neko's thinkbox

My last post seems to have pleased Yuuki.

My last post seems to have pleased Yuuki.

And yes, I am liking this show a lot! So many surprises in this long spring season.

I admit, I started watching this series with a mind to badmouth its flashy fanservice and apparently second-rate story, but, gyakuten^[1] ! I’m loving this show! …wut?You’re kidding me, right? Read on.

The reasons are many, but perhaps I should start by getting rid with the most controversial one (and hypocritical for me).
Indeed, there are lots of fanservice – nothing explicit, but many extremely close situations where you would actually expect, don’t know, flashing pantsu, or nipples. Yes, there is a metric fuckton of zettai ryouiki (絶対領域)Just sweating there, isn’t it? Yeah right. going on, and the angles the characters are shown in often seem to focus either on their buttocksFunny thing is, even the audience WITHIN the anime is catered to. Fuckers. (where the skirt would barely stop short of the cheeks, not showing pantsu, implying they all wear strings or so) or Nodoka’s ridiculously huge globes (or on Saki’s, Yuuki’sDFC ALERT! DFC DFC and Hajime’sMORE DFC! DFC LEVEL OVER 9000!! lack thereof). Actually, I believe the producers were wary of calling this anime a pantsufest, and swiftly removed all pantsu from this anime. Here’s some proofSadly, no pantsu for you..

You know me. Whenever I encounter such blatant service, my blood starts boiling. Not from excitement, but from rage. I still am of that opinion that excessive service usually only exists to surround, overshadow, hide a weak plot, even weaker characters, and possibly cater to the current generation of lolicons and other perverts. But in Saki, I seriously feel that it is NOT SO THE CASE. For once, __I__ do feel that it is mainly meant to provide humorous relief, rather than just fapping and awful diversion material.^[2] Because the plot and the characters are solid enough to stand on their own this time; they are precisely the forte of this anime.

Though sometimes I cannot help but facepalm at such pointless lines. Yuuki, you jealous bitch.

Though sometimes I cannot help but facepalm at such pointless lines. Yuuki, you jealous bitch.

Saki has a relatively normal story. The basic outline does resemble that of a generic sports anime: main character, who hates Mahjong because of family reasons, tastes blood (i.e. learns to win games) and eventually enjoys the game, joins her school’s Mahjong club, which now aspires to make it past the prefectural qualifiers to the national tournament. Easy mode, does not look like much. The progression seems rather slow too: as of episode 14, they have only made it to the second half of the qualifiers’ finals. But who cares? The plot is fascinating, that’s what matters.
Especially during these qualifiers, there is a lot of suspense going on. We all know that our protagonists are bound to advance to the nationals, but the heated battles and the many situation reversals keep spicing up the wait, and will make the eventual victory even more tasteful.

Of course, this suspense is intrinsically linked to the tons of interesting characters that appear in this anime. There are at least 20 characters (I honestly lost count), all with interesting and varied personalities. Of course, the story is centered around our girls from Kiyosumi High: Saki, Nodoka, Yuuki, Mako and Hisa^[3], but here comes another good point of this series.
I absolutely like the endearing presentation of all the participants of the tournament. What I mean is, most of the opponents in the matches are not just treated like archenemies with evil/unknown intents (as is the case in many other sports anime, or rivalry anime in general) but their backstory, ie. their personal circumstances, relations and ambitions are well shown and explained. They also have their place in the limelight, and deserve to advance as well. As such, it almost is a shame to root for the protagonists’ team.

The characters I hate the most so far… Well, I don’t know. It is a well-known fact that I like plain girls (read: tsuru pettans), especially genki lolis, but they are many here in Saki, and some are plain obnoxious, Yuuki the most. Feeding on anything that has “tako” in it’s name: tacos, tako, takoyaki… Stupid. Take a box of dead mice, label it “Taco mice” and give it to her, and she might eat those. STUPID! Plus her voice is fucking annoying, but it’s obviously Rie Kugimiya, so… Yuuki can go DIAF. The other stupid loli is Ryuumonbuchi Touka, she’s the typical spoilt ojou-sama character, and an attention whore who thinks too highly of herself. She’s such a conceited piece of brat, it makes me want to punch her silly.^[4] And finally, there’s that one nekomimi loli from Kazekoshi (forgot her name) whose permanent “:3″ mouthDunno, I’m not into :3-chan, though a cat is fine too. resembles a cleft lip.

At first I thought she always hid a Sharingan or Millenium Eye-similar feature, but it seems it's only a different-colored eye. Well, apparently she can assess the situation easier with it, too. Dunno. But still, CUTE!

At first I thought she always hid a Sharingan or Millenium Eye-similar feature, but it seems it’s only a different-colored eye. Well, apparently she can assess the situation easier with it, too. Dunno. But still, CUTE!

Now, those I like… I think in every team there is at least one girl I appreciate.

• From Kiyosumi High, I like Saki, Mako^[5], but especially Hisa. She is obviously cute, but also smart, steady, full of hope, and relatively lucky. She knows her girls too, which results in the many keikaku doori moments of this series.

Mako is the more down-to-earth character of the pack, and is pretty sweet too. Saki, of course, main character, naive, flat, etc. It’s a given.

