Forum - View topicTohai: Ura Rate Mahjong Tohai Roku (TV).
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Tony K.
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 11440 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Tohai: Ura Rate Mahjong Tohai Roku (TV) Source: Manga (ongoing @ 45 volumes by Kōji Shinasaka) Demographic: Seinen Animation Studio: East Fish Studio Genres: drama, psychological Themes: mahjong, strategy Plot Summary: Not a lot of people know that one of the most talented and ruthless Mahjong players in the city is a young high school boy. Kei is a teenager of few words, but his observation skills, unwavering will and experience in the game allows him to survive in a world full of powerful, rich and dangerous characters. Kei is currently hiding a girl named Amina who has entered the country illegally and protecting her from being deported. He spends his days sleeping through class and his nights playing high stakes Mahjong, waiting for when a worthy opponent arrives. Air Date & Platform: October 4, 2024 (Thursday) Available on: Pending Episode Count / Runtime: Pending ---------------------------------- Hikaru no Go surprised the heck out of me when I didn't think it was possible to make a compelling story around a tabletop game. Here's hoping for another great one centered around mahjong. Last edited by Tony K. on Sun Oct 06, 2024 1:46 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2961 |
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#1
This 100% will not be officially reviewed on this website. No international distributor will take it because 1. Mahjong is a niche sport and 2. Source material is Akagi with an R17/R18 rating. For its home market, it depends on how far the adaptation will go as even on demand streaming services like Abema can't outright show something explicit. I expect the violence to be kept as-is, while the other factor behind the R18 rating is already censored. Then there's the animators who are new and don't have a track record so expectations aren't high to begin with. The material has also seen a live-action adaptation years ago which didn't really make waves the same way Akagi did, so keeping it niche and within Japan seems to be the only way this would ever be adapted. Putting that aside, the first episode is a taster of what this series is going to be about for casual viewers. This isn't Saki, which is Mahjong portrayed at its most wholesome as a competitive sport. Unlike Akagi, it's guaranteed there's cheating which is pervasive (Akagi didn't need to cheat in all of his story arcs by comparison) so a lot of the tension is seeing how Kei gets past these obstacles with his astonishing memory capabilities and capacity for ice-cold temperament which feeds through to his playing style no matter what dire straits he finds himself in (and that ED animation if true means the animators plan to go REALLY far into the source material if they have the budget for it). Akagi Shigeru is a genius, but he also has his character flaws. This series is a veritable collection of humans with distinct psychological defects, otherwise they wouldn't be able to play high-stakes mahjong without freezing in fear like most humans with normal psychological states would. If viewers don't like the characters behind the players sitting in their playing chairs, they won't like this as none of them are "likeable" in the conventional sense. The role of the Yakuza and other organized crime groups is also very prominent in this author's works. Although they're just black suits who sort of blend into the background and only surface when it's time to collect the mobsters here play a very active and distasteful role as villains. Macchan is a case in point, and he's just the appetiser for what's to come all adaptation. Viewers who can't get past the suspension of disbelief where a high-school student takes on organized crime head-on in games of rigged mahjong and somehow comes out on top despite initial losses are strongly advised not to bother watching further. As for the VAs, it's no surprise Fairouz Ai is playing Amina as she's one of the few in the industry with the linguistic skills to pull off Amina's role given its demands. I don't recognise any of the others, but Kei's role is played well and he sounds right given the age and the personality behind it. What I'm looking forward are some of the bigger roles which are not formally introduced; that will be a factor in whether the series can make its mark beyond the core audience. If this is going to end after one quarter, I have a rough idea of where it might end depending on how the animators pace the material. The ED gives enough hints, I'm hoping they don't rush it or skip too much. |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2961 |
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#2
