Hah, I can't believe I couldn't find a single plot synopsis to paste here! Okay, so the year is 1946. The story centers around the life of Tetsuya, a young gambler aspiring to grind out a living by playing mahjong in post-war Japan. However, as one might expect, things don't start out too well for him. After his first attempt at testing out his skills in Shinjuku, he's quickly taken to the cleaners by Boshu, a local pro. Eventually, they form a teacher-student relationship, Tetsuya learns all the tricks of the trade and goes around playing against some of the weirdest looking people, making a name for himself in the process. The story is loosely based on the hit novel "Mahjong Hourouki" by Asada Tetsuya.

So what's good about this series? In a nutshell, it's got some great characters, great music and great drama, along with great insights into the world of gambling and some great mahjong battles. Also, some spectacular voice acting! Now, as for the mahjong content, the depiction of the action revolves more around different forms of cheating than actual game strategy. However, this is not to say that they're not interesting, far from it! For those who know their mahjong mangas by heart, one could say that in this sense, the mahjong scenes are closer to, say, Noujou Junichi's "Naki no Ryuu" than to Fukumoto Nobuyuki's "Ten" or "Akagi."

As for the translation, I decided to leave the Japanese mahjong terms intact because a good, consistent set of English terms doesn't seem to exist. If I ever come up with one, I'll consider adding a second subtitle track for it. I decided to keep the subtitles very simple, and chose to compile a quick Mahjong glossary instead of flooding the screen with constant liner notes about everything related to mahjong. I hope you find it useful. I recommend getting familiar with the rules of the game before watching the show.