• From Ryuumonbuchi High, I like Hajime and Amae. Yes, they’re absolute pettans, but they are pretty lonely and vulnerable. Hajime has always been trying to regain the trust of Touka (because she had cheated once in an elementary school mahjong tournament), though eventually she saw those restraining chains as a bond between her and her master. And Amae, it goes without saying, because she is isolated from the rest of the world because of her otherworldly mahjong play. Though she still looks way too young, and acts like a five year old. Sacrifice for the Koromo? Ain’t you a cute oneAin’t you a cute one.. More like Kodomo. Grow up, loli.^[6]

Incidentally, she looks like Fallen FlonneThe resemblance is stunning. from Disgaea.

• From Kazekoshi All-girls, I just like, no, admire Mihoko. She is simply too kind for this ungrateful world, and I really will feel bad if her team loses the match. Interestingly, they made the choice of making her a shy person who hides her heterochromia, I think it’s because she doesn’t want to draw too much attention onto herself. …Reminds me of that one metaphor Hisa told her. “Blue sapphires and red rubies consist of the same element.” Does she mean that no matter which eye it is, it will always be the same element: Mihoko? I believe she is appealing to her to be a little more true to herself and not to hide her right eye. And I hope she will realize that soon.
• And from Tsuruga Academy, I like Momo the most because she is interesting. It’s true, her invisibility may sound and look quite creepy, though I believe it is just a state she decided to put herself in to shield herself from being hurt by society. Rather than being disappointed in a vain search for attention, she prefers to reduce her existence to naught, not to disturb the flow of life of others. Of course, she is perfectly visible to other people; the fact that she seems invisible can be explained by the simple fact that any attention is drawn to the most crowded, colorful, interesting spot within the field of view of people. Trying to find Momo is like searching for a needle in a haystack: she is so small, uninteresting, colorless, that she completely disappears from one’s sight. She’s cute though. Wonder if I would lose sight of her in a room, too.

I wrote so much (and yet so little) mentioning the most interesting characters, but these are by far not all. You definitely cannot get bored of them. Without these, I would have probably focused too much on the fanservice, and probably zapped away by the end of the second episode already.

Girls love. No objections at all.

Girls love. No objections at all.

But with so many girls and only one boy, it might lead the unwary viewer to think that there is almost no romance in this anime – wrong. Of course, there is nothing explicit, but there are implicit relationships in the making for many female couples. Saki x NodokaThis is more than implicit. This is almost full-fledged INTERCOURSE., Hisa x MakoThis would be so relevant to my interests., Touka x HajimeHajime looks so sweet… Touka, on the other hand, doesn’t. Typical tsundere face., Momo x (that violet-haired girl)Momo, I CAN SEE YOU! T_T, Mihoko x (this nekogirl)I only thought boys would react like this upon successful boob-to-back-of-head contact., am I missing a couple? I certainly am. Of course, one can write it off as enhanced friendship between all of these girls, but in some cases, there might be a little more at stake than just friendship… Actually, the only hetero couple I can think of so far is Yuuki x Kyou. Seriously, who’d have thought that the most anormal of our main team would end up having such normal taste? Must be the tacos. This scene made it all clear to menopan! nopan! nopan! Though Kyou isn’t all that impressed it seems.. What a lewd loli, Yuuki. But Yuuki isn’t into lolis it seems. Guess he likes big breasted MILFs. Wait, Nodoka isn’t a MILF. Yet…. … Ahem.

Of course, I shall not omit the predominant mahjong element of Saki. Back in the days, Hikaru no Go (the manga, though) had gotten me interested in Go. (crowd is murmuring, shocked) YES, YES I KNOW. It might be preposterous to compare Saki with a series of such epic magnitude, but nevertheless, it still makes me want to understand and play a game I absolutely did not know anything about, just like HnG did.

Now, I do realize that watching Saki require some preliminary knowledge of Mahjong gameplay and terminology, which I don’t have – good thing the subs I watch do have many explanation notes about the different rules and moves, so complete neophytes like me will catch on easily.^[7] However, I think I would have appreciated this series a lot more if the producers had made an introductory episode about Mahjong, so the protagonists would have explained the rules, rather than the fansubbers.

Last but not least, I must mention that I love the ED. Usually I would just skip past EDs because they are generally overly slow, boring, and scarcely animated, accompanied by slow, soft and even more boring tunes. But in Saki, I haven’t skipped it even once (I did skip the alternate ED though). It’s hilarious, extremely cuteWai~ wai~, and it does tell a small story by itself! I love it! Plus the song is filled with Mahjong terms, it fits perfectly. (Why of course, it has been tailored just for this series.)

All right, I shall leave this at that for now. I have a taco dinner to attend, see you later!

Om nom nom om nom

Om nom nom om nom.

(Next might be probably a summer first impressions post, stay tuned!)

1. I am such a weeaboo. Seriously. [↩]
2. Really, blame and shame me for the hypocrisy today, but I shall address this issue later again. [↩]
3. I’ll gladly omit that male sidekick, Kyou [↩]
4. It reminds me so strongly of a certain persona in the aniblogosphere… Shouldn’t be all that hard to guess who it is. :P [↩]
5. It’s rare that I like meganekkos, but I’ll gladly make an exception here [↩]
6. On the other hand, “tight” is a stretchable concept… IYKWIM ´:3c [↩]
7. I would have given major props to Underwater-Mahjong, although I heard they only use Crunchyroll’s scripts with additional QCing… Sigh, fansubbing has never been so low. [↩]