Mahjong Legend Kaiji: The Genius Who Descended Into The Darkness.

Picking up immediately after the end of the previous part in Kaiji’s saga, Kaiji is now a penniless layabout in Sakazaki’s home, much to the latter’s disdain, and ultimately, is told to leave before things get nasty, which neatly coincides with Miyoshi and Maeda, two of the 45ers, confronting Kaiji with a get-rich-quick scheme involving the president of the underground casino they now work at. This involves 17 Steps, a form of Mahjong he invented, where both players start in tenpai, and must declare mangan to survive a round (for a total of 17), and declare ron to win instantly, and if neither player does, then their hands are reshuffled, and the next round begins, with the wager doubled. And this is the basis for the volumes of this manga, and all I can say is, if you thought E-Card or The Bog went on too long, then you’ll have to prepare yourself, because this is definitely much longer than those two, and truthfully, though enjoyable, and I never once did find myself bored, I think this is certainly one of the weaker games, perhaps because I’m a baka gaijin whose understanding of Mahjong is rudimentary at best (though great effort is made to help explain things, so it’s not as though it makes no sense), but really, it’s not until Kaiji develops his major strategy to win the unwinnable, as he so often does, which occurs by about the 80th chapter, that it really picks up the pace, which is a shame, because those chapters in which he does reminded me precisely why I loved the nail-biting intensity of Kaiji so much, it just makes it unfortunate it gets off to such a slow start, because from this point onwards, it’s as good as the previous games in the series. It’s also interesting to get some character development for Maeda and Miyoshi, and an interesting one at that, in particular it can be compared to Ishida and his son, and in a sense the same can be said for the ‘Young Master’ who also accompanies them in the room, but that’s also where my final complaint lies, for now at least. When the gamble is over, he offers to do one himself with Kaiji, which he instantly accepts, claiming he’d been hoping he could all along, but I don’t particularly see why, it may be an act of bravado, but it just seemed so instantaneous, I should probably keep my mouth shut in case it does get explained early on in the next part, but really, he had very little reason to do so.

Ultimately, it’s Kaiji, part 3, and that should be enough of a review for anyone, I can’t imagine anyone would’ve gotten this far and remained unsure whether they liked the series or not. Admittedly, it does start off rather slowly, and while perfectly enjoyable, it’s certainly not the same quality as seen in the beginning of the previous gambles, but once the brakes are off, it’s rushing forwards with the same intensity any reader of Kaiji’s familiar with, unequivocally exceptional quality through and through, but I must give one final complaint, I preferred the greasy and unkempt look of Kaiji’s hair and face in earlier volumes, which has since disappeared.