Also mahjong is not that difficult. I’ve gotten plenty of my normie friends and my family learning and having fun even in their first match. You’re just creating 4 melds and a pair. A meld can be a sequence of numbers like 123 or 456 or triplets like 777 or 888. Then your hand needs a winning condition called a “yaku” which there are a lot of. The difficult and confusion of the game comes in memorizing Yaku but it’s really not so bad. They’re just poker hands that are worth more points based off how rare or difficult it is to make that hand. There’s simple yaku like all simples, which is having a hand with no honor tiles (dragons winds) or terminals (1’s or 9’s) or yakuhai (having 3 of a dragon tile or your rounds wind tile), or like all triplets etc etc. so many options. It’s literally just super poker. And in Kaiji the mahjong arc is basically the two players making almost complete hands worth a lot of points and being one tile away from victory, both of them discard tiles in hopes that they don’t play the tile that the other needs to complete their super powerful hand.

I finally found this general after embarrassing myself on the mobile game board looking for you fucks..
I am relatively new to the world of mahjong and it’s become quite an obsession of mine. Trying to teach my cat who is starting to make mangan hands now. I FUCKING love mahjong.

Hell yeah man
I watched the Kaiji anime a decade ago when I was a small lad and only recently at the ripe ol age of 25 rewatched it and continued on with the manga and it unironically changed my fucking life trajectory. I’ve read a lot of Fukumotos work now and I love gambling manga. Usugoi is a fucking insane ride as well, high recommend after you’re done with Kaiji.
It is an incredibly fun ride and the next couple games take place in one single night where Kaiji goes through sheer hell in Minefiled Mahjong, witnessing the Slavation Game and then finally facing off against the devil himself in One Poker to cap the night off.
Minefield Mahjong may be incredibly confusing at first and I actually read the entire thing complete clueless for the most part on how the game was being played and still had a wonderful time witnessing all the reveals and big character moments, and it most definitely sparked my interest in mahjong in a major way, I own my own tiles now and play with my friends and have a thorough understanding of how the game is played. The one they play in Kaiji is very simplified though, for the most part.
Kaiji is just such an awesome character, one of the best main characters ever put to page if you ask me. There is such a sincerity to Kaiji. It’s one of my favorites.
Pic related, my cat learning mahjong.