius, who will go on to do great things and have climatic battles. 

Literally the last time we see Akagi he is wearing this. Nice tiger skin shirt dude.

                Akagi is a very interesting show. As a character study, we are given very little about the main character, like his history and his motivations beyond wanting to push himself to the limit. But it actually works to the shows benefit. We are forced to analyze what Akagi is, like the other characters in the show, and come to our own conclusions. My conclusion is that Akagi is either completely insane, or a literal demon trapped in the body of a white haired dude. Either way, it is really fun to watch. The show made mahjong as a game really interesting. It is something that I would like to play, though I would need to know how to read the character tiles. The worst part of the show is how it can get pretty repetitive sometimes. If you watch long enough, you can almost call what Akagi is going to do and when he will do it. Luckily, the show knows when to focus less on Akagi playing and more on what his opponent will do. This helps, but still, by the third arc you can call Kan almost every time Akagi does. But aside from its repetitiveness, this is a really good show. It is very atmospheric and Akagi is an interesting character to watch. The side characters are a bit dull, mostly there to gasp at whatever Akagi does, but they don’t hurt the show. If you like shows with gambling, or some sort of game being played, you will enjoy this. If you liked One Outs, the gambling baseball anime, then you will love this show. Go watch Akagi, it is a really cool show. So until next time, have fun watching.