FKMTkrazy Blog

Fukumoto Nobuyuki's Kaiji on Hiatus

2024-01-22T00:04:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone, it's been a while! As I'm sure many people are wondering, there has not been a new Kaiji chapter posted in quite a long while now. Fukumoto has put Kaiji on Hiatus while he researches information regarding it. Originally this was going to be a 2.5 month hiatus, but it has continued with no new information going on 5 months. As of now there is no word on when Kaiji will return, but we will patiently wait for Kaiji to return. We hope that you will wait patiently with us as well.

Thank you as always for being loyal fans to Kaiji and Fukumoto. Please take care.

New FKMTkrazy translator: Substar!

2022-01-12T18:53:00.003-08:00

Hi everyone! It is my pleasure to introduce you to our newest translator, Substar! He is a 2nd-generation Japanese man living in America and he loves Fukumoto and mahjong so we feel he is a great addition to our team and enthusiastically brought him aboard! He will be translating Kaiji alongside Spanish starting at Chapter 408. His work is so similar to Sonickrazy's that it's practically indistinguishable, so I think you all will love having him here and he is very excited himself to be working with us! He is very shy so you probably won't see him in the comments or on discord or anywhere, and he didn't even want to write his own introduction post, but we are super thrilled to have him aboard and think his inclusion will be to the benefit of Fukumoto fans everywhere!

Now, despite what you probably weren't even thinking, I must emphasize that Substar is definitely not Sonickrazy coming back under a different name for legal reasons. Sonickrazy has moved on from FKMT and will never be coming back, despite being a constant presence in the FKMTkrazy discord. He is now doing professional translation for an official company, so he wouldn't be caught dead coming back to FKMTkrazy! So please put your suspicions aside, for I again assure you that this is absolutely and definitively NOT! I repeat, NOT! SONICKRAZY COMING BACK UNDER A DIFFERENT NAME FOR LEGAL REASONS TO AVOID TROUBLE WITH HIS NEW COMPANY! That would just be silly! But, heh, I mean if it were Sonickrazy coming back under a different name, I guess he might say something like this:

Hello everyone. It's been nearly 2 years since I left, but after taking time to mourn my father and seek mental treatment I requested to be let back in to the group and Tambur and Spanish both warmly accepted me. I think I'm finally ready. I'm very happy to be returning to what I love, as my life simply felt empty and barren without translation in it. I founded this group over 10 years ago and it carried me through my life. I sacrificed everything for this group, my education, my career, even my brain itself. I poured all my heart and passion into this group and now that I'm here 10 years later it's really the only thing in my life that has any meaning at all. So to just go my separate way from it and pretend it never happened would be a shame greater than any other. I stand here now, looking back on everything that this group has accomplished, and it fills me with nothing but pride. I give my heartfelt thanks to Tambur, Spanish, Jawsh and Gramercy for keeping the Kaiji translations going in my absence. We've accomplished a whole lot these 10 years, and now, I hope to help to bring it to even higher heights. I'm ready. I'm back.

But... I do feel I need to say some words considering the abrupt and childish way I left the group 2 years ago. These last 2 years have been very rough for me, but very eye-opening at the same time. I have completely given up marijuana, and I can see now that it was affecting my brain in a very severe way. I believe I was suffering from a combination of marijuana psychosis, alchohol addiction and severe grief at the time I wrote that post. It was a bubbling up of emotions that had been building up over the 4 months since my father's passing. I became a Christian out of a desire for comfort, I believed the gospel, and I came to see Fukumoto's works themselves as sinful and believed wholeheartedly that I had to set myself free from them as soon as possible. I will not delete the video that I made, as I believe it will give you insight into my mindset at the time if you care to watch it. But I will now add on top of that, having had 2 years of reflection at this point, that the extremity of my beliefs towards my past work and the ranting nature of my initial post were most likely a direct result of the psychosis caused by my marijuana dependence. You might say to that, but weed is a harmless drug isn't it? Nobody's brain can be affected by dope, can it? Well I am writing here to say that, in my experience, marijuana absolutely can affect your brain, especially in my case where I was especially susceptible to its affects. The first hit I did of weed drove me into a existential euphoria where I was questioning the very nature of existence to the point where I was completely unaware of my surroundings. One hit. And I was doing that stuff EVERY DAY. The more I did it the more I liked it, and the more strange thoughts entered my brain, until I got to the point where I was seeing meaning in things that had no meaning, was believing in things that are most likely not true, and due to my, for lack of a better word, unabashed disposition, I was willing to act on what I believed to be true to the detriment of many people I encountered. Having been clean of marijuana for a good year now, I can see that it was having a huge affect on my brain and the way I saw the world.

I'm not trying to make excuses, I'm simply telling you what I have come to realize about how I was at the time. Now that I am a year clean of the stuff, I can tell you that my mind is much clearer and less prone to wild delusions and leaps of logic. Believe it or don't, it's up to you, but it is my firm belief that were I not heavily dependent on marijuana at the time I would not have written that post, even if I did wind up still quitting out of grief.

I will also mention as a side note that I do still hold a belief in God, but fully admit now that the logic of (God is real -> therefore demons are real -> therefore the things I'm feeling in my room are demons -> therefore I must have brought them into my room with my work -> therefore I must repent and stop translating) was a faulty delusion and not true in the slightest.

