Tetsunaki no Kirinji Conclusion

Yo, 

Here's my Volume 4 Analysis + Thoughts on the whole series. You can read it below. First some words:

I'm so happy we managed to complete Season One. The first time I read Kirinji ~8 months ago, I immediately fell in love with it. I've been reading manga for over 10 years, but Kirinji had something special that captivated me. Even though I had no experience in scanlation, I loved the manga so much I just wanted to make sure that people in the west could also enjoy it. Looking back at our first chapters feels really nostalgic, looks so clumsy and amateurish. I'd dare say we came a long way since then. Translating it also helped me a lot escaping from my miserable life.

Full thanks for completing season one: First, thanks to WhITelion, without him there'd be no Lion's Ridge, thanks to xGeo for joining in a critical moment and showing how much stronger a team of 3 is than a team of 2. Thanks to all our readers and their nice comments, every one of them actually means a lot to us. Thanks to the generous donators who practically saved my life. Also not to sound ungrateful or greedy: Any amount would still help us a lot, even though we raised enough for my Visa, additional costs showed up that I had no idea about (I need to be medically insured to get the Visa, but this country doesn't cover for me so I'll have to get a private insurance, I need to pay for the translation of all documents to the Czech language, etc. life's never simple, is it (T⌓T) ) plus I still have to survive 3.5 months in these sewers of a country.

The news everyone was expecting: YES, we will be doing Kirinji Season 2. Of course we will. You can look forward to the first chapter in the near future.

One advice: If you're into Kirinji this is the perfect time to learn the basics of Riichi mahjong. Just knowing the basics will immensely increase your enjoyment, and the rules are really intuitive and logical, it's just the terminology that scares people away. I suggest watching these videos for a basic grasp, but there are many guides on the internet, a google search will do.

With that I'd like to use this opportunity to ask you guys if you would be interested in reviving our Kabuking Mahjong Nights? Basically, we played one night a week simulating the popular parlor rules of mahjong that are seen in Kirinji. We would bet imaginary money and keep scores. It was a lot of fun but back then we didn't have a lot of readers and it was hard to gather the minimal 4 people to play, so I was wondering if now there'd be enough people interested. Let us know.

Ok, that's it for now, deep analysis below.

Enjoy!!

Ok, first off, here are the previous analyses for those who missed them:

Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3

Volume 4:

Chapter 32: Because I'm Garbage

A nice detail I liked about this chapter is that in the image where Arino imagines them playing in online mahjong, most of the spectators are actually online mahjong players from before. I can see:
Centowa Mummy, Mole, Sunglasses Chief, Zion Transfer Student and Roland.
We also finally see what Arino's nightmare on the beach was about. It was more tragic than I thought at first.
It's also a nice touch how at the beginning Arino says "A million is an amount for which you can buy somebody's life", at first I thought he might be referring to the Yakuza or something, but later on in the chapter we learn that as a child he believed his mother sold him for a million yen.
I noticed some people got confused by "Ant King Mode" in this chapter, I thought it was fairly obvious what it meant, Arino was done playing a "pro mahjong" style and decided to play just like Rinji, imagining he was in online mahjong- thus Ant King Mode.

Chapter 33: Topliner

A lot of people got confused how mahjong pros could lose to the online mahjong girls. A few reasons: 1) They underestimated them obviously 2) a pro ruleset is a lot different from the online mahjong rules, on a deeper level it almost becomes like 2 different games.
We see more of Gouno's background. I won't lie, Gouno is my favorite character in the series. I can kinda identify with his delinquent past where he was hated by everyone, and in better times I was also a cocky loudmouth like him (also with a shaved head >_>).
We see how disappointed he was in the injustice and corruption of the real, adult world, where fixing
games and status has more importance than the actual beauty of the game. But thank God there's also people like Majin. Young naivety clashing with adult harshness, I wonder where he would have strayed if he never encountered Majin.

Chapter 34: Sinking Volcano

This is Hira's background chapter. This is what I particularly like about Kirinji, there is no bad or good guys, main and support roles (Thanks Gouno) like in your typical shounen manga, everyone has their own lives, backgrounds, motivations and characters. Just like in real life.

