Anime Review: Legendary Gambler Tetsuya

(Below is a copy of my review from myanimelist.net)

Legendary Gambler Tetsuya is an anime series that’s hard for me to recommend. Not because it’s bad mind you, it’s very, very, good; the problem lies in what it’s about; this show is about mahjong.

 

No, not that solitary game you have preinstalled on your pc, the real mahjong, an ancient Chinese game for four players, which resembles modern rummy or gin. The Japanese variant, often known as Riichi Mahjong; takes this game to a whole new level of complexity, establishing a large list of hand combinations and situations you MUST make at least one of in order to win at all. All of a sudden this is a massively deep, intricate game, like poker on steroids.

Why am I saying any of this, it’s very simple really, this anime won’t make any sense if you can’t play Mahjong on at least a low level, you need to know the rules, the tile names, the hands, ect in order to follow this show. Because you see, this anime is written for someone who already understands the game, as such it never gets bogged down trying to explain the rules it assumes you already know.

If you know the rules or are willing to take time to learn them, you’ll be greatly rewarded, now if you’ve made it this far, onto the actual review!

At the point of my writing this, I have seen three shows dedicated to mahjong, This, Akagi, and Saki. This show is by far the best of the three. This is a somewhat contraversal statement I feel, since Akagi is quite well received on this site, but allow me to explain why this is the best show about mahjong I’ve seen.

It’s because this show cheats.

Everything this anime does is about cheating; some of the most well thought out, genius cheating I’ve ever seen. Akagi sometimes focuses on cheating at the game as well, but more often then not the game is resolved due to Akagi’s “monstrous luck”

In Akagi, and even moreso in Saki, I feel a disconnect from the game and the characters, these shows are about the characters and their insane luck that almost always makes games go their way, things that are statistically impossible are the more here, and for no good reason.

Tetsuya makes his own luck. You not only see why he gets the hands he does, you see how he forces the games to go his way, from skilled dice throws that always get your desired number to boldly switching tiles from your hand with those on the table.

Where Akagi’s narrator would simple tell us that he’s doing something crazy, it never feels justified, he’s just lucky, this leads to a problem many anime have, the protagonist can’t lose. Not so in this fine example here, Tetsuya loses and he loses hard, making his victories all the more gratifying when he finally wins.

This is not a show for anybody; the art is dated for one, and features none of modern Anime’s “moe” sensibilities, if you’re looking for that, try Saki. Characters are never off model and every character has a distinct design, since it focuses on characters sitting and playing a game most of the time there’s minimal motion, but what is there is well executed.

The sound is nothing to write home about, the OST is unmemorable, but the character voices all fit well. As I can’t speak Japanese I can’t pass judgment on the acting level but it seemed to par with shows of the time.

But where this show shines is its story and characters, every character we meet is either likeable or satisfyingly detestable, Tetsuya himself is a great character, who unlike Akagi actually grows and changes as it goes on.

The story is fairly straight forward and mostly involves escalating battles in gambling between our main characters and an assortment of colorful “villains”, with each game essentially being standalone. That’s not to say there are no twists, there are a decent many turns in this story that all lead up to an emotional, satisfying conclusion despite being an incomplete adaptation of a manga that as of now has no translation I can find anywhere, which is somewhat disappointing as I hear this anime only covered a small amount of it.

If you haven’t the faintest idea what mahjong is, you probably won’t like this show, but if you love mahjong or even just understand it on a beginner level, this is a hell of a hidden gem.