I humbly apologize to the fans, to the group, to the person I alienated perhaps permanently with my erratic psychotic behavior (you know who you are if you ever read this) but most of all I apologize to Fukumoto Nobuyuki-Sensei for ever, even in a mournful rage, insinuating that his works were sinful and wrong. They are full of powerful messages that have changed many lives for the better. I don't expect anyone to forgive me or respect me, all I ask is that you allow me to return to my life's work of bringing as many of Fukumoto's wonderful pieces to you as I can. I just want to be a part of this ride as long as I can, and fulfill the wide-eyed, far-fetched dream I had 10 years ago of personally delivering Kaiji to the English-speaking world from the day I began until the day it is completed. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you can accept me back.

Haha! But just ignore all that! That's just something that Sonic wrote back when he thought he would be allowed to come back to FKMTkrazy a few months ago. But things have changed and now, since this wonderful new translator Substar has appeared out of the woodwork to take his place, Sonickrazy is happy to move on and allow him to take over Kaiji! Oh, and I should also mention, you might also see Substar doing some other random scanlations for other series (which oddly enough are series that Sonickrazy happened to have a vested interest in before he met Substar) but don't even pay any mind to that! Just welcome aboard our newest translator and don't even think about it any further than that, okay? Okay! Welcome to Substar and may he push Kaiji to new heights! We are happy to have him and I hope you're happy to have him too! Follow our twitter at the top of the page to stay up to date on the newest chapters! And if you don't mind being in a toxic swamp of degenerates occasionally broken up by Fukumoto-related discussion and mahjong games, consider also joining our Discord, also at the top! That's it! See ya!!

Some old posts have been re-posted

2021-12-13T04:37:00.005-08:00

Since it seems like people are still visiting this blog for whatever reason, I just re-published 55 posts that I found particularly noteworthy. Of these, some had particularly meaningful rants, some had interesting information you can't find anywhere else, some were just cute, and I also re-posted all the early posts that explained what was different between the manga and anime of early Kaiji and Akagi. Of note is that I re-posted most of the later Pen-Chan posts since they were all pretty meaningful, and most of the one-shot posts as well since they typically had some kind of philosophy in them. If you would like to read them, you can click the "Archived Post" tag on the right sidebar, otherwise you'll just be seeing my downward spiral into insanity. If you want me to re-publish more posts, please let me know in the comments of this post. That is all, thank you.

I'm a Christian now. Here's why. (Video)

2020-02-18T12:16:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to reconsider my decision to quit FKMTkrazy. You guys were right, I did have a mental breakdown when I wrote that post and I was at the end of my rope. I regret saying a lot of the things I said but it's out there now and I can't take it back. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm a Christian now and that's going to take precedence in my life from this moment forward. Allow me to explain.

I QUIT

2020-02-05T15:27:00.000-08:00

I disavow the post that was here before. I still quit and I'm still a Christian but I was much too extreme in my reasoning. I am calmer now and I see that I was just too desperate to please God and said a lot of things that I don't believe. Fukumoto is a great writer and while I do still think he's not writing as well as he used to that doesn't mean it's wrong to read his works. I'm sorry for freaking out.

R.I.P. FKMTkrazy Blog, 5/24/11 - 1/22/20

2020-01-24T09:55:00.001-08:00

As I'm sure you have already noticed, the vast majority of the posts on this blog have been taken down and reverted to draft status. This is because Takeshobo, the publisher of most of Fukumoto's mahjong manga, issued a DMCA takedown through "Comeso GmbH". We at FKMTkrazy are devastated by this action, and we will be looking into other ways to continue our passion of translating Fukumoto's amazing series, whether through uploading them directly to Mangadex or by utilizing a different platform to announce our releases. But in any event, we cannot use Blogger any longer, meaning the end of our heartfelt blog posts about the series. I personally am worried that it may also jeopardize our ability to scanlate in general, as after the recent suing of Cloudflare by Takeshobo, it seems that they are cracking down on uploads of their series all together. After the takedowns have concluded, I might consider removing the links to the chapters and reposting the posts just for the contents of the blog itself. But it seems it is too dangerous now to continue doing this as we have been for any longer. I am open to suggestions for what we should do now.

No Chapter today

2020-01-10T10:34:00.000-08:00

Hey. Just letting everyone know early today that I've been sick all week with a serious cough from breathing in smoke and dust, and I wasn't able to do any work on Kaiji whatsoever. To make matters worse Tambur also woke up this morning with a cat clawing at his face and wound up with a serious injury to his left eye so he might need stitches depending on how bad it is. Hopefully we can recover in time for a release next week but well see. Prayers for Tambur!

...No Kaiji today either...

2019-11-08T12:11:00.002-08:00

I'm sorry everyone but we just couldn't get 334 ready on time for a release today. Tatts has his version of the chapter complete so if you need to read it feel free to message him on the Discord and maybe he'll send it to you. But my dad's funeral is today and I wasn't in any state of mind to do any work on it whatsoever. As a matter of fact, I might be heading to rehab for alcohol abuse, if so I'll need a month off since they don't allow access to the internet or any outside communication. We'll see if Denji or Tatts could fill in while I'm gone, or if we'll just have to go on complete hiatus. I love you all, please understand what I'm going through.

One more week...

2019-10-25T22:22:00.001-07:00

Just one more week...

No Kaiji this week either

2019-10-18T14:51:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry everyone, I'm still reeling from what happened last week and I haven't been able to do any work on the next chapter, and nobody else on our team was able to have it ready for you either. We'll see you next week and hopefully begin work on catching up.

