Spoilers solely regarding the prequels Akagi and Ten - The Blessed Way of the Nice Guy are left unmarked. You have been warned.
(Currently under construction, feel free to contribute)HERO - Akagi no Ishi O Tsugu Otoko note is a manga drawn by Jirou Madea, in close cooperation with Nobuyuki Fukumoto. It was published in Kindai Mahjong, and from October 2009 until the conclusion in July 2021,spans 18 volumes. It serves as a direct sequel to Ten-The Blessed Way of the Nice Guy.
It has been excatly three years since Akagi Shigeru died, and Hiroyuki Igawa has since turned his life around. Following Akagi's advice, he now works as a mahjong player in parlors. On that day on Akagi's grave, he meets Ten Takashi and promptly challenges him to a mahjong match to test his own skills. Ten agrees to this, but after 24 hours of playing, Ten gets a phone call and then disappears. To make matters even worse, Sawada gets kidnapped just afterwards in exchange for Hiroyuki being let go. Thus, Hiro's search for his two friends begins..
HERO provides examples of:
- Absurdly High-Stakes Game: In Ten, the highest stake was the mahjong gambling ruleset inside Japan, between the eastern faction and the western faction. Here, a similar East-West-War happens, with the future of the whole gambling world of Japan on the stake
- Anime Hair: Ten, of course again.
- Cheaters Never Prosper: Zig-Zagged, depending on who plays. Though throughout the whole series, there's only one instance where cheating is detected and prevented, in every other case there's either no consequence or the cheat turns into the cheater's downfall.
- Chromosome Casting: Not even a handful of women are shown in the series, and only one has a somewhat important role.
- Cool Boat: The latter half of the setting takes place on a luxury liner.
- The Gambler: This is a manga focusing on Mahjong, so it's a given that just about everyone is.
- Lighter and Softer: In comparison to its prequels, definitely. While those had no problem to let people risk thier life in a game or actually let someone die, here even a death elevator is not lethal at all. Nevertheless, the stakes are huge.
- Subverted in that rarely, the regular Imagine Spots are still showing injuries or even the death of whoever dealt in. And not to mention some nightmare faces or actual injuries