We learn Hira's meek personality comes from the fact that he's a country boy, and it's common all over the world for young people coming to the city to not fit in. I saw it plenty of times in real life, the way they talk, the way they "don't get it" etc. more than often alienates them from the Big City society. But that's wrong, since we can see that it's not easy leaving behind your hometown and your family in order to chase your dreams. In fact, it takes courage, I respect Hira a lot.

Here the theme of "Betting Time" appears again and can be finally understood. Betting time is what we all do in life, we all have a limited time on this planet and each decision and action is us betting our time, a gamble. Kiriya, Arino and Gouno already understood that, I guess that's why they were better players than Hira. Gouno talks first about it, Arino confirms his understanding of betting time when he tells Kiriya "Everything is a gamble", and Kiriya explodes with a "The experience I have of betting time..." at the end of volume 3.

Chapter 35: Lalala Four Looks Song

Ok, I done goofed on this chapter title. I guess due to exhaustion I misread a kanji in the title as I was
doing the content page on the beginning of Volume 4, might fix in the future. The kanjis are "4 Side Danger Song", an idiom for "Enemies on all sides". Meh.

This chapter is for our mahjong connoisseurs, like the following.

Only thing I'd like to point out is how Arino confirms and holds strong on his belief that "once something is lost, you can never get it back", probably caused by growing up without a mother and never believing they could make up and get the lost time back.

Chapter 36: Delinquent Face

Another Arino flashback showing his reaction to learning his mother is critically ill. Not sure if he misunderstood his father when he said he wanted an adult decision. Pretty sure his father wanted him to see his mother before dying. Hanako finds the crumpled note.

The rest of the chapter is intense mahjong between 4 players that all brought up all their strength. Good mind games.

Chapter 37: Picture Book Springing To Life

The "Skilled" and "Unskilled" expressions used here are more encompassing in Japanese, they can mean all kind of things in the sense of "Clumsy, Incapable, Not good, Unskilled etc.", that's why Arino uses it to describe his life.

Another Arino flashback where we see him wanting to see his mother deep inside, but his traumas hindering him. I'm pretty sure Hanako showed up on that station because she knew, I don't believe it was a coincidence. She read the note, knew where the hospital was, the Sotobou line station isn't that commonly used, especially if you want to get around Tokyo.

Also this was the final point to stop hating Arino. I can understand why most people disliked him at the beginning, I did too, but as the story progresses we learn about his sad, lonely childhood. In this chapter I really came to like him. All his motives and behavior become understandable, all he ever wanted was the warmth and affection of a family... Thus "A meal with the whole family, huh?" "Must be nice...".

He probably fell in love with Hanako because she gave him the first glimpse of such affection and actually understood him and tolerated his childish outbursts like the one he did "SHUT THE HELL UP!".

Hira, The One Silent As A Forest, finally realizes that being as silent as the forest isn't a disadvantage against Wind, Fire and Mountain. After all, the forest has the patience to endure the winter and blossom in spring.

Round ends in a draw, pretty intense game. Which only proves everyone is at their best.

Chapter 38: Proof of Iron Strength

Rinji being crazy and deciding to settle it once and for all. Is his mahjong strong enough to support a family? Props to his balls, I could never imagine betting 600,000 yen ~ 6000€ on a single mahjong round.

But as he said once before, the better his enemies are, the easier it is for him to play. The Three Monkeys arc confirmed that, and it's a common thing in games and gambling. The more logical and smarter your opponents are, the easier it is for you to make stable predictions and read the situation. Not like that damn Misawa and his crazy Mizaru plays!!! So part of his plan was to provoke them to give it their best so he could more easily read them. Smart.

We also see Rinji's Three Monkeys experience connecting to Gouno. The "Magic" Sakiyo taught him enabled him here to trigger some memories in Gouno, since Gouno practically grew up in Three Monkeys.

Another Arino flashback. But this one was more about Rinji than Shione. For the first time we see Hanako's perspective on the whole breaking-up affair.