No Kaiji this week

2019-10-11T21:40:00.000-07:00

Sonic is dealing with sudden, serious personal matters, so there will not be a Kaiji chapter this week. I may fill in to get a chapter out next week, though I won't guarantee anything because I'm busy as well. Sorry to everyone who was looking forward to it after the events of the previous chapter, but as always we'll catch up eventually.

Sorry guys, no Kaiji this week either

2019-09-06T17:59:00.001-07:00

I just got back from a week-long mahjong tournament that took up all my time and I was expecting to get one or both chapters done when I got back but I caught some kind of cold and I've been in bed asleep all day so we're going to have to delay Kaiji again this week. We'll be sure to make up for it with some multi-releases in the coming weeks but for now all I can offer in its place is this cute picture of a sleepy foxy. See you next week.

No Chapter Today

2019-08-16T10:51:00.000-07:00

Hello Fukumoto fans. I am writing this today to inform you that there was no Kaiji chapter this week due to Young Magazine itself taking a break, and due to my real life obligations I was unable to finish Chapter 32 of HERO in time for today either. I have the next chapter of Mamiya being sent to me at the moment but all I can do today is promise we will have the next chapter of HERO out soon. Thank you for understanding.

FKMTkrazy will be on The Mahjong Meetup!

2016-10-04T16:31:00.002-07:00

Tonight at 9:00 PM PST (4.5 hours from this posting) Crump and I will be on the podcast hosted by Pacific Mahjong League players Dasuke and Frenetic7, The Mahjong Meetup! Come watch!

FKMTkrazy Mahjong Tournament #2

2016-05-13T20:11:00.001-07:00

UPDATE: DUE TO AN IMPORTANT EVENT IN MY LIFE ON FRIDAY THIS TOURNAMENT HAS BEEN MOVED TO FRIDAY THE 17th THROUGH SATURDAY THE 18th!! PLEASE ADJUST YOUR AVAILABILITY ACCORDINGLY! THE DEADLINE FOR SIGNUPS WILL ALSO BE MOVED TO FRIDAY THE 10th!

So in light of our inability to release any chapters at the moment I decided now would be a good time to start the initial stages of our second mahjong tournament! And once again, the prize is a volume of a manga of your choice, translated by yours truly in a timely fashion! However, this time will be a bit different. As I do not have time to translate very many series at once, and considering that Mukoubuchi has already gone well past the 1 volume I promised to translate after last tournament, I will be willing to stop doing Mukoubuchi for a while to translate the manga you choose... IF you can beat me in the tournament!

However, as I kind of wanna keep doing Mukoubuchi, I don't want to just start from the bottom. If you want to win the prize, you'll have to earn the chance to take Mukoubuchi away from me for a while! The chance to win the aforementioned prize will only be given to the three that place the highest in the initial tournament bracket. Those three will then move on to the Championship Round, where they will play against me in a multiple-hanchan finale, where the winner gets the manga of their choice translated! And naturally, I'll be picking mukoubuchi if I win.

Tournament Structure

The tournament will once again be single-elimination. It will be held Friday, June 10th, through Saturday, June 11th, which will mostly be Saturday and Sunday for those not living in the Americas. When you enter the tournament, you will pay 50 points from the mahjong night standings as your entry fee. This 50 points will be pooled together with everyone else's and awarded proportionally based on place. If you do not have 50 points, you may go into negative numbers.

If we don't have a power of 2 number of entrants, we will have to "seed" people or start them ahead of others. What this means in this structure is that there will probably be a preliminary round in which the last-place player is eliminated and the other 3 move on. The players who get "seeded", or are able to skip this preliminary round, will be decided based on their placement in the previous tournament, and then by their total points on the "Mahjong Night Standings" page. In other words, those who placed higher or have more points will have priority to be seeded. Apart from the prelims, I'll try to make the top 2 advance in each round, though last time I had to make the semi-finals first-place-only, so that might happen again. There will be no 3-player games.

So the main tournament will work just like the previous one. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place players from the main tournament may then advance to the Championship Round, where they will play me for the all-important prize of a manga volume! Here are the prizes for the main tournament:

1st: 400 points + 50% of total entry fees + ticket to Championship Round
2nd: 300 points + 30% of total entry fees + ticket to Championship Round
3rd: 200 points + 11% of total entry fees + ticket to Championship Round
4th: 100 points + 5% of total entry fees
5th-8th: 50 points + 1% each of total entry fees
9th-12th: 30 points
13th-16th: 20 points
17th-32nd: 10 points
33rd+: nothing

I know it's a weird system but this way we can have actual prizes for the runners-up and a grand showdown finale which I think will be pretty cool. Also I want to rig it as much as possible in my favor. Hey, it's my tournament!

Tournament Rules

Main Tournament

The tournament will be held in a custom lobby that allows for these custom rules:

Open Tanyao allowed
No red tiles
Multiple Rons are decided by head-bump
Rounded-up (Kiriage) mangan
4-player riichi is not a draw
Kan Dora flipped immediately

For the Semi-Finals and Finals you will be allowed to have 2 or 3 hanchans if you so wish. If so, the points awarded per hanchan will matter. For that, the points follow this formula:

(End Points/1000)-30+UMA+OKA

For each place, the uma and oka are:

1st: UMA: +30, OKA +20
2nd: UMA: +10, OKA 0
3rd: UMA: -10, OKA 0
4th: UMA: -30, OKA 0

Championship Round

First of all, if you place in the top 3 and you do not want to pick a manga for me to translate, please tell me and I will give your ticket to the next highest placing player. If you have not decided on a manga by the time the championship round rolls around I will pass your ticket on to someone who has decided on a manga. You already earned the glory in the main tournament, so let someone who cares about manga play me!

