After having watched and adored both seasons of Kaiji, I thought it only natural to almost immediately jump into Akagi, which at a glance seemed basically like Kaiji but Mahjong. Now there was one problem with this and admittedly, it's still a problem, that being, I have absolutely no idea how to play Mahjong and every time I've tried to learn it, I just feel my brain leaking out of my ears instead, it's just not a game I have the patience to sit down and properly learn, at least not at this point in time. Funnily enough, this show ended up being one that was highly enjoyable for the most part even without the knowledge of how the game it all focuses on is actually played, which is certainly something I both found to be a positive and negative for its own reasons. When watching this, it was undeniable how much Fukumoto's writing style could be pretty easily seen and interchanged between this and Kaiji, being something that certainly could have felt almost like a spinoff.

That said, as it goes on, it becomes clear that there are numerous clear differences between the two series that end up that end up separating them in some huge ways. I appreciate this for the way it plays into the stylistic cohesion between the writer's works while also demonstrating just how much can be done with it, keeping a lot of that same personality and simply having it branch out into something else that's almost equally as great. The biggest way in which this is conveyed is through the titular character himself and the way he manages to completely flip the tone you'd expect on its head while remaining incredibly tense at every moment, once again with every miniscule decision and movement feeling truly gargantuan in impact. This is due to the way Akagi is framed as this imposing force who takes pleasure in completely destroying people and their hopes, rather than the driven yet desperate nature of Kaiji. With this alone, it immediately creates a very different dynamic throughout, one that's further reinforced by the way the show is written. Rather than showing our protagonist repeatedly scraping past by the skin of his teeth, with a lot of the tension coming from the impossibly high stakes and genuine chance of total failure, the dynamic here is more akin to two total mad geniuses battling against one another, constantly outdoing one another in terms of the convoluted, insane strategies brought to the table. Focusing on these elements from the plot ultimately makes a lot of the tension fall onto what these strategies end up being and seeing how Akagi manages to one-up them, as opposed to wondering whether he'll even make it through in the first place. This gives a similar yet very distinct vibe that ends up being fun to watch for entirely different reasons, with it being impossible to tell exactly what will happen despite knowing who’s going to win in the end.

What makes this even more impressive in some ways is the fact that I had genuinely no idea what was happening for most of the Mahjong games, it was nonetheless very engaging the whole way through, representing the ability to create some enthralling tension that transcends the game that’s played itself. It’s further helped by the ever-present narrator, but with this comes the problem with Akagi’s storytelling that makes it far less engaging compared to a lot of Kaiji. When the narrator is having to explain this one game for all 26 episodes of a show and what is happening with every decision, it rapidly hits a point in which it becomes repetitive, retreading the same concepts ad nauseum because there are only so many ways much of the game can actually be explained, with the more novel elements always coming from those huge twists that centre around some insane strategy. This causes the series to become a rather uneven watch in general, often with parts that feel like clear-cut lulls in the story where very little actually happens, and while they’re definitely somewhat balanced by these aforementioned highlights, I cannot entirely get behind the show in a few places because of this.

Akagi also falls into the exact same pitfall as the 2nd season of Kaiji, where the final encounter of it takes an agonisingly long time, in this case with 10 of the episodes being completely dedicated to one match, which limits a lot of the variety that can be brought to the table through characters, as those that appear at the start of this arc are around to stay until the end. I feel this is made all the worse by the fact that in this case, we’re not even given a mildly satisfying conclusion, instead having the season end halfway through this big arc, not even giving a payoff to the previous 10 episodes of this. If there was a season 2 to this, I’d feel differently about the decision to end it here, but as it stands, it’s essentially 10 episodes of build up to a climactic moment that never appears. Despite these complaints however, there’s a lot to love here nonetheless, and for those who enjoy a series based around tension and/or playing games, this is definitely something you should watch, as long as you prepare yourself for not getting a satisfying conclusion to this without reading the manga.