Ranked #588

Saki

I have to admit I went into my viewing of Saki with next to zero knowledge about the game of Mahjong, its terminology, or its rules. Besides a short wiki article and just the visual similarities to some domino games I have played before, most of it still is quite vague and mysterious. I was drawn to Saki by the cute character designs, a hint of yuri romance, and my own curiosity over the game of Mahjong.

Despite my curiosity, the idea of a 25 episode anime revolving around a table game doesn’t sound all that exciting. Most likely that is going to be the reaction of quite a few people who just give Saki a casual glance. However they would be wrong. Saki manages to take something that doesn’t have any real action or makes for an interesting spectator sport and injects energy and excitement into it. While it’s decidedly over the top and completely implausible, it nonetheless works brilliantly.

The basic premise of the story revolves around Saki Miyanaga, a high school freshman who finds herself participating in the schools Mahjong club even though she hates the game. Though she is a very skillful player, bad memories of playing with her family has left a bad taste for the game with her. However she finds playing with people other than her family to be fun and her love of the game begins to be rekindled. Soon Saki and her new friends set their sights on making the national Mahjong tournament, and it’s this goal which dominates the plot.

As I mentioned, Saki does an excellent job of creating drama and action from something that isn’t in reality exciting. Characters are animated making special "finishing moves" when completing important hands and also some have special powers to intimidate or confuse their opponents. So don’t be expecting a lot of realism, both in terms of game play or the players themselves. Besides the game action, there is a fair amount of character building and touches of yuri themed romance. Saki overall is quite fun to watch and entertaining.

However it’s not all positive. While the actual plot revolving the Mahjong tournament is exciting and compelling the story does manage to derail itself quite a few times. The most glaring being the open ending. While it seems extremely likely that a second season is probable, I really wonder if it was even necessary. There were too many filler and service episodes and way too much story time devoted to developing unimportant and often nauseatingly annoying characters. I would have much more preferred the story spend its time developing the relationship between Saki and Nodoka. While the yuri aspects of the story are quite obviously present they are also unsatisfying. Beyond the wistful stares and blushing glances there is nothing of substance.

My opinions of the characters are decidedly mixed. Saki and Nodoka, as well as their friends in the Mahjong club are very enjoyable and interesting characters. Particularly in the case of Yuuki who steals the show a bit, adding comedic moments and also just being a funny character. Saki and Nodoka have a lot of chemistry together and make for a cute pair, though an unfulfilling couple. We get some background on both of them but really considering how important they are to the story it really is quite small. All of these subplots are left unresolved by the ending, so it will take a new season for them to be satisfactorily completed.

What really drags Saki's story and characters down is an enormous amount of dead weight in the supporting cast. There is absolutely no need to have this many "named" characters. The middle portions of the series give way to much screen time to developing the rival schools and players characters. This is not to say it shouldn’t have been done at all, but there was no need to have this done with basically everyone! It doesn’t help that I was completely uninterested in the majority of them and downright hated a few others. Annoying cat girl Kana? Please go eat a bowl of cat food laced with arsenic. Disappearing girl Momoko? Please get run over by a speeding city bus. There are a few memorable supporting characters but most are just various standard stereotypes we see in every other anime made.

The voice cