Akagi is a manga about a youngster that willingly discards his life and safety for a gamble. In general it is a great manga, but some arcs simply seem too drawn out and slow. The art isn't very good meaning that, even though that all the characters look fairly different, you can get confused sometimes (the same thing sometimes happens with the plot). Still - it's a great manga, by my standards much better than Kaiji, therefore I recommend it to all of you who like mystery and gamble/mahjong manga with a lot of seinen elements.