Akagi is a mah-jong-centric Japanese comic, written and illustrated by Nobuyuki Fukumoto and first published in 1992. It is featured in the weekly magazine Modern Mahjong, and is a prequel to the author's previous work Ten, in which Akagi's titular character also appears. Due to its popularity, the manga has been adopted into two live-action direct-to-video movies, a 26-episode anime series which aired in Japan in the fall of 2005, and a live-action TV drama series.
The story is set in Hiroshima Prefecture's Onomichi City, where a high school student Nashiko Jippensha was kicked out of her house. Without a place to play with her friends, she learns that the mahjong parlor that her father used to run is now vacant. She fixes the mahjong parlor and turns it into a place where she and her friends can have fun, cook, have tea, and sometimes play mahjong.
Nodoka Haramura's appearance on television playing in a high school mahjong tournament inspires her old Jr. high school friends to reform their schools club so they can meet and play her in the National High School Mahjong Tournament.
Ryuu, also known as Crying Dragon, is a mysterious man who often plays mahjong with gang members. He only wins by "ron" - a move in which one needs to wait for the opponent's tile to complete the win.
Akagi Shigeru is a young, white-haired mahjong genius. One summer in 1965, he ends up facing off against Washizu Iwao, Japan’s King of Darkness who has amassed enormous fortune and power, at the request of his acquaintance, the rogue detective Yasuoka. As the observer, Ogi Takeshi, a leader of the henchmen of Inada-gumi watches over them, mahjong with special rules called Washizu Mahjong begins. It is a life or death struggle with Akagi’s fresh blood and Washizu’s entire fortune at stake.
Xie Lian, the crown prince of Xian Le Kingdom, successfully ascends to Heaven during his third trial in spite of successive demotions. However, he accidentally breaks the Gold Palace of heavenly officials. With no human worshiping him, Xie Lian has to descend to the secular world to exorcise ghosts, which may help him sustain his divinity.
