Flying Legend of Mahjong / The Calling Dragon {麻雀飛翔伝 哭きの竜} / Naki no Ryuu OVAs
The title (Naki no Ryuu) is a play on the mahjong action of "calling [tiles]," both "to call" and "to cry" are naki, though they utilize different kanji and the one in the title is that for crying specifically. At least that's the conclusion we've arrived to, manga translators kept it as "crying dragon" - I don't know what was their logic behind this, but in any case we decided on "calling" (as in I asked "is it 'calling'?" and muzu said "ye"). The other part of the title - Mahjong Hishouden - nobody in the world knows what the flying fuck hishouden is, literal translation is "flying legend" so I went with this. Needless to say, in this show, Ryuu neither cries nor flies.
Bandai version:
Episode 1 covers volume 1 through 4 (with omissions); the first 22 chapters were scanlated, so I stole the translation from there whenever I could because I don't care and their language seems to be better than mine. Huge shoutout to whoever did that, it won't be an exaggeration to say the translation for at least 2 episodes here belongs to them, all I did was time it.
Episode 2 moves from volume 4 to 5. That's outside the translated part, I consulted the original.
Episode 3 finishes volume 5 and covers half of volume 6. Chapter 44 is where the adaptation ends.
The Toshiba version - funnily enough, it seems both versions were produced by gainax / magic bus - it's as though they were making amends for how shitty the previous version turned out - is literally the same thing as the episode 1 of the other OVA, except that it looks a little prettier - covers chapters 2 through 10, effectively volume 2 only. I'd actually recommend you to start editing/typesetting from here, even though it's not the production order. This version of episode 1 is easier to follow and get your bearings. The translation is also more fleshed out.
Less relevant notes:
I don't know why I picked this up, I think I might just like to hurt myself.
Episode 1: It's actually crazy how the first half of episode 1 is a hotchpotch of random moments from manga, glued together in an incomprehensible mess. I won't say the original manga is great, but it was perfectly comprehensible, easy to follow, and engaging, to an extent. Meanwhile, here, for the first 30 minutes you just find yourself overwhelmed by tons of characters, their backstories, respective organizations, etc., dumped on you all at once in the form of a narrative that keeps jumping back and forward in time. I deadass had to compile a mind chart on miro (https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVLa_50Do=/?share_link_id=837857616312) just to be able to make out what's going on. It's almost as bad as when I did Genji (Part 1) for Orphan. I have a theory that the scriptwriter felt the urge to change the flow of the story somehow just for the sake of it, simply to leave a mark or something, until someone finally told him off. Whoever it was, I am grateful to him as after that the show adapted the manga virtually frame-by-frame so it was extremely easy to follow for cribbing lines.
Episode 2 is the only one more or less good. Or rather, un-awful. So much so I have nothing else to add on it. They use the words for relative direction of a player a lot, which is as follows
> Shimocha 「下家」, or player to the right
> Toimen 「対面」, or player across
> Kamicha「上家」, or player to the left
(idk what you gonna do with this info but muzu said it's important)
Episode 3 is back in the shitter again. Literally half of it is comprised by flashbacks to previous episodes. Another one of my theories is that they put this episode together at the last minute when they didn't have time to animate a whole episode properly. Either that, or making a show from flashbacks comes with releasing your episodes with a one-year window.
The 1991 OVA - by and large, it's literally the same thing as episode 1 of the 1988 OVA, albeit with better pacing and graphics. Fun fact: with the mad amount of flashbacks to episode 1 in episode 3 of the 1988 OVA, I could type some lines here by heart, even without opening up other episodes to copy-paste it by the time I got here.
That said, if you remember my gripes with shitty storytelling in 1988 version's episode 1, I could unironically recommend watching this instead. Here, at least, they didn't reinvent the wheel and kept the order of events from the manga. And it's just a better adaptation overall. If some line sounds the same in those two episodes, but translated differently, the one in the 1991 one is most likely to be better. Or just choose one yourself. Or don't and just don't give a crap like I did. Who's ever gonna watch this anyway, am I right? Let alone both versions of it.
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