It’s on to the prefectural tournament. Will Achiga be able to top perennial favorite Bansei High?
What They Say:
“Contact”
The prefectural tournament has started and Achiga’s first opponent is the famed 9-time winners, Bansei. This is what the girls have trained for; this is their stepping stone to reaching Nodoka.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
And so, we go straight to the Nara Prefectural Tournament. We see it only briefly, as the Achiga girls manage to knock out the perennial leader Bansei High in the very first round. There is not that much mahjong, just a few quick rounds (apparently Bansei, for all the build up, is meant to be a quick pushover here). The next day, Shizuno comes running in to tell Ako and Kuro the good news: they will be able to see Nodoka again at the Nationals, since the winner for Nagano Prefecture was Kiyosumi (which we have known for some time). The two series are starting to come into temporal alignment.
Arado, of course, is already thinking ahead to the next stage. It used to be that prefectural representatives were not allowed to play practice matches before the National tournament. The rules have apparently changed, however, so she proposes that the girls travel to play the runners-up from every prefecture. Naturally, Shizuno demands they go to Nagano first, which means we’re about to meet some old friends. So, they go to play a practice match against Ryuumonbuchi, yes the kodomo, ahem, Koromo Amae and friends come back for a brief cameo during which Ryuumonbuchi beats Achiga. Not really a surprise, since they have the national-class monster Koromo. Overall, however, they do well on their tour of the prefectures, as the only other road bump is a nationally-noted player from the no.2 school in North Osaka, but they won’t have to worry about her in the National Tournament.
Things move quickly, as the girls finish their training to build up their team power and head to Tokyo for the tournament. Once there, they settle in. Walking along the halls of the event site, the girls happen to come across a young girl covered in shadow walking towards them. A strong aura comes off of her, and a familiar profile appears. She emanates malevolence as she walks. There was some speculation last week that Teru Miyanga, the terror of high school mahjong, might make an appearance, and it really does look like her from a distance. We end with a closer look.
Unfortunately, it appears that the production team is on a very tight schedule. For all of the build up of the end of episode 2, where we see Bansei High and are meant to assume that they will pose a serious challenge, the Nara Prefectural Tournament lasts only a brief while, long enough for each member of Achiga to be shown calling a winning hand once. Are they saving all of the mahjong for an OVA at this point?
As much as I loved the little cameo from the past, I was not entirely satisfied by this episode because of the feeling of how rushed it all was. Would it have killed them to spend a little time in Nara, showing us the different schools and playing a few hands of mahjong? Apparently so. I assume that there must be some sort of reason for the great rush things are going through. Part of it may be that the production team never really cared all that much about Achiga and its girls. This series has in the end been a way of doing a sequel to the original Saki without quite doing it. The original series ended slightly abruptly as it had already gone past the manga. But now, there is probably more material to work with, going to the National Tournament, though I do not doubt we will continue to see events through the eyes of Achiga’s team. It will be interesting, however, to see whether this show stays “focused” on Achiga, or will turn into a further look at Kiyosumi, though this time from a third-person perspective, from which some players might appear…somewhat different.
In Summary:
The episode itself was entertaining, but it was far too quickly paced. There was hardly a chance to soak in what was happening as the run of events whizzed by. The Nara Prefectural Tournament gets barely five minutes, after which the girls are already preparing for the Nationals. It would seem that everyone is in a rush to get there, so that we may see what happened to Nodoka and friends after the first series left off.
Grade: B
Streamed by: Crunchyroll Review Equipment: Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
the pace is very fast here becouse �becouse The point of Achiga is the nationals. The creating a club, qualifying, and training for it that we saw the last 2 eps was just the prologue for whats coming now.