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Last edited by Tony K. on Sun Oct 06, 2024 1:46 am; edited 1 time in total

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
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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.

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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?

#7

Kei has to take a back seat this week, and he has good reason to. Since he's forced to go along with Seki's scheme, he's content to let Doujima take the stage and bully Hatakeyama off the table metaphorically. He's satisfied the first of the conditions Seki has set him, unfortunately both Doujima and Takatsu have caught on to the fact he's secretly helping Seki in this match and the latter would have killed him had his gun not mysteriously failed to fire.

With Kei hamstrung, it's a week of watching Doujima at his best. His style of Mahjong means the bigger the stage, the more effective his "go big or go home" style of play becomes. That's why Takatsu selected him since he knew he'd be capable of making back considerable losses once he started riding his "wave" of momentum. However, Doujima is also fully aware that his style of play relies on seizing the flow of tiles and generating momentum, so to that end he tends to brute-force hands that no one in their right mind would play in order to generate his own luck. It does lead him to deal into other players as he cannot play safe, but that's how he rolls. Problem with Hatakeyama is that despite his current appearance his base nature of not going over the edge the same way Doujima and to a lesser extent Kei can means he's never going to be a match for them no matter how drugged up he is.

Seki is still confident he can pull off his scheme as there's still everything to play for and Kei still has one hand he can play into his own. No doubt he's already arranged for a specific signal to Kei to inform him when he can collect on his arrangement. The problem for Kei is he doesn't want to jeopardise Amina's survival yet knows he'll be dead if he does deal into a big hand of Seki's. Squaring this dilemma while helping the Takatsu group win their deathmatch is Kei's current challenge, but not something beyond him as he's already proven himself in previous arcs and after observing the match for so long no doubt has his own plan to extricate himself from his current predicament. Next week should prove Kei's salvation, it is the how which provides the entertainment.

#8

That's one way of getting yourself out of a dilemma; commit ritual disembowelment to buy time to win the round and hopefully emergency medical treatment. As outlandish as it is, it appeals to the Yakuza's sense of equity and buys Kei the out he needs to continue without being shot later for betrayal. Of course, he's bleeding profusely and might well die anyway even if he wins because the injury is life-threatening. But this isn't the first time he's had to risk life and limb and it won't be the last.

The other issue was the combination play between Seki and Hatakeyama. To break up the pairing, he had to annoy Hatakeyama enough and get to the heart of his frustrations. Highly unrealistic, but what choice did Kei have in order to isolate Seki and make it as close to a 2 on 1 as he could? As it stands, Hatakeyama will play to win, but he will not help his partner with deliberate deal-ins. Hence making it a 2 vs 1 vs 1 situation rather than 2 vs 2. An improvement, but Kei needs every little advantage he can get now that he's deal into a counted Yakuman and fulfilled his promise to Seki.

I say 2 vs 1, but Doujima and Kei don't do typical combination plays. The best they can hope for is to build massive hands and target Seki. Since he's playing defence with a huge total, he's going to run away with his lead and do absolutely nothing but speed up the hands until the round's conclusion. Yet anyone who's played Mahjong knows all too well that running away with a big lead earned early in a round is never guaranteed, especially in a match with stakes as high as this.

The stage is set for the finale of the Seki arc, and anyone enjoying what they've seen to date can look forward to seeing how Kei (and Doujima) are going to see this out.

#9

The conclusion to the Seki arc relies heavily on viewers keeping up with everything which happened over the last two episodes. Watching on it's own doesn't do it justice; a binge watch of the entire arc has the best effect. Ordinarily Kei's winning Honitsu hand wouldn't have anywhere near enough points to overturn the deficit, but thanks to the unique nature of Japanese Mahjong with its bonus dragon tiles Kei gets the extra Han he needs to get the counted Yakuman self-draw. Having the other major Yakuza clans as the audience cum referees also stops Seki from trying to cheat his way out having been baited into going for the win. All that remained was for momentum to swing his way; this is the first time Doujima and Kei actually played proper tag-team Mahjong rather than their individual playstyles. All in all an impressive win for Kei, with Hatakeyama keeping his pride and contributing to the contest outcome.

The arc immediately following this might seem like a climbdown given the stakes that went before, but it does have its purpose. It doesn't mean much now, but if my read is correct the significance of this short arc between Kei and the hustler classmate Ueno will be revealed as material will be animated later on which will make the episode more important than it initially appears. Given what Kei had been through, a cheating classmate who has memorised all of his house tiles to an extent and with help from associates is small fry compared to professional Yakuza players who can easily kill with less obvious cheating. Yuu is out of the picture for now given the relationship breakdown, but she'll be back as she's been unwittingly brought into the world of the Yakuza.