For those who watched the Akagi animated adaptation, the most obvious difference between this franchise and that one is how violence is portrayed and used as a plot device. For Akagi, at most he ends up beating up punks who try to rob him or getting threatened with katanas by Yakuza. Here, the Yakuza are more than happy to kill with guns and with complete nonchalance. We don't know who Seki really is at this point, but he refers to the captive girls as "merchandise" so is clearly part of the underworld society. He is also a sucker for talent, and Kei is someone he wants as no middle-schooler in his right mind would pull off the plays Kei did especially with the handicaps he faced. Although the mahjong plays in this franchise are far fetched, they make sense if one players knows the other player is using team play signals and can somehow figure out what those signals are. Fortunately for Kei, the other side is too confident in the stereotype that Japanese are terrible linguists and doesn't know Kei has a phenomenal memory. If the code was more than just a simple word substitution, Kei would have had no chance with the time he had. That's also why Amina is living with him. He feels he owes her for giving him the crucial hint he needed to turn the tables. He also has a kinship with her, which will hopefully be properly explained as the adaptation continues. Unfortunately, the impulse decision to "buy" Amina in place of his winnings from Macchan means his household of one now becomes two as he has to pay for her living expenses. No legal avenue for part-time work exists in Japan to pay for the living expenses he needs to sustain her, so Seki was right Kei would look for him as the opportunities he offers are the high risk high reward options that are realistically the only way he can continue to pay with Amina living as his rent-free lodger (not to matter the legal implications if he's caught with an undocumented illegal alien former exploited child sex worker). So much for the first meeting between the main pairing and why Kei has his "part-time job" which he described to his classmate last week. The next story arc is also fun, since it introduces the character so popular he has his own spin-off franchise. They picked Doujima's VA well, that's definitely a voice I'd imagine him having given his personality. Anyone who thinks the mahjong plays illustrated this week are too outrageous to take seriously might as well stop here. It's going to get even wilder since this franchise hardly uses mahjong as an exercise in fair play. Those who do like the franchise for its broken characters might want to stick around, as the franchise is full of people like Kei and Seki. If watching a table of skilled if mentally unhinged persons is good entertainment, then this franchise will deliver on those expectations. |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2961 |
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#3
There's a reason why Doujima is very popular in this franchise: it isn't just the style of Mahjong he plays but also his personality and appearance. Kei plays a rational game which naturally considers the probability of likely winning tiles in forming valid combinations, Doujima is the complete opposite who's willing to risk everything on a huge hand to overturn huge deficits in one go. Yet he's also capable of playing Mahjong the "proper" way and will lay traps to snare anyone who tries to outcompete him in shooting for the moon. Between Kei and Doujima as a choice for "rep" players for the Yakuza, they would usually choose the latter for everyday games to earn money consistently over a long period. Doujima however would be the player to bet on if your life was on the line and it was an all-or-nothing showdown. He has the luck to generate the momentum needed to amass hands that ordinary mortals would never see in their lifetime playing legally, and multiple times to boot. This arc, although short, is also the first episode where the players do not cheat whatsoever. It makes a chance, as cheating is fairly baked in with stakes at this level. The other players on this week's table were mere spectators, with the Mahjong being 1 on 1 between Kei and Doujima. Deathmatch games like this are a running theme of this franchise, which is a difference to other Mahjong adaptations with the usual four-player table where all participants actively attempt to win the round. Amina does act as Kei's morality compass, he'd otherwise fall for Doujima's trap when he's blinded by greed. Unfortunately, Amina's existence appears to be an open existence in the series underworld which is something that will be used against Kei in the future. Especially so as Doujima has cleaned Kei out for most of his hard-earned career earnings at this point. He'll have the chance to turn it round though, as next week's opponent is another interesting player the franchise consistently sends out as part of its modus operandi. |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2961 |
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#4
