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

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.