I don't like it, really. One of the reasons I didn't like
Akagi at first was the prominent role cheating took in the first few games; I don't consider cheating to be admirable like some people apparently do, especially since most of the techniques shown in the show aren't possible convincingly (like the Tsubame Gaeshi and Caterpillar) so seeing some kind of cheating in
Akagi's first episode was a major turnoff to an otherwise strong start for the show. Same feeling for the end of the Yagi match, parts of the Ichikawa ones, ect. It's cool Ichikawa, Yagi and the other folks could do stuff like that (namely Ichikawa memorizing all the tiles on his wall, which was pretty incredible) but a bit point of the
Akagi show was it was "realistic". Anyone who plays mahjong knows ANYTHING can happen in the game, making the crazy stuff that happened during those rounds very possible. One guy I saw from Lobby 7447 even got a Suu An Kou, Dai San Gen (with the 8 Pin concealed Pon) JUST LIKE AKAGI DID. That added a whole layer to the awesome. Me, once I had a Kokushi Musou wait on the 1 Pin just like Washizu and I won on a Tsumo, but I clicked the wrong button (リーチ for Riichi instead of ツモ for Tsumo) and DEALT THE 1 PIN, which was snapped up by my Kami Cha and I ended up losing my hand. It was the equivalent of hitting the table right when I had victory in my hand; I reached for the heavens but my luck ran short and I fell into the abyss.
Tetsuya is a lot different from
Akagi. It's less mythic and noir, more like a shounen anime than some epic narrative about an urban legend in the Japanese underworld. The show's a lot less technical than Akagi, not bothering with the mechanics and logistics of mahjong and just skipping to the effect. This puts it in common with something like
Shion no Ou and
Hikaru no Go where the game is just a backdrop for the central themes of the story, while in
Akagi the game and themes were inseparable - one could not properly convey Akagi's genius without going into details about the gameplay.
I also disapprove of the rampant cheating. It's different from
Akagi, but different doesn't necessarily mean awesome. Tetsuya is a different character from Akagi himself and I guess that makes him interesting in a sense, but honestly he's pretty annoying. Hot-headed, stubborn, and otherwise talentless without what he knows in mahjong. Akagi's genius could be applied in any scenario; had he been born two decades earlier, he could have been a legendary general for the Japanese in World War II. Born three decades earlier or three decades later, he could have become powerful shadow king like Washizu (which he inevitably became). But fate lead him to mahjong and that's where he expressed his talents best.
I've only seen the first three episodes of Tetsuya, but though I don't like it thus far, I'm still quite eager to watch the rest and my great thanks to k-profiler for hunting down the elusive raws to provide us with a top quality release. I'm always game for anything mahjong related; I feel it makes me a better player somehow.