Anyway, the championship round will be at least 3 hanchans, maybe more if people want them. The custom rules, Uma and Oka from the main tournament will still apply, but in addition, we will be adding a 5-point "Binta", a system used in Mukoubuchi! In short, people at or above 25000 (floating) will earn extra points while those below 25000 (sinking) will lose extra points. This is how it will work specifically:

If only 1st place is floating:

1st: +30
2nd: +0
3rd: -10
4th: -20

If 1st and 2nd are floating:

1st: +25
2nd: +15
3rd: -15
4th: -25

If 1st-3rd are all floating:

1st: +20
2nd: +10
3rd: +0
4th: -30

If everyone is floating (EXTREMELY UNLIKELY):

1st: +15
2nd: +5
3rd: -5
4th: -15

So even if you're in first, if you can sink everyone else you'll get even more points! And if you're last, make sure you're not the only one sinking! It should add an extra layer of strategy to the final round!

Prize Information

Now for the exciting part! If you can beat me in the Championship Round, you will be able to choose a volume of manga for me to translate. I will be obligated to put out at least 1 chapter of this manga every two weeks until the volume is complete. There is no guarantee that it will be cleaned or typeset, but I can promise that I will translate anything you throw at me, with the following rules:

Any FKMT or Mahjong manga is an automatic pass, but you may not choose something we are already translating (Kaiji, Akagi, HERO, Kurosawa, Tetsuya, Naki no Ryuu or Mukoubuchi)
If the volume in question does not have chapter distinctions, I will be allowed to decide where to define "chapters" as beginning and ending.
If the manga is not a FKMT or Mahjong manga, I will not be releasing it under FKMTkrazy or Mahjongkrazy.
I reserve the right to ask you to change your choice for the following reasons:

The manga is licensed
There are no existing raws for the manga
It is not in Japanese
The requested content has existing and adequate translations

I will NOT decline a manga because I don't like it or it isn't my genre of choice. So yes, Shoujo manga are fine. sigh.

UPDATE: You may also choose novels, games, or any other form of written media, or a movie with Japanese subtitles included, so long as it does not conflict with any of the above criteria

Application

Please fill out the following and post it in the comments section below to apply for the tournament. You must have a Tenhou ID. To register one, follow this procedure taken from arcturus.su's Tenhou documentation:

To register an ID, click the Register ID option on the Login window. In the textbox, type in an alias which will be associated with that ID (permanently - you can't change it). It can't be an already registered alias and it can be up to 8 glyphs wide (that is, latin, greek, kana, kanji, or any other Unicode glyph). Press OK and a confirmation window will pop up with your ID asking if you are sure you want to register it. The left button confirms while the right cancels. The following window will have a textbox with a ID########-######## format string in it. Copy that into a text file or remember it for future use. Plug that string into the alias box of the login screen whenever you want to play with that ID. Tenhou will automatically keep ranks and records for the ID.

Preferred Username: _________

Tenhou ID (the name you registered with, not the login ID): _________

Time Zone: _________
Times Available, Friday (sat for non-americans): ________
Times Available, Saturday (sun for non-americans): _______

Manga of choice: ________

I hope to have a fun and exciting tournament, and may the best man win!

Mahjongkrazy Happenings

2015-10-19T20:43:00.002-07:00

Hey mahjong fans! Did you know that mahjongkrazy has been releasing new mahjong manga?! Well now you do! I'm here to announce THREE series that are getting releases! Go check them out at "Mahjongkrazy Branch" up there in the top bar! Thanks to Denji and Chuck for keeping releases coming!

First, there's the ever-popular Legendary Gambler Tetsuya, which had a long gap in releases, but that gap has been broken by our resident damn punk, Chuck190! Tetsuya is a manga about post-war japan and the mahjong games that happened around the 1940's, which involved some heavy cheating. Releases done sporadically.

Then, there's Naki no Ryuu, one of the pioneers of the mahjong manga scene, which popularized doing crazy stuff while playing and looking cool doing it. It stars a guy named Ryuu who plays for Yakuza in high-stakes mahjong games, and plays in a way that defies explanation. Released every friday.

Finally, I'm doing a manga called Mukoubuchi, a tale of high-stakes underground mahjong. The 1980's saw a big economic bubble that led to high stakes games unlike anything the world had ever seen. And in it, a man some call Kai lives as a Mukoubuchi, a lone-wolf gambler that lives off high-stakes games. Terribly sorry, but releases will only be every other monday.

FKMTkrazy Mahjong Tournament Bracket!

2015-09-13T20:41:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone! The FKMTkrazy mahjong tournament is now all planned and ready to go! You can view the full bracket here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1clDjrvjEvlBeSVT8RAxzAd2NE1CUz-yyRJi-yYe0xz4/edit?usp=sharing

The tournament will be held in this lobby: http://tenhou.net/0/?C54071867

If there are any adjustments that you want me to make or any mistakes that you catch, please let me know by Thursday so I can fix them and let everyone else know! If you didn't sign up in time for the tournament, we may need some people to fill in in case people don't show up on time. Details on this and other aspects of the tournament below the cut.

Tournament Structure

As you can see, the tournament will take place over 3 to 4 rounds. I wanted to have the whole tournament be top-2-advance, but since we have players from all over the world and the times do not coincide very much, I had to divide it into 4 divisions, where the top player of each division advances to the finals.

Also of note is the fact that some players start ahead of others. This is called "seeding" players, and it was done based on the positions of the players on the "mahjong night standings" page at the time I made the bracket. The top 11 players on the standings start in the quarter finals, while the other 28 players will begin in the preliminary matches where only the last-place player is eliminated.

