High school girls. Mahjong. Brutal competition. Hand holding. Really short uniform skirts. Sweating thighs. The clack of the tiles on the table. Yes, we’re going to take another look at 2009’s original series that started it all.
What They Say
Episode 1: Encounter
Saki doesn’t understand why she was taken to play mahjong but that’s where Saki and Nodoka met. Nodoka wins but questions Saki’s playing style so she asks for another game.
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Originally broadcast and reviewed by me in 2009, the old reviews have disappeared into the ether, while the manga now is licensed here at least in digital form. So, I decided to take a fresh look at Saki the original series. I’ll be making use of my old reviews and notes, but my judgment about the show has changed over time and I have updated this review to reflect that.
Adapted from the manga by Ritz Kobayashi, serialized in Young Gangan, Saki is not your average sports anime, nor your common high school drama. Instead, it combines elements of both to make for a rather unusual sports drama.
Saki Miyanaga seems like an ordinary high school girl. When we first meet her sitting under a tree by the banks of a small stream reading a book, we might just pass her by without a thought. Our attention would probably be drawn to where Saki’s own attention is drawn: towards a pink-haired girl with, quite frankly, unreasonably large breasts. As Saki stares at this girl, she notices that this other girl is wearing the same exact uniform as hers, which tells her that the pink-haired one is also a first year student at Kiyosumi High School. As Saki engages in a little wishful thinking, her childhood friend “Kyou-chan” asks her to go with him to the cafeteria. To have a romantic lunch together? No. To have her buy him the “Ladies Lunch,” which he thought looked good that day. This is part of the winking misdirection placed early on in a show that is now pretty famous for its strong yuri undertones. All of that is to come later though.
At lunch, it is revealed that Kyoutarou is a member of the school’s Mahjong Club. At this point Saki quietly says to herself watashi, mahjong kirai “I hate mahjong.” Kyou-chan seems to be oblivious to her feelings, but instead latches upon the fact that Saki knows how to play. So, Kyoutarou drags Saki up to the Mahjong Club’s room atop the old school building, since he says that the club is one player short today and she can be their fourth. When they come to the club room, Saki meets…the overly endowed pink-haired girl, Nodoka Haramura, who is revealed to be a member of the club as well. Before we can learn anything more about Nodoka, the incredibly overactive and on the small side Yuuki Kataoka appears (Ritz Kobayashi’s preferences for character designs seem to range toward the extremes: either incredibly overdone or lolita types taken as far as you can go, with others being pretty much in a default middle that does not stand out, interestingly). Yuuki’s endearing traits are her energy and her obsession over tacos. The quartet complete, they decide to play a match. Saki is at first upset at being roped into playing, but she does not seem entirely disappointed when she notes to herself that this is the first time she has played with people other than her family.
One of the reasons why Saki has probably not gained more widespread notice on this side of the Pacific is because there is something of a steep learning curve involved in watching the actual mahjong portions of the show. I had a passing familiarity with the game before watching, so I at least had some notion of what would happen going into it, but for those who are learning about it for the first time by watching the show…it can be intimidating and likely off-putting. Here we must give the translator (Sam Pinansky) a lot of credit, since he provides good translator’s notes at the top of the screen when the characters spout off the complex mahjong terminology. Unfortunate that it blocks out some of the animation, but a necessary evil in this case unless you are an experienced Japanese-style riichi mahjong player.
A bunch of high schoolers playing mahjong is a rather limited foundation upon which to build either a story or audience interest, even if the Japanese audience would be much more familiar with mahjong (as well as the original manga, which is a decent seller to this day). So we get the first of the author’s gambits in trying to engage the viewer’s interest. Saki is an extremely skilled player, but she deliberately holds back, avoiding winning over her opponents, instead attempting to place in the middle of the four players. Her complex maneuvering to avoid gaining or losing points every round (achieving ±0 from her starting point score) gains the attention of the president of the Mahjong Club, Hisa Takei, who also happens to be the Student Council President (she insists, however, on being called the Student Congress President, but no one else seems to care). Hisa is perplexed by this style of play, but before she can see more, Saki runs off as Hisa is now awake (she had been sleeping previously) to be the fourth player. Saki, after all, dislikes mahjong.