Rinji actually did work like an ant before Koume was born. That's the biggest difference between Rinji and Shione, Shione isn't a father. But what changed Rinji is exactly the fact he became a father. I can imagine him suddenly doing all these tasks of a father, taking her to the preschool, socializing with other fathers and then getting asked "So, what do you do?"... "I'm a janitor....".

A mother is ready to give her reputation and everything for her child, but a father wants to be successful and pave a path in front of his child that the child can look forward to. Rinji discovers online mahjong and sees that unlike most things in life, it isn't corrupted, there's no injustice, it all depends on you, the more you give it the more you get back. He believes he might have actually found a thing that he's talented at for the first time in his life.

But Hanako didn't understand, all she saw was a NEET glued to the screen that didn't support his family, so it's understandable she left him, even though later on she started to understand...

Arino also finally understood Rinji's feelings as a father, but of course he's not ready to give up his first love.

Chapter 39: Genius of Play

The final round is really intense. Rinji imagining Koume on his back is particularly cute and heartwarming. Burning Riichi from Gouno the Fire, Blooming Riichi from Hira the Forest.

My favorite part is Rinji drawing the 5p and Koume remembering it from the "Red Uupin Bento" Rinji made for her way back. The whole series has nice little touches and details all over it, it's really obvious that it's well thought through and just how much attention the author paid while doing this.

Gouno's flashback where Tsukiko reveals to him that his master isn't just some old, Showa drunkard
talking about flow... He's actually the legendary Majin, best player in all of Kabukichou in the Showa Era! Nice touch that his real name is Manjirou which sounds similar to Majin.

Chapter 40: All Those Flowers

My favorite chapter of this volume.

Gouno's final flashback where we see Majin destroying that slimy piece of shit chairman. Gouno can't believe his eyes and Tsukiko starts talking about psychic abilities.

Alright, here's my take on the whole Magic/Psychic/Flow aspect of the series. First, to be perfectly clear, it is never directly stated or shown that anything supernatural exists. The way most of those things are talked about in Japanese are deliberately expressed ambiguously, as I will further elaborate in one of the next chapters. We saw Sakiyo also talking about Magic, but for her it was just mind games. It's common for people from the Showa era to talk about faith, magic, destiny, flow etc. but it doesn't have to be taken at face value, it's just a Showa/Older people thing that I think Tsukiko inherited from her parents. More about this later.

We see Majin exposing more of Gouno's background which is really tragic and made me respect Gouno a whole lot more. He's cocky and a loudmouth but no one knows what kind of hell his youth was, everything he has in his life he made with his own two hands. Majin breaks into tears and starts
coughing blood, yet wants the game to go on, what a colossus of a guy, a true legend. Gouno starts running, which was a particularly striking image for me. Goddamnit I love this manga.

Arino's final flashback. We finally see where that image he always remembers came from. His mother dying in the hospital, her final thoughts being about her little son that she had to let go off and Koume singing to her brought me to tears. If this wasn't the point you started liking Arino then you're just wrong, sorry. I like the touch that he's sitting on the same tree stump where he was waiting for his mother as a kid, that stump being a traumatic memory, but seeing Hanako and Koume laughing and playing in the ocean cured him. This time he's crying because the scenery is so pretty unlike when he was a boy and he cried because he was abandoned.

His mother died but a child is splashing water in the ocean while the sun is rising, Truly symbolic to the circle of life.

Arino's mother's maiden name also means Beach which is a particularly nice touch.

The whole theme of flowers I found particularly nice. The way I see it, their flowers are the pretty, beautiful things in their painful lives that they fight for. Having flowers you fight for in your life makes you stronger. Majin's flower was a Sunflower larger than life that only radiated warmth and beauty and faced towards the sun, Gouno is chasing after that flower, Arino's flowers are Hanako and Koume that brought some beauty in his lonely, cold life, Hira's flowers are blossoms from his hometown that he abandoned, Rinji's flowers are...