The specific positions in each division were randomized using random.org.

Each game will be one hanchan, no red fives, open tanyao allowed, rounded-up mangan, with multiple rons decided by head-bump. Also important to note is that 4-player riichi is NOT a draw, so be careful about that one.

In the semi-finals and finals, we have enough time for best of 2 or 3 hanchans. You may request to have it be best of 2 or 3 before the game starts, and if all the players agree to it that's what we'll do.

For the final table, I will ask each of the finalists from tables P, Q, R, and S what their availabilities on Sunday will be, and use that to schedule the final table.

Attendance Policy

Because the times I've set are pretty tight, I'm going to need everyone to be right on time. I've allotted 1 hour and 30 minutes for each hanchan, and while most hanchans only last about 45 minutes on tenhou they can easily stretch to an hour or more. So if you're more than 15 minutes late, I'll have to count you as a no-show and disqualify you. If you're disqualified in one of the preliminary, 3-player-advance matches, the other 3 players will advance to the quarter finals without contest. Otherwise, I will need someone to stand in for you.

If anyone would like to volunteer to stand in for players, please check the schedule on the bracket page (second tab at the bottom) and see how many of the quarter-final-and-on matches you can make it to, and let me know in the comments. Ideally, I'd like to have 2 players in the wings for each match from the quarter finals on, just in case. You can stand in for a player even if you're in the tournament in another division.

When standing in for a player, your placement has no bearing on who advances; If you get first place, second place and third place will advance. As such, I'd suggest you try and stay out of other players' way to affect the match as little as possible, but it's up to you.

I will be streaming the tournament live on http://twitch.tv/sonickrazy, so tune in and watch!

FKMTkrazy Mahjong Tournament

2015-08-29T11:00:00.000-07:00

Yes, you read it right, FKMTkrazy will be holding its first-ever Mahjong tournament on Friday and Saturday, September 18th - 19th! I originally wanted to have it on the 25th-26th, but the NYC mahjong tournament is being held then and I don't want to have to compete with them. What will the prize be, you ask? The winner of the tournament will receive... the right to choose which manga I translate next!!! But fear not, this will not interfere with our current release schedule. We will still be doing Kaiji as planned each week. More information below the cut.

Prize Information

Let's start with the juicy bit: the prize. The last player standing will be able to choose a volume of manga for me to translate. I will be obligated to put out at least 1 chapter of this manga every two weeks until the volume is complete. There is no guarantee that it will be cleaned or typeset, but I can promise that I will translate anything you throw at me, with the following rules:

Any FKMT or Mahjong manga is an automatic pass
If we are already translating the manga, I will put out twice as many chapters.
If the volume in question does not have chapter distinctions, I will be allowed to decide where to define "chapters" as beginning and ending.
If the manga is not a FKMT or Mahjong manga, I will not be releasing it under FKMTkrazy or Mahjongkrazy.
I reserve the right to ask you to change your choice for the following reasons:

The manga is licensed
There are no existing raws for the manga
It is not in Japanese
The requested content has existing and adequate translations

I will NOT decline a manga because I don't like it or it isn't my genre of choice. So yes, Shoujo manga are fine. sigh.

If the winner does not want to pick a manga, the right will go to the second-place finisher, then the third-place finisher if they also do not want to pick a manga, and so on.

Tournament Rules

The exact format of the tournament will vary depending on the amount of applicants. If the amount of applicants is not a power of 2, we will need to "seed" people, or start them ahead of other players. Seeds will be given with priority to players who are ranked higher on the Mahjong Night Standings page at the time I write up the tournament bracket. It will be a single-elimination tournament, and while I will try to make each game have the top 2 advance with the exception of the final round, time restraints or number of participants may cause that to fluctuate. There will be no 3-player games.

The tournament will be held on Tenhou.net, with a custom lobby that will permit these custom rules:

Open Tanyao is allowed
No red tiles
Multiple rons are decided by head-bump
Rounded-up (kiriage) mangan
4-player Riichi is not a draw

Depending on the number of applicants, I may also need to include these rules to save time:

No abortive draws
No west rounds
3-second timer, 5-second time bank (as opposed to the normal 5 and 10)

Application

To register an ID, click the Register ID option on the Login window. In the textbox, type in an alias which will be associated with that ID (permenantly - you can't change it). It can't be an already registered alias and it can be up to 8 glyphs wide (that is, latin, greek, kana, kanji, or any other Unicode glyph). Press OK and a confirmation window will pop up with your ID asking if you are sure you want to register it. The left button confirms while the right cancels. The following window will have a textbox with a ID########-######## format string in it. Copy that into a text file or remember it for future use. Plug that string into the alias box of the login screen whenever you want to play with that ID. Tenhou will automatically keep ranks and records for the ID.

Preferred Username: _________

Tenhou ID (the name you registered with, not the login ID): _________

Time Zone: _________
Times Available, Friday (sat for non-americans): ________
Times Available, Saturday (sun for non-americans): _______

Manga of choice: ________

I hope to have a fun and exciting tournament, and may the best man win!

EDIT: The deadline for signups has been moved up to Sunday, September 13th since I'll need a while to work out the bracket, and to give people plenty of notice for when their games will be. Please ensure your application is on time.

