Yuudai Sato

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.

Kaiji Itou is a good-for-nothing loiterer who spends his days drinking beer and stealing hubcaps—that is, until he ends up being tricked by his former co-worker. Unable to suddenly repay his friend's huge debt all by himself, Kaiji is offered a shady deal to participate in an illegal underground gamble on a cruise ship. This turns out to be nothing more than the beginning of his new life of hell—thrown headlong into a life-threatening roller coaster of mind games, cheating, and deceit.