Chapter 41: A Small Plum Blossom

We finally see Rinji's background. Rinji was a naive, young, hard-working guy. His shoes and pants rugged from all the hard work he did. He always held unto the belief that he's just enduring the winter and that spring has eventually to come. Seeing plum blossom that bloomed during winter being the one thing that gave him hope. Holding his first child in his arms changed the man completely, he's now a provider and responsible for 2 lives. He has to find a way to give them a better life, but he has no education, no training, no talents...

I am not a father so I can't understand, the author is and has actually a small daughter. I'm pretty sure the author put all his feelings as a father in this manga, and I think I can understand a bit. I suppose it's love that cannot be put into words or pictures. But we can understand it a bit through Rinji's actions.

He wasn't addicted to mahjong, he was just frantically trying to find something in his life where he could have success for the sake of his family.

Koume's line "I love you" can be read as "Big/Full Moon" since it's child talk in hiragana, there's no way to tell. It's deliberately done that way to keep the whole magic/flow/psychic theme ambiguous. But it's beautiful none the less. Rinji's final realization that it's neither hope, nor courage moving him forward, it's his love for his daughter.

One touch I also liked was how Hanako said in the hospital "A man doesn't realize he is a father until he can feel the child's weight" and the chapter finishes with Rinji saying "I can feel Koume's weight on my back" implying he finally understood what he's fighting for.

Chapter 42: Picture Book's Conclusion

Nice teaser at the beginning making it seem like Arino was the winner.

The statice flowers also seem to be the flowers associated with Arino, implying his flowers won over Rinji's. Sea-Lavender is a flower that grows on the beach- which is associated with Arino.

Most of this chapter is Rinji explaining his train of thought behind his action, proving that nothing supernatural was behind his plays, it was all within the digital school of mahjong.

One detail most of you probably missed is how Rinji holds the tiles during the series. If you pay attention at the beginning he holds and picks up the tiles like an amateur while now at the very end he uses very flashy ways of holding and picking up a tile between his fingers.

The imagery of a plum flower blossoming and transitioning into the middle circle of a 5 pin tile blew my mind so hard, it never recovered. To think the plum blossom has 5 petals, the circles of a pin tile looking like a flower with 5 petals, and for him to furiten tsumo off the 5 pin of which he made his daughter a bento, her name being small plum, and all the 5s and petals and flowers... I just... I... I love this manga so much.

The overarching Picture Book's conclusion: People aren't ants or grasshoppers, we are people, some circumstances might make us ants, some grasshoppers, the only moral there is for all of us is to give it our best for whichever flowers we are fighting for.



That's it for Volume 4 analysis, what follows is a brief analysis on the whole series:


Tetsunaki no Kirinji is a manga that explores several different themes and manages to intertwine them so seamlessly. It manages to connect all the overarching themes of:
Unconditional love between parent and child
Hard working Ant vs. Playful Grasshopper
Digital world view (Logic and Reason) vs Occult world view (Destiny, Flow, Magic)
Escapism and isolation vs. Human emotional needs and hardships
Different characters from different environments and motivations clashing
Character growth and characters growing to understand each other

And I'm sure I left out some. What is remarkable about this series is that it balances all of the themes
beautifully and never paints one extreme as being the right one. It manages to portray what it means to be a person in the modern society with all these conflicting world-views perfectly. All characters are flawed but learn and experience character growth. Even though we have our protagonist, all of the other cast is perfectly relatable and likable. The series seems particularly realistic as most of the characters can be imagined in the real world and their actions seem very plausible. It's obvious the author put a lot of effort into this series and is emotionally attached to it as he puts a lot of his life experiences into it. His daughter, many mahjong pros and gamblers he met, etc. As proof for this many characters in Tetsunaki no Kirinji are based on real people, for example the character Hira Hitoshi is a real mahjong pro in Tokyo that came from the country side.

So far the series has been very enjoyable and well done for me, in fact it's my favorite. Looking forward to Season 2 and feeling determined to take on the task of bringing this story to the western world.

Thanks to everyone sticking with us and supporting us.

Rinshan out.