April Fool's 2015: Akagi Zawa... Zawa... Anthology

2015-04-01T17:12:00.004-07:00

So, to continue the tradition we started last year, here's a triple-dose of Akagi "Zawa..." "Zawa..." Anthology! This time, the theme is "Oneshots written by other famous Gambling Mangaka"! A big thanks to Denji for doing the translations for this one, and to Tambur for the ever-stellar typesetting, AND cleaning!

I will not be streaming this Sunday, because I'll be at Sakura-Con Friday-Sunday this week! If you're going, you should stop by the mahjong room and look for a guy with messy red hair and glasses so we can shoot the breeze! There will be a mahjong night this Saturday on the FKMTkrazy IRC, and I will not be there for similar reasons.

Akagi-San, 18
Stripping Apocalypse Akagi
The such-and-so that went down to the beach

This one comes to you from the author of Usagi, Itou Makoto. I didn't find this one all that funny, I more wished that Akagi vs. Washizu vs. Soga vs. Yamashiro actually happened. I like the art style though, I'll have to check out Usagi some time.

This one comes to you from the author of Tohai, Shinasaka Kouji! The first episode of the Tohai live action drama was recently subbed over at Osamuko, and you can go check it out here!

As for the chapter itself, I did find this one pretty funny, especially the punchline at the end. I like how intensely this eroge was portrayed, as well.

This one's probably my favorite of the bunch, written by Katayama Masayuki, author of "Manchou! Tsumo Kuratetsu", an ongoing mahjong manga in Kindai Mahjong. I just thought this one was legitimately funny and I have to give major props to Denji for translating this pretty much exactly how I would have done it.

Check back tomorrow for more excitement!

Halloween Release: Akagi Musou (Zawa Anthology)

2014-10-31T13:06:00.002-07:00

Yes! This halloween, we bring you two tales that put Akagi in the most horrifying situations he has ever faced! Curl up in horror as we take you through moments in which even Akagi himself cannot keep his cool!!

Akagi Musou

Ok, but seriously, these chapters are pretty silly. Akagi is VERY out of character in them, and I actually wasn't completely thrilled to be translating them. But they were the most Halloween-y chapters in the anthology so I figured we may as well get them out of the way.

I did enjoy the first chapter, it crossed the line twice for me, being so over the top out of character that it became funny. But the second chapter was still kind of believable which made it kind of hard to read with how much shit was being dug up about my favorite manga character. I'm sure some people loved it, but it just wasn't my kind of humor.

April Fool's Day Release: 3 Akagi Zawa Zawa Anthology Chapters

2014-04-01T11:47:00.001-07:00

Rather than doing some lame bait and switch joke, I figured just releasing a few new parody shorts of Akagi would be better, and probably better appreciated as well. The theme for these chapters isssss... shorts done by the mangaka of other mahjong/gambling manga! That's right, we have for you chapters done by Owada Hideki (author of Legend of Koizumi/Mudazumo Naki no Kaikaku), Shinobu Kaitani (author of One Outs and Liar Game), and Maeda Jirou (author of HERO)! They're all super short, though, the one we did last time was literally 5 times longer than any other manga in the collection. Let's get to it!

Thanks to Biggums for the quick cleans, and to Tambur for the impeccable typesetting! Maybe there will be something tomorrow for our anniversary as well? I sure hope we didn't forget!!

The Akagi Manga
Akagi: Baseball Edition
Chicken

This one is short even among the shorts in the anthology, but it fit with the theme I was going for with this release so I tossed it in. It's done by the same mangaka who did Legend of Koizumi, so it's no surprise that Koizumi makes an appearance, and the awkwardness of him appearing as-is in 1965 is the punchline of the manga. TO BE CONTINUED... never.

This one's pretty good. It's done, obviously, by the author who wrote One Outs, Shinobu Kaitani. In this short, Akagi is now a professional baseball pitcher! I didn't know he could pitch! And what's more, he claims he'll shut down the battery with a single pitch! How can he do this?! Well, with a pickoff attempt. Yeah.

Finally, this one's done by Fukumoto's assistant, Maeda Jirou, author of HERO! A lot of the humor in this chapter doesn't translate very well, but let me try and walk you through it. The name of the game that Akagi plays at the start of his series is Chicken, but in Japanese it's called a "Chicken Run". For this reason, this short literally has chickens running towards a goal, risking their lives in a chicken run. Hopefully just Chicken works well enough to get the joke across.

Next, the lines that Akagi and Washizu say over the first three pages are taken directly from the first few chapters of the Washizu arc, with some words changed to make them parodies. I used my translations of those chapters as the basis for those lines, but if you've never read the manga scanlations it might go over your head because it's not the exact same wording. I guess I have myself to blame for changing the wording, but oh well.

Finally, the "Get paddling!" lines are taken from the Ten manga, and also from the HERO manga during Hiroyuki's flashbacks. I again used my own translations from HERO as the basis for the wording here, but I think it was similar at least in the Ten scanlations.

Well, I hope you enjoyed these three super-short chapters, and will come back to see all the surprises the Zawa Zawa Anthology still has in store! When will we be releasing more chapters, you ask? Well.........

New Year's Release: Akagi, Defender of Planet Earth

2013-12-31T17:09:00.002-08:00

And now for something completely different! A lot of you have been requesting that we do the Akagi Zawa Zawa Anthology for some time now, and while we don't have the whole thing for you, we do have the longest and (imo) best parody in the anthology, Akagi: Defender of Planet Earth by Tony Takezaki! Let me just clarify that there are no spoilers for the real Akagi manga in this one (you could even read it without having heard of Akagi before and not be spoiled on hardly anything), so don't worry about that. More on that in a minute, but first...