Next week's episode is one I'm looking forward to. There are many faces in the OP, and one of them hasn't been introduced yet.

#10

At long last, Ai makes her debut in this series. Not just a pretty face, she also plays a very different game from the opponents Kei has faced down to date. Matsumoto was one of the best players in the Takatsu stable, and he is now forced into retirement because he couldn't stand up to her playing style. As expected from the episode title, her "eye" in Mahjong means she can read what her opponent is playing using their psychological profile as a base, rather than the tiles played. Kei has never faced such an opponent before, and right now he's down six fingers with possibly the same fate as Matsumoto depending on how this final round goes.

Although the Mahjong is front and centre, the episode does include other world-building aspects. Kei and Amina now have a new home courtesy of the Takatsu group, while Kei's childhood friend Yuu is absent from school. Not only that, Kei's own backstory is slowly revealed in this arc through his showdown with Ai. Plenty to see for the casual viewers in addition to keeping up with the Mahjong.

Matsumoto might well lose his fingers given the time that has elapsed since their dismemberment, but he's not going down quietly without a fight. Having carefully observed Kei through his struggle against Ai, his final piece of advice to Kei about not running away from the contest is the signal for the do or die counterattack Kei has to embark on if he wants to leave the room in one piece.

#11

When faced with an opponent who reads his hands perfectly based on his reactions and discarded tiles, Kei decides on a very drastic set of countermeasures to ensure she can no longer read him like an open book. I wouldn't recommend what he did in regular Mahjong either, since a lot of it relies on personal luck and an accurate read both of the tiles on the table and the mix through which they are distributed amongst players. Get it right, and Ai is flummoxed as Kei's hands are essentially reliant on combinations which can offer up different reads provided one of the tiles is obscured. Then it's a matter of picking the less likely winning combination and profiting off Ai having to deal in because she's in Riichi.

I'm actually reminded more of Akagi Shigeru in this arc than at any other point in the franchise. Akagi is the only other fictional Mahjong player I know who could sense what the tile tendency for a round would be and then react accordingly. Not only that, the way Kei played his Mahjong this week was an even more extreme version of Washizu Mahjong, using his own luck drawing good tiles to progress his hand as a way of forcing the other players on the table to back off rather than contribute to his counterattack. Hiding one tile to confuse the other players when declaring his hand wasn't in Riichi is also a callback to the Urabe arc in Akagi which was pivotal then in deciding the contest.

The next arc for me is interesting because I'm not sure how the animators can do this without falling foul of terrestrial broadcast regulations. Considering they are starting this arc now when it's already December means it's going for two straight quarters. Ueno had zero luck taking on Doujima and Hatakeyama to sooth his battered ego, and now he's a pawn to be used by Ai's employers to get even with Kei for publicly humiliating them and making off with the winnings on behalf of the Takatsu group. As far as the Mahjong pairs are concerned, Yuu and Ueno have no chance against Kei alone, never mind that the Takatsu group have assigned him an ally to play combination Mahjong. The idea would be to pressure Kei into playing poorly to save Yuu, but this is Ice K we're talking about so they've misread him again.

#12

Just the one episode to conclude Ueno's fate before the series breaks off for the New Year. Not a bad place to end it either, as the next arc is going to please casual viewers with the amount of actual Mahjong to be shown.

Ironically this is the episode where Mahjong is almost non-existent and all of the drama is on how Kei handles the situation. As I suspected, the animators are not obliged to censor violence but there are red lines they cannot cross. No need to elaborate on the most obvious change from the source material, but the episode actually cut a bit of the nuance from Kei's attempted cheating attempt. The differences ultimately aren't significant to detract from the overall viewing experience, and the most important points of the episode were retained. Thinking about it, there isn't much need to depict complicated Mahjong scenes since this is round 2 of Kei vs Ueno and the latter already knew he had zero chance of success with marked titles. The table they were on is a public Mahjong parlour standard set, so any differences in skill (and cheating) are magnified with a level playing field.

The focus on Yuu matters later on, as she knows about Kei's lucrative part time job but has not yet been told WHY Kei is taking on mortal risk. For now, she escapes with her life and a few scars on her left hand. Her role is less important next quarter, so those interested in just the Mahjong between psychopaths will be pleased with her reduced screen-time. The less said about Ueno, the better. It's been a while since a scoundrel to the core was adapted on screen, and the VA has done the job to make him as detestable as possible. He's not the only scoundrel in this series, but there's a sense of catharsis seeing him get pummelled and having an ice pick sent through his face.

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