Akagi/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Adaptation Displacement: Non-Japanese fans are more familiar with the anime than the manga, which is still ongoing in Japan.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome: Akagi loses the fatal total amount (for someone of his build, at least) of 2000cc of blood in the fifth session against Washizu. He crumples on top of the tiles, while Ohgi remembers his wager of an arm if Akagi should lose. Washizu grabs a ceremonial sword, ready to lop off Ohgi's limb, while Yasuoka looks on in horror. Just as the sword comes down, there is a shuffling of the tiles. Everybody freezes. Akagi has literally come back from the dead. Needless to say, Ohgi and Yasuoka are overjoyed, and Washizu is pissed.
    • Akagi foresaw this inevitability, and needed to know how much extra blood his body could safely hold. The 500cc's on top of his normal 4500cc's gave Akagi a buffer against death via excess blood loss. Naturally, Yasuoka and Ohgi had no idea Akagi had planned this far ahead.
      • This moment is repeated in Volume 24, minus the sword part.
    • There's actually at least one per arc, but one that stands out is during the Fake Akagi/Urabe arc, where Akagi pons and chis his way down to a single wait on a tile, basically declaring that he is in tenpai. With that, he gets up and walks away from the table, knowing Urabe will play his winning tile the next turn. And he does. Did I mention that Urabe was playing it safe, and therefore could have played any of the 14 tiles in his hand? And that this was the last round of a 32-million Yen (320 mil today) gamble?
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: The entire soundtrack. This is Hideki Taniuchi after all. Also worth mentioning is the amazing opening Nantokanare, and both the ending themes (Akagi by Maximum the Hormone and Silent This Side by The Animals).
  • Magnificent Bastard: Akagi and Washizu. Ichikawa qualifies to some extent.
  • Memetic Mutation: The phrase "Yagi ni denry? hashiru" and many variations on it is a full-blown meme on the Japanese Internet.
  • More Popular Spinoff: Akagi is a prequel to one of Fukumoto's earlier manga called Ten, in which Akagi dies at the end.
  • Prequel Displacement: Most Akagi fans don't even know about Ten, where the fifty-three year old Akagi dies at the end.