Akagi Shigeru

Manga
Anime
Drama
Movie

* Manga (Akagi, 13)
* Anime (Akagi, 13)
* Film (Akagi, 13)
* Drama (Akagi, 13)
* Manga (Akagi, 19)
* Anime (Akagi, 19)
* Drama (Akagi, 19)
* Manga (Ten, 44)
* Drama (Ten, 44)
* Manga (Ten, 53)
* Anime (Akagi, 53)

Akagi Shigeru (赤木しげる *Akagi Shigeru*) is the main protagonist of the Akagi series, and a main character in Ten. He is a genius who specializes in gambling. Ruling the Japanese underworld for around three years, he is well known as a mahjong legend.

## Biography

Most information about Akagi is unknown. He is described to not have a family, and his birthday, place of birth, and all other personal information, are never specified. He mostly wanders from place to place, gambling to get the money he needs, and intentionally losing the rest. This direction causes him to frequently disappear from the public eye for years on end.

## Information

#### Akagi - Yami ni Oritatta Tensai

After participating in a game of Chicken, where neither player hits the breaks, and both end up in the ocean, Akagi runs from the cops to a nearby mahjong parlour, and ends up playing against the yakuza for a man trying to clear his debt named Nangou. The room quickly sees him as a mahjong genius, as he even uses the eventual appearance of the police to help him win the match. After defeating the opponent rep player, he is convinced to stop doubling up, and wait to play with an overseer to make sure he gets paid, by the cop Yasuoka, who sees Akagi as a way to make money.

After getting a gun from the yakuza members, Akagi scares off the the gang members related to the Chicken game, and shows up late to a match against the blind mahjong master Ichikawa. Akagi successfully uses his cheating against him, and wins the match, but is left unsatisfied, as the yakuza refuse to have a rematch they know they will lose, after this Akagi vanishes.

6 years later Akagi is working in a toy factory, before he is approached to meet a fake version of himself, brought by Yasuoka as a money making scheme. After winning a small gamble agaisnt the fake, proving his ability, Akagi returns to work, where Osamu, who was forced to play mahjong in his absence is being cheated. Akagi wraps them up in a gamble for their life savings, and takes them for all their worth, before quickly being taken back to battle against the Fake Akagi. However Akagi predicts that the fake will lose the match, and once this comes to pass, Akagi defeats Urabe in his stead. Urabe, now deep in debt with disheveled hands wants a rematch, but Akagi shuts him down, asking him to bet his hands instead, because the essence of gambling is "a meaningless death", Akagi is left wandering once again searching for said death match.

Akagi reunites with Osamu to give him his share of the money, and is forced into a match with Nakai, who is sure Akagi is cheating, yet is defeated by Akagi who breaks down his cheating method. Akagi soon vanishes after this.

Akagi reappears playing evens and odds against yakuza, winning consistently, though this gets him in trouble, the yakuza want him to admit he rolled a number he did not to get their money back, refusing to back down, Akagi is cut in the shoulder by a sword, and almost killed, until Yasuoka bursts in to save him. Akagi is informed at the hospital that mysterious deaths have occurred, including Hirayama, the Fake Akagi, and they want Akagi to come in and defeat the murderer.

Akagi then meets Washizu Iwao, who has been holding matches where players must bet their own blood against his fortune, Akagi enters the death match, refusing to transfuse blood back into his body. When Akagi finally loses 2000 ccs, the fatal amount, he survives, having pumped 500 extra ccs of blood into his body before the match. Eventually Akagi takes his entire fortune, and Washizu begins to bet his own blood. After multiple brushes with death, Washizu eventually dies right before his own victory, and his white suits forfeit the match to transfuse his blood back. Akagi leaves his own cut of the fortune behind, deciding that he didn't defeat Washizu, he only outlived him.

6 years pass, and Akagi is now being followed by Osamu. Frequently winning huge amounts of money in gambles, an exciting venture Osamu, to Akagi's own detriment, who is trying to get Osamu to leave him alone, telling him people like him "start to think they're my friend". When the house comes demanding money back from Akagi, he finds a way to escape with his money. During this time he is being chased by Washizu, who demands a rematch. While he still thinks about Washizu, stopping at Washizugatani Station, seemingly on the simple whim it happens to contain Washizu's name, Akagi shows no interest in a rematch. Akagi, after imagining Washizu in the local bathhouse, tells Osamu he can stop by the bathhouses, and he may even meet "someone you'd never want to meet".

During this time in his life, Akagi is obsessed with getting to the essence of gambling, which he has surmised to be "a meaningless death". Due to this obsession, he constantly raises stakes with the main purpose being to force his opponents to put everything on the line, by extension of this goal, Akagi is more than willing to lose his own life to the whims of a gamble. This attitude causes him to be described as insane, or a demon due to the skill that accompanies these death matches, Ohgi surmises what Akagi yearns for is not a worthless death, but an even match that will finally excite him, a goal mostly fulfilled by his match against Washizu. During this time Akagi is friendless, wandering without making many connections, and only seeming irritated by the attachment characters like Osamu have towards him. By the end of this match, Akagi confirms to himself that when he dies he wants to die as himself, the same way Washizu did.

#### Ten - Tenhoudouri no Kaidanji

Akagi is brought in as a rep player against Ten Takashi, and after sizing up Ten, loses just barely, with Ten commenting that Akagi would have won if he was still in his prime. A year later, Akagi returns from playing golf in Hawaii, bringing in multiple other mahjong pros to enter the East West match that is about to occur. Akagi lasts through the matches, and is one of the last 3 on East's side, but after gambling on a certain tile, Akagi barely survives on a technicality, of Harada giving him a pass on his other wait, Akagi however takes the loss, as it wasn't the tile he bet on. He tells Hiro that life is a cycle, and that when one dies, they return to the earth and become new life, whether that be microbes in the ocean, or some other thing, so the only thing you lose when you die is your conscious, meaning being who you are is what is most important, this ideal means Akagi cannot go against what he bet on, even on a technicality.

9 years later, Akagi is diagnosed with Alzheimer's, this will soon cause him to lose his sense of self, so Akagi decides to use a machine to commit suicide, so he can die while he is still himself. At his funeral, he invites all of the members of the East West match, and takes time talking to all of them, arguing against why he should live, and explaining to them why they are unsatisfied with their own lives, even gambling against Soga, betting his own death, rather than his life. Despite their best efforts, Akagi Shigeru dies smiling, September 26th, 1999.

After his death, gambling paraphernalia is left at his grave, and pieces of his grave are chipped off for good luck.

In his older age, Akagi generally has moved on from his goal of finding a death match, only referencing those kinds of insane gambles during the end of the story, when asking Hiro to bet his arm. Through this however, Akagi's views on life have stayed consistent, and much of the story is motivated by his desire to live, as well as die, as himself. Otherwise, Akagi seems to live a casual life, continuing to move around at his own whims, doing things like playing golf in Hawaii seemingly on a whim. While Akagi was well known for appearing and disappearing at random, spending his younger days friendless, he becomes friends with the characters in Ten, something that he decides makes up for his lack of a family.

## Trivia

* Most colored art of Akagi comes from the black tankobons, and the Kindai Mahjong magazine covers. In both versions, his color scheme is chosen based around the individual image, rather than anything consistent. The recent red covers of Akagi give characters consistent color schemes, and match those seen in the few colored pages of the manga itself, revealing Akagi's shirt color throughout the Washizu arc to seemingly be purple, however, no adaptation of the story has depicted Akagi wearing this color scheme. Instead he is typically seen wearing a blue shirt, as seen in the anime, drama, and casino machines.