Thanks to Crump for stepping up to clean this. Typesetting by me. Mahjong Night will be Saturday the 7th at 23:00 GMT (3:00 PM PST). I'm certain I'll be there this time, so no need to prepare for what might happen if I'm not.

Chapter Link

"Antimatter Palpolpen! Youshi Musou! Baibaioh Paipapallin!!"

Okay, so let's just get the explanation out of the way first. Why choose this chapter out of all the chapters in the anthology? Well, there's several reasons. First of all, it's the longest one, stretching out to 20 pages when most of the chapters are like 3 or 4 pages. It's also probably the most elaborate parody, poking fun at everything from the complexity of mahjong to the outrageous metaphors and even the ever-present "modern day" notes. Third, I feel like it's the one that you really need to understand to appreciate; most of the other chapters in the anthology are funny enough through just the pictures alone, but for this one you really need the translation to really get what's happening. Finally, and probably most important for me, it has NO spoilers for anything that happens in the Akagi manga. That last one is a real major thing for me, I wouldn't have been willing to do it if it spoiled things (there's other chapters in the anthology that do spoil things that our translations haven't gotten to yet), so I'm really glad that that's the case.

Besides all that, though, I felt like this was among the top 2 or 3 chapters in the anthology anyway, and I felt it would be a lot of fun to translate, which it was. I might do some other non-spoilery chapters later on, there's still a couple that I feel need to be translated to be understood, particularly the one by Maeda Jirou (author of HERO).

But enough about that, let's get down to business. Earth is under attack by Aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy, and certainly do not come in peace. All hope seems lost, but luckily they are giving the Earthlings one last hope to reclaim their planet in the form of Space Mahjong. They do not think there is any chance of the Earthlings' victory, but little do they know that Earth has an unmatched genius on their side in the form of Akagi Shigeru!

A lot of chapters in the anthology turn the characters into over-exaggerated caricatures of themselves, but what I like about this one is that all the characters act pretty much exactly like themselves, and the parody merely comes in exaggerating what goes on around them. While Washizu is not present himself, we of course have his personality implanted into the Silver Alien, who provides us with plenty of face-meltingly good expressions. This is probably the parody that shows the most appreciation for the original work instead of just pointing out its flaws, so if you found this chapter distasteful you'd better stay far far away from the rest of the anthology.

I've said so much already and have barely even introduced the chapter, but I think it's sufficient to say that I liked this parody and it made me laugh a lot. I especially liked the "These awards of national honor in 1965 are exactly the same in modern times" line, since I too have noticed how often Fukumoto has to clarify that, yes, 600 Million yen was ten times more in 1965 than it is today. To say nothing of the ending, which is the perfect way to end it.

Penguin71

2013-12-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

I've got a confession to make. As you guys can tell, releases of Kaiji have been erratic and sparse, to put it kindly. In light of this, I've decided to leave FKMTkrazy. I've thought about it for while, and thought in the end it that it simply wasn't fair to everyone. For FKMTkrazy to wait for me to do my share of the work and for readers of Kaiji to have to suffer from my inactivity.

It's been a fun ride. Approximately a year. Hundreds of chapters, thousands of pages, and tens of thousands of words. I learned a lot about how groups operate, how much effort was put into each chapter, and how difficult Mahjong is. But all good things must come to an end. There isn't much else to say. I'm a Fukumoto fan, through and through, just as you guys are, and I'll always be following this group and the releases. I'll simply be part of the audience instead of the actors this time.

I want to give a final thanks to FKMTkrazy for all they've done for me. I was a complete amateur when I first joined (probably through a fluke, really), but they gave me a chance, and that's a lot more than most groups would do. It was fun chatting with everything behind the scenes and playing Mahjong when I could. A special mention goes out to Sonickrazy, for keeping us all together and for having to deal with my sporadic work.

Of course, I also want to show my gratitude to the readers for following all throughout this time. My typesetting work isn't the greatest and my blogs aren't the most interesting, but I'm grateful for everyone who stuck through it.

さようなら、みんな.

New Side Project Options

2013-08-23T23:21:00.003-07:00

So, now that we're done with Rude 39, I suppose we have room for another side project to put out once every couple months on the side. Of note is the fact that I am NOT looking for a major commitment like Hero or Washizu that you'll be expecting regular releases from, this is just something for me to work on when I don't have anything else going on. We have the RAWs for the following Fukumoto works, so if you see one you like, please give it a vote in the poll on the sidebar, and don't forget you can vote for multiple!

Also, THERE WILL BE A MAHJONG DAY SATURDAY AT 22:00 GMT (3:00 PM PST)!! That's today for some and tomorrow for others. See you on the IRC!

First, we have for you the leftovers from last time I asked you for a side project, to which you loudly replied "RUDE 39". These were scrounged up by our good friend Skutieos, but aren't actually as rare as some of the other stuff I have in store for you. First up of those is...

If you're looking for a hot and spicy 80's romantic comedy, look no further than the second earliest FKMT work I have available, Wani no Hatsukoi (Wani's First Love)!

Fukumoto-Sensei himself called it the predecessor to Kurosawa, so if you're really really looking forward to the New Kurosawa series, perhaps seeing where it all began will help tide you over. The story focuses on a fellow named Wani who's still a bit new to the dating scene despite being well up in years, but he's willing to stick his neck out for a girl he's interested in. The story isn't just about romance, there's also some life lessons and Kurosawa-esque comedy mixed in as well. I was a bit hesitant to try this the first time I asked, but I think my translation ability has developed enough to where I can try my hand at it. You'd be looking at much slower releases than a lot of other options, though, since there's a lot of text per page and it might take me a while to get through them.

