Banjou no Alpha Episode 1

In Banjou no Alpha Tamaki Hiroshi plays Akiba, a local news reporter who is transferred to the culture section to report on Shogi aka Japanese chess.

We see that Akiba is self centered and his girlfriend played by Higa Manami returns his keys and asks that they have a temporary separation.

We pretty much know how the show is going to go. Akiba is going to meet struggling shogi players and slowly turn over a new leaf.

What sets Banjou no Alpha different from other underdog sports doramas is that the main character is the observer rather than the player.

I have no idea how to play Shogi despite playing all the Yakuza games but I kept thinking how fun must it be to get paid to watch people try to master this game?

So far the first episode has been decent. Thanks to 31st for subbing the first episode. I think I got the raw from nyaa. Watchable and I'm pretty confident it going to turn out good because its a NHK BS Premium dorama.