With M-League 2020 finished, all eyes now start turning to next season, and which teams may or may not make changes. Last year we had a very muted offseason with all teams choosing to retain their players, and only Sakura Knights making any changes by picking up Hori Shingo. This year remains to be seen as to what will happen, but we’ve already had an announcement from EX Furinkazan that they will be picking up a fourth player (as well as potentially dropping some, but as they finished in the top 3, that is no longer a concern). What makes this different to Sakura Knights picking up Hori last year? Well EX Furinkazan is holding an “audition” to select the player who will be nominated by then at the Draft Meeting in July.
Draft Audition
There were a lot of questions about how EX Furinkazan were going to go about picking their 4th member, thankfully though, on the 8th of May they tweeted out a link to a google docs slideshow that seemed to have all the details. It’s assumed that this was available within the pro organisations earlier than this point in time, as we’d seen screenshots of it here and there, and by the time it was tweeted, the initial application phase had already passed.
Looking at the slide show we can see the process will take 5-6 steps, or phases, and we should have our answer by July 23rd. But who is eligible? What do the phases entail? How likely is XYZ pro to make it through to the nomination? For these details, lets dive into the specifics of what each phase is, how long it will take, and what it will entail.
Phase 1 – Application and Requirements
Duration: 17th of April – 30th of April 2021
The first phase is essentially just a written application. Eligible players must submit their application, no entry fee is required, and successful participants are notified by the 5th of May.
To be eligible you must be all of the following:
- A current member of one of the 5 professional mahjong organisations that are part of M-League. Those are: The Japanese Professional Mahjong League (JPML), The Japanese Professional Mahjong Association (NPM/Kyoukai), Saikouisen, Mahjong Union (μread as myu/Rengou), and Real Mahjong Unit (RMU)
- Between the ages of 18 and 49 on the 10th of October 2021
That’s it. Those are the only qualifications necessary to enter the Draft Audition.
The actual selection criteria for this point is private, but reports from people familiar with the matter suggest that almost all applicants that met the requirements made it through to the next stage.
Once entries close, there will be confidential conversations between EX Furinkazan and the pro organisations to decide on players who will receive the Team Recommendation, which gives them a bonus +50pt to their score in the next Phase. These players will also be notified at the same time as the results of this phase.
Phase 2 – League Battle
Duration: 20th of May – 4th of July 2021
The League Battle phase consists each participant playing 4 games a day over 4 different days, for a total of 16 hanchan, with the top 6 players progressing to the next stage. This is where most participants will fall out, but it’s not all just Mahjong strength that will see one through.
This phase is also where the entry fee comes in, with all participants required to pay 20,000 yen (about $236 AUD/$183 USD/150€ EUR), as well as a 5,000 yen (about $60 AUD/$45 USD/38€ EUR) facility fee on each day they play, for a total of 40,000 yen (about $473 AUD/$366 USD/300€ EUR). All the games will be played at MahjongHOLIC in Akasaka, Tokyo where there will also be a streaming booth setup, and some select games will be broadcast exclusively on Abema Premium. We don’t know much about the streaming schedule, but during the M-League Finals broadcast it was mentioned that the first broadcast would be on the 24th of May.
However, as we mentioned, this is not just a straight forward league battle where the top 6 move on to the next stage. This is still for an M-League team! So while strength is important, so is the brand of the player. As such there are a number of factors that add bonus points to a players score. The Team Recommendation from Phase 1 is one of them, however here is a full list:
- Team Recommendation
- Title Holder
- Only titles from 2015 onwards count
- If the title is currently held, then the bonus points for it are doubled
- Whether the title is currently held is based from the time of application.
- Bonus Points: Title’s Prize Money / 100,000pt (So essentially 1pt for every 100,000 yen of prize money)
- Social Media followers
- Numbers are counted at time of application.
- Accounts under 10,000 will not count.
- Numbers are rounded to the 2nd decimal place.
- Bonus Points: 10pt per 10,000 followers, maximum of 200 points.
So basically current title holders, and those who are popular on social media get preferential treatment. For comparison, most current M-Leaguers on Twitter have between 30,000 and 90,000 followers, though it’s worth noting that they will not be only counting twitter, so accounts on Instagram, and Ameblo blogs will likely also count for their own bonus points.
Phase 3 – Fan Voting
Duration: 5th – 11th of July 2021
This is probably the most odd phase of the whole cycle. The top 6 from Phase 2, plus 2 Wild Cards (picked from within the players participating in Phase 2) will be put to a fan vote, with points added to their scores in Phase 4 based on the result.
There are two ways of voting, both require a membership.
First, is to be an Official Supporter of EX Furinkazan (6,500 yen/year – $77 AUD/$59 USD/49€ EUR ) via the M-League’s website, and each Official Supporter’s vote is worth 10 points.
Second, is to be a member of EX Furinkazan’s DMM Online Salon https://lounge.dmm.com/detail/2372/ The different tiers giving different vote weights:
- SS Rank (16,500 yen/month – $195 AUD/$151 USD/124€ EUR): 300 points (There are 18 out of 20 possible people at this rank at the time of writing)
- Voting Member: 100 points (This tier doesn’t appear on the main DMM site, so it’s not clear who exactly this might include)
- P Rank (1,100 yen/month – $13 AUD/$10 USD/8.25€ EUR): 10 points
The point totals are then divided by 100 and added to the pts the player starts with in Phase 4. There is also an upper limit of 100pt a player can earn from this phase.
Phase 4 – Semi Finals
Duration: 12th, 13th, 15th, 16th of July 2021(Revival Bracket: 18th of July 2021)
This phase is back to more understandable straight Mahjong. Each player will play 4 games a day for 2 days, for a total of 8 hanchan. After fan vote pts are added to their scores from the game, the top 2 will progress to the next phase, while the bottom 2 are eliminated. The remaining 6 players will play a further 3 hanchan in the Revival Bracket, with the top 2 from that rounding out the 4 players going to the finals. All these games will be broadcast exclusively on Abema Premium.
Final Phase – Finals
Duration: 23rd of July 2021
This is just a straightforward, 6 hanchan slug match. The matches will be broadcast on Abema Premium, and the overall winner after the 6 games will be nominated to join EX Furinkazan during the official M-League Draft. If, for some reason, the chosen player is also nominated by another team during the draft, and EX Furinkazan loses the nomination, then the 2nd place player will be nominated in their stead.
Participants
Who’s shooting their shot?
EX Furinkazan have released a table of participants (and their scores), which can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTlOaCPko-NsWet95ZqCq2dCPv9HTSaWC8MvTt72FzVJwyw53pTcRsfK12B5qMQov0eNL-BVfS3_Cxy/pubhtml
It seems that two players have managed to get the full 200pt for social media:
NPM’s Marina Nagasawa, who is a gravure idol, similar to Sakura Knight’s Okada Sayaka
JPML’s Nakada Kana, who is a former member of Nogizaka46. Not to be confused with Nakata Kana, who’s won a number of recent JPML female pro tournaments.
So we’re in for some interesting times following this process, and it also remains to be seen what the others teams do in regards to their rosters in the offseason. We’ll do out best to cover all the stages as they happen, as well as the official Draft Meeting when that is announced by M-League. We’ll also be doing a closer look at some of the competitors in the coming weeks.
For now, I’ll leave you with a question: Who are you rooting for? Who do you want to see nominated to EX Furinkazan?
M-League Watch 
