Alternative title: Pon no Michi
Manga Adaptation by OLM
English Simulcast Pending

Premise

Nashiko is kicked out of her family home for constantly disturbing her mother. Fortunately, her dad owns a closed-down mahjong parlor, which he allows her to turn into a new hangout. While tidying up the place, she encounters a mahjong spirit.

Euri’s verdict: Kan Do Better

Just to get it out of the way up front, if you don’t already have a basic understanding of mahjong, this show is probably not for you. It does offer a very quick explanation of what a winning hand looks like, but it glosses over the rest of the rules in favor of goofing around. It may drip more rules the further it goes, but this does seem comedy-first based on its opening episode.

As for the episode proper, it makes a pretty weak first impression. The characters seem fine, but they’re not given enough time to establish themselves before we get into the mahjong section. This is a weird thing to say; there should be plenty of time to talk at the table, but The Way of Pon opts instead to spend that entire session riffing on other mahjong shows. Parodying Akagi and The Legend of Koizumi is nice enough, but it’s a weird choice to do so this early. I’m coming away from episode one thinking about Akagi goofs more than I am about anything original in the show.

It’s a shame, then, that there’s not much to really say about this show, especially when it has a talking bird that claims to be a mahjong spirit. Making Akio Ootsuka, the voice behind many of anime’s big-bads, a tiny animal continues to be funny despite being far from original, but even he doesn’t have too much to say. He does get to play mahjong with the other girls though, and admittedly I did enjoy that they barely question that he knows how to play.

I’m going to stick around for two reasons. The first of which is that I am genuinely curious about what this show is actually going to turn into; I don’t have high hopes for a story that seemed indifferent about creating its own identity, but we’ll see how it goes. The other is that it’s just been so long since the last mahjong show and I can’t help myself. As it stands, go to Akagi if you want a serious mahjong show, and try Saki if you want cute girls playing mahjong cutely, but they also have special powers.