Putting aside that last scene before the credits (the first of more to come for this franchise), this episode is another one where there's no cheating in the Mahjong. The reason I don't like it as much as the earlier episode is because the focus is all on the psychology of the players under extreme pressure, which is the determining factor behind victory or defeat. The hands they form to win are secondary to who wins the game of chicken, or to put it in their terms which player is willing to risk everything for victory in a game where the stakes are so high losing is as good as death. The first episode where Kei is supposed to play cooperatively with his partner, but it doesn't turn out that way at all. Hatakeyama is very similar to Kei in terms of playing style; he goes for big hands when he can and plays boldly when he's sure of what shape his opponents' hands have taken. The difference between the players is one of experience: Kei was like Hatakeyama before he met Macchan but after winning some harrowing games of his own has acquired the gambler's courage which Hatakeyama will never develop while he remains in his "gamer" mindset. Kei betting all of his (and Hatakeyama's) toes on an underside tile to match at least one of his winning tiles epitomises what Akagi Shigeru described gambling as: dying an absolutely pointless death. High risk, but he needed it to go over the line right at the last. Kei's winning score with that last hand also overtook Hatakeyama's cumulative score over the cumulative rounds, so Kei came good on his word to play the game competitively over and above the circumstances of the match. Unfortunately Kei's winning hand has ironically worked against him. He wanted to walk away with his winnings, but Takatsu really wants him in his hand-picked Mahjong rep group so forces him along for "overtime". Even if Kei had been explicit in refusing to join Takatsu's group, he would still have been forced to do so anyway because the Yakuza are an organization that use brute force and violence to achieve their aims. Now that Kei has his handicap, time to see what exactly this "entrance exam" for Takatsu's rep group is really about. |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2961 |
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#5
As a test to enter a Yakuza-backed Mahjong rep team, it doesn't get any more sadistic than this. The test-setters do have a point: the stakes are so high that rep players really have to do anything short of cheating to win entire rounds instead of just one-off hands. To do that, they have to do a combination of Kei's usual steady play and Doujima's huge hands consistently well. Kei isn't able to do the latter prior to this as that's not his style, but after this week he learnt something valuable from having Doujima as an unexpected and unwelcome opponent with his little toe on the line (which he ended up forfeiting anyway). Even with salt as a disinfectant and clotter, I'm surprised Kei didn't die from septic shock given how much blood he'd lost by that point. He managed to play through it and clean house, with the psychological impact on the two normal players enough to let him use them as easy marks. The key is Doujima: he also wanted to win but realised Kei was being put up to the handicap match. Giving Kei advice on how to read players' play instincts and manipulate the tile momentum is something Kei needs to effectively master as a rep player, so Kei owes him in the long run for helping him improve further. Doujima's reaction to Kei's predicament is more laconic than one would imagine, he's very blasé about serious players willing to risk appendages if it means they can seize momentum on the table. There's a reason for this, and I'm not sure they'll ever cover it in this adaptation. Kei's motivations for joining Takatsu's "first team" are also revealed: he's doing it for Amina so that she can stay legally in Japan without fear of deportation. He owes her, but it's surprising in some ways that he'd go this far for her sake. It also means sticking his neck deep into the criminal underworld, but there are no legal means for Amina otherwise so he's prepared himself for whatever might come now that Seki is trying to muscle his way into the big boy leagues. |
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Harleyquin
Posts: 2961 |
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#6
The Takatsu Yakuza group has a problem: a foreign gang wants in on a slice of Japan's underworld pie and their territory is the main target. In a society which until recently didn't crack down so hard on organized crime provided it stayed in the shadows, having assassinations make the news doesn't suit any of the stakeholders. The contest is of course orchestrated by Seki who's using the Tayao group as his puppet to rise up in the underworld hierarchy, otherwise he wouldn't be willing to use Kei as his hidden resource with Amina as leverage. The question is how Kei will approach this high-stakes match, as he feels like he owes Yanagi for saving his life from the assassin's bullet. We don't know how good Seki is as a Mahjong player, as all this while he's been organizing matches for Kei until recently. Now that the Takatsu group have effectively claimed him as a rep player, Seki on the surface has to face his one-time contractor. Of course, he expects Kei to betray the Takatsu group when the moment arrives. What no one has expected is the true identity of his partner. Hatakeyama has had quite the image change since viewers last saw him two weeks ago, and it seems he has taken Kei's previous lesson about gambling a bit too much to heart. Now that the shackles are off him, how well will he play against Kei and Doujima? The two Takatsu rep players are better known for their solo play, and this is the first time they've been paired together despite their personal animosity with each other. Is it enough to overcome Seki's scheme and Hatakeyama's improved skills at the table? |
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