Hisa, however, cannot let go of what she’s seen. How is it possible for anyone to score ±0 for three games in a row? Nodoka cannot let go of what occurred either, as her apparent victories in the three rounds they played may not have been one she fully earned and so Nodoka abruptly runs off to track down Saki, even though it has begun to rain outside. She finally catches up to Saki and we are treated to a little wet girl embracing, along with the occasional view from an inappropriate angle (did I mention the school uniforms have rather short skirts? There were a couple of low angle shots earlier as well). In the rain, Nodoka asks Saki to play mahjong with her one more time, but Saki declines. She doesn’t like mahjong. Here we have author’s gambit #2: heavily implied girl-girl relationship-ing.
I won’t summarize the entire episode. Suffice it to say, if Saki never played mahjong again, the show would be over. And as many probably have guessed, it is Hisa who somehow manages to cajole Saki back into the club room for one more match. This time, however, Hisa makes the conditions much harder for Saki to avoid winning: a special shortened version of a full match, with far fewer hands available to achieve a ±0 score. This time, Saki is playing against not only Nodoka and Yuuki, but also Mako, another member of the club and friend of Hisa’s. In this shortened game, the stakes are raised considerably. Needless to say, Saki manages the incredible, scoring a ±0 at its end (I will not give away how she does it).
Everyone is suitably impressed. Even Hisa is driven to remark in the first episode’s final line of spoken dialogue as the ending (opening) song begins to play: “Luck powerful enough to create miracles…is that the power of a god or a devil?”
For those who might be wondering why I’m calling this a sports anime, I can tell you clearly why it is. Many of the character types that we all know well from sports are present: there is the bumbling newcomer (Kyoutarou). The accomplished veteran (Nodoka). The lazy genius (taco-loving Yuuki). The “coach” figure (Hisa, though she is also a player, but we do not get to see her play yet). And then there is the supernatural prodigy, “The Chosen One,” Saki, whose abilities are a level beyond what mere mortals can achieve. There is also the full range of visual tropes that we have come to associate with sports anime: slow motion whenever a particularly dramatic physical movement occurs. Lens flare. There’s even a bolt of lightning when Saki throws down her final tile while declaring her “winning” hand at the end of the episode. Vocally, there is a lot of insider technical terminology and an over-the-top delivery at moments of high drama.
But sports shows are a dime a dozen and there are much better known sports. It’s not quite a cute girls doing nothing in a club show, because it is a competitive sport and as things unfold we will see serious competition.
In Summary:
Saki has multiple angles which attempt to draw in the audience: cute high school girls (even if the character designs border on the generic and also seem somehow out of place—it just happens that the Mahjong Club has both an overdeveloped girl with breasts that might each be the same size as the head of the underdeveloped loli member) that seem to have been chosen for their otaku appeal, competition and the drama promised by that future conflict, and strong yuri undertones in the opening episode here. Not all of this makes much of a positive impression on me now as these elements have become over-present in anime. But the original Saki series does have other strengths compared to many of its competitors both contemporary and those that followed. The pacing is brisk, which prevents it from being boring or annoying. The character personalities may be highly cliched, from the overconfident Student Council President, to the very demure Nodoka, to the hyperactive Yuuki, but they fit well within this world and do not detract from the story. It’s not high art, but it’s pleasantly diverting. While you might get something more out of it if you actually know how to play mahjong (and you certainly won’t learn how to play just by watching this show), it has its appeal even to those who wouldn’t know a tsumo from a kong, let alone King Kong.
Grade: A- (for direction and pacing)/ B+ (content)
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 12GB RAM, Mac OS 10.10 Yosemite.
