Akagi Shigeru

The autassassinophile
After participating in a game of Chicken, where neither player hits the breaks, and both end up in the ocean, Akagi runs from the cops to a nearby mahjong parlor, and ends up playing against the yakuza for a man trying to clear his debt named Nangou. The room quickly sees him as a mahjong genius, as he even uses the eventual appearance of the police to help him win the match. After defeating the opponent rep player, he is convinced to stop doubling up, and wait to play with an overseer to make sure he gets paid, by the cop Yasuoka, who sees Akagi as a way to make money.

After getting a gun from the yakuza members, Akagi scares off the the gang members related to the Chicken game, and shows up late to a match against the blind mahjong master Ichikawa. Akagi successfully uses his cheating against him, and wins the match, but is left unsatisfied, as the yakuza refuse to have a rematch they know they will lose, after this Akagi vanishes.

6 years later Akagi is working in a toy factory, before he is approached to meet a fake version of himself, brought by Yasuoka as a money making scheme. After winning a small gamble agaisnt the fake, proving his ability, Akagi returns to work, where Osamu, who was forced to play mahjong in his absence is being cheated. Akagi wraps them up in a gamble for their life savings, and takes them for all their worth, before quickly being taken back to battle against the Fake Akagi. However Akagi predicts that the fake will lose the match, and once this comes to pass, Akagi defeats Urabe in his stead. Urabe, now deep in debt with disheveled hands wants a rematch, but Akagi shuts him down, asking him to bet his hands instead, because the essence of gambling is "a meaningless death", Akagi is left wandering once again searching for said death match.

Akagi reunites with Osamu to give him his cut of the money, and is forced into a match with Nakai, who is sure Akagi is cheating, yet is defeated by Akagi who breaks down his cheating method. Akagi soon vanishes after this.

Akagi reappears playing evens and odds against yakuza, winning consistently, though this gets him in trouble, the yakuza want him to admit he rolled a number he did not to get their money back, refusing to back down, Akagi is cut in the shoulder by a sword, and almost killed, until Yasukoa bursts in to save him. Akagi is informed at the hospital that mysterious deaths have occurred, including Hiriyama, the Fake Akagi, and they want Akagi to come in and defeat the murderer.

Akagi then meets Washizu Iwao, who has been holding matches where players must bet their own blood against his fortune, Akagi enters the death match, refusing to transfuse blood back into his body. When Akagi finally loses 2000 ccs, the fatal amount, he survives, having pumped 500 extra ccs of blood into his body before the match. Eventually Akagi takes his entire fortune, and Washizu begins to bet his own blood. After multiple brushes with death, Washizu eventually dies right before his own victory, and his white suits forfeit the match to transfuse his blood back. Akagi leaves his own cut of the fortune behind, deciding that he didn't defeat Washizu, he only outlived him.

6 years pass, and Akagi is now being followed by Osamu. Frequently winning huge amounts of money in gambles, an exciting venture Osamu, to Akagi's own detriment, who is trying to get Osamu to leave him alone, telling him people like him "start to think they're my friend". When the house comes demanding money back from Akagi, he finds a way to escape with his money. During this time he is being chased by Washizu, who demands a rematch. While he still thinks about Washizu, stopping at Washizugatani Station, seemingly on the simple whim it happens to contain Washizu's name, Akagi shows no interest in a rematch. Akagi, after imagining Washizu in the local bathhouse, tells Osamu he can stop by the bathhouses, and he may even meet "someone you'd never want to meet".

During this time in his life, Akagi is obsessed with getting to the essence of gambling, which he has surmised to be "a meaningless death". Due to this obsession, he constantly raises stakes with the main purpose being to force his opponents to put everything on the line, by extension of this goal, Akagi is more than willing to lose his own life to the whims of a gamble. This attitude causes him to be described as insane, or a demon due to the skill that accompanies these death matches, Ohgi surmises what Akagi yearns for is not a worthless death, but an even match that will finally excite him, a goal mostly fulfilled by his match agaisnt Washizu. During this time Akagi is friendless, wandering without making many connections, and only seeming irritated by the attachment characters like Osamu have towards him. By the end of this match, Akagi confirms to himself that when he dies he wants to die as himself, the same way Washizu did.

And he has come to TFR for that, after all, what better way to fulfill his death fetish than to bet his own life in the famous TFR while also BTFO moralfags.