Everyone at this fucking table is cheating.
North discards 7m. West calls chi to meld [6m, 7m, 8m].
West discards 8p.
South discards 9m. West calls pon to meld [9m, 9m, 9m].
Since West does absolutely no "fresh" draws from the wall during the clip, we know that West had four 9ms in his hand at this point, yet chose to call pon instead of kan. Remember that.
West discards 2m.
South discards 1m. West calls pon to meld [1m, 1m, 1m].
This is the point where we finally get to see the full game board. There are no other melds on the board so nobody other than South has called.
East has discarded 1m, 2m, 7p, 8s, 9m.
North has discarded 4m, 9m, and what looks like East wind - though, what wind it is doesn't matter in this gamestate.
West has discarded 5m, 2m, 8p, 2m.
South has discarded 7m, 3p.
Before we continue, this game state is already weird. Either East has an extra discard, or South has forgotten to discard. The latter seems more likely - it would explain why East has 5 discards. After getting called on twice in a row, South might have just given up on the game and nobody noticed that he's basically checked out of the match when East decided to go. This is supported by North drawing the next tile, which would otherwise be strange if South or East haven't discarded yet.
However there's something more blatantly strange about this board: When we get to see West's melds, we can deduce that there are 6 9m tiles in this game. North and East have discarded two of them, 3 were melded by West, and West has one in his hand. In Mahjong there are only 4 of each numbered tile in a suit, like how in Poker there's only 4 of each number total. This wouldn't be something you could miss - as soon as East discards that fifth 9m tile everyone would be able to immediately say "hey there are too many 9m tiles on this board." In fact, it would be more likely that the person who has that 9m in their hand would call out the misdeal before he'd even discard it.
North discards 4m, West calls chi to meld [2m, 3m, 4m].
West discards the 9m.
Actually, it's closer to say West discards 9m and then melds. This is also weird: normally you take the tile you've called, place it into your hand, and then discard from your hand to end your turn. Doing it like this shows a bit of a callous disregard for the game and - in my opinion - is a bit disrespectful to the opponent. In a more casual game it's likely more acceptable, though this game is anything but laid back.
We get a look at West's melds, which confirms the current game state. West's full hand is
1m 1m 1m, 2m 3m 4m, 6m 7m 8m, 9m 9m 9m, 5m.
Their wait tile is 5m, which would give a Chiniisou, or a "Full flush". This is a thin wait, but it's safe because there are no 5ms on the table - this could easily spoil a waiting pon or take advantage of a poor pivot. With no dora (South tiles are dora since West is the indicator) this is a respectable mangan.
South discards 4m.
East barely looks at their drawn tile before putting it firmly in their hand and declaring Riichi. Two things bother me about this play. The way they put the tile in their hand makes it look like he was already planning to get whatever his tile was. It's like he knew where the tiles ended up - perhaps the tile was marked subtly? More notably though is that his hand reaches a little too low to be grabbing for a point stick to declare Riichi. The first time I saw it, I assumed he had pulled the damn thing from his pocket.
But what if he did?
East discards 1m.
Another small oddity is that North doesn't even attempt to draw the next tile. They sit politely with their hands clasped while West monologues. Normally you'd want to call ron at the earliest opportunity so you don't miss your opportunity to call.
But the true weirdness - something most people have noted - is that West calls ron on the wrong tile. The cutscene dramatically zooms in on West tipping over a 5m tile, but the discard was 1m. This isn't even a winning hand.
Even weirder still, this is the fifth 1m tile on the board. Once again we have a game state with too many of a very specific tile, and yet nobody points it out.
East calls for a misdeal: West is in furiten for 5m, since he discarded it at the beginning of the game. Furiten is an extra rule to prevent you from playing cheaply to "steal" points from an opponent. Essentially, you can't discard a tile to bait another player into discarding that same tile. If you discard a tile it's considered "safe".
But yet even this completely correct callout is weird. First, nobody acknowledges that the discarded tile is 1m and not 5m. It's almost like everyone knew that the discard should have been 5m and everyone's just going along with it like they're using a substitute tile.
Second, furiten is almost never an example of cheating. It's hard to cheat with a furiten because everyone can see the board state and immediately check to see if it happened. In fact, most likely it will be the person discarding who notices the furiten, since they most likely chose to discard the tile because they thought it was safe. Most of the time a chombo (misdeal) caused by a furiten ron is a mistake. This is supported by West's confusion when called out ("Wha-?")
The talks fall through.
So let's go over a few of these oddities.
There are 6 9m tiles and 5 1m tiles on the board right now. The 1ms are easy to follow - East discarded the first at the beginning of the game, then West found two through draws. South finds the fourth but loses it to East. When the fifth shows up, it seems to be to purposefully try and avoid dealing into West with the 5m - but it fools absolutely nobody. I think this is related to that strange Riichi East performed. I'm willing to bet East has been feeding himself 1ms either as safe tiles or to make easy triplets. When he did his boisterous Riichi call, it was a bluff. He didn't have a good hand, and he was about to deal in, but he purposefully tried to look confident and use a hidden 1m tile to
Of the 9ms, North had one, and West drew 3 into his hand. The fifth shows up when South discards it, which West calls not for a kan but for a pon. The last 9m is discarded by East afterwards. Where did they all come from?
Obviously, the wall is stacked. Someone has deliberately loaded too many manzu tiles into the game. This isn't like East pulling out the extra 1m from his pocket, everyone has noticed the extra tiles and deliberately hasn't mentioned it because they want to benefit from the situation. Everyone wants to benefit from someone stacking the deck in their favor. There's an obvious metaphor in there.
So why didn't West kan the 9m? The obvious answer is because he didn't want to make it obvious that the deck was stacked, but a better answer is likely that he didn't want to flip over another dora indicator. Having more dora in the game is great if you want extra chances to score points, but in a situation where you have enough points to win the game during a later round, you might just go without it to play it safe and reduce the amount of points your opponents could potentially get. Once again, an obvious metaphor: in this situation where everyone could potentially benefit, West finds it more beneficial to instead starve his opponents of resources.
East calling furiten breaks the magic circle. Everyone's been knowingly playing with cheats and deceptive tactics, but as soon as East chooses to call someone out on it, it opens the door for every single player to call out every single mistake in the game - and at that point, retaliation is on the table.
The diplomats choose to skip the formalities.