Next up on our list is Gin Yanma, or Gin's Lament. It stars a man who looks like Katagiri (whose name is now Ginji) playing mahjong against several underground pros due to personal requests from friends of his. It's kind of a miniature version of Ten, with tons of cheating and outrageous tactics taking place over the 5 chapters. It would be a very easy manga for me to translate, as I'm quite familiar with all the Mahjong lingo, so you could expect very quick releases. And hey, more Mahjong can never hurt, right?

Now, this manga I'm sure most of you have at least heard of, so I won't bother putting in any mangacaps. It's Atsuize Pen-Chan, a very comical manga about a young man nicknamed Pen-Chan for his love of Mahjong (Penchan is a type of wait in Mahjong, known in english as an End Wait, like 12 waiting on 3). He's not very good at Mahjong, but boy is he passionate about it! I've had a look at some of the later chapters, and they got a serious chuckle from me, so I can say honestly that I'd be thrilled to continue from Chapter 6, where the anonymous scanlators left off. The one problem is that I only have Volume 1 available, and there's a whole other volume out there as of yet unscanned, so I'd have to drop it once I was through Chapter 11 unless someone would be kind enough to buy volume 2 and scan it. But it would be very fast for me, and very enjoyable to do as well.

Now, for a horse-racing manga that was given to me to scan by the wonderful Wright of Happyscans!, by the name of Burai na Kaze Tetsu! (Self-Reliant Wind, Tetsu) If you guys were able to wrap your minds around the colorful game of Pachinko, horse racing should be a much easier pastime to understand. Heck, you can even do it in your country, in all likelihood!

This story was coupled in a release with Atsuize Tenma, so I've been itching to get my hands on it for a long time. It stars the fellow on the cover, Tetsu, who's an up-and-coming horse jockey who's having a hard time winning races. It focuses more on the races themselves than the betting that goes on, but you'd be ashamed to think we could have a horse racing manga without any betting at all. And guess what, there's actually women gambling in it! So yeah, should be fun to see where it leads, if you want to give it a shot. I could probably get chapters out at a moderate pace, and it's relatively short as well, since these manga were also included in the same volume:

This one's apparently quite a rarity, I have yet to see it on an official list of Fukumoto's works besides my own. But regardless, it's called Korinai Samba, or the Ne'er-do-well Samba. It's about being in prison, with some tales of cruelty added to the mix. So if you liked the jailbreak part of Buraiden Gai, you should find this 3-chapter series to be quite enjoyable.

And to finish us off, I have for you two one-shots by Fukumoto. The one on the left is Jinan no Blues, or The Blues of a Second Son. It's a tragedy, but I don't want to say any more than that about it. It's quite good, if you liked The Night the Stars Fall, you should like this one as well.

And the one on the right was not scanned by me, hence the scratchy style of it. But it is, get ready for it, LITERALLY THE OLDEST manga in Fukumoto's collection. It's called Yoroshiku! Junjou Daisho, it's something like Wani no Hatsukoi in tone, and it's also a love story, but it should be enjoyable simply because it was written wayyy back in the 70's, when Fukumoto was still using a pseudonym, Fukumoto Tobi. So if you want to read Fukumoto's very first work, look no further than right here!

Sorry for the lengthy post, but I wanted to lay out all the options on the table at once so you can pick out what you really want to see. As I say, if you pick anything other than a Oneshot, it will be a while before it's complete as I'm going to be mostly focusing on Kaiji and Akagi. But if you need something to fill the void now that Rude 39 is over, be sure to drop a vote for your favorite in the poll on the sidebar!

FKMTkrazy Needs Your Help!

2013-07-01T17:53:00.001-07:00

Okay, after waiting around for a while for people to get things done to no success, I've decided that it's time we get some more help to get this group back on its feet. We're okay for Typesetters as far as I can tell, but since cleaning is such a taxing job I've decided that we should get as many cleaners as possible. No longer will we be having a single cleaner for each series, it's clear to me now that there is a much higher need for cleaners than any of the other two jobs. I plan to get as many people as possible to clean, so we can have multiple chapters of each series being worked on at once. Since cleaning does take a lot of time and effort, I think that's for the best.

Now, this is not to say that we'll be taking just anyone who says they want to help out cleaning. I'm afraid you'll have to prove it to me by cleaning the next chapter of Akagi. To help you, I have included with the chapter a few tips that I've gathered over the years. The link to the chapter is at the end of this post. It's quite a lot of text, but I've included some images and even an example to give you an idea of what I need you to do. Try and do your best, so long as you put in a good amount of effort I'm willing to put you on the team.

Also, because of this boom of cleaners, we MAY need a few more typesetters to compensate. I'm not sure, but if cleaning seems too daunting to you you can try your hand at typesetting. I've included some fonts and the script in the rar. The link to that is at the end of the post, as well.

So yeah, sorry for the month-long absence, I don't really have a good excuse or anything, I just took some time off. While all of you are working I'll be cranking out some translations so we can get back to it with a bang. On a similar note, I've closed the donations box for now. It's probably unrelated to the drop in releases, but it did signal the start of the fall for us, so we may as well just get rid of it altogether. If enough people want it back up later, I'll reinstate it.

Oh, and should we try for a Mahjong Day this Saturday? I think we should try for a Mahjong Day this saturday.

LINK FOR CLEANERS-TO-BE

LINK FOR TYPESETTER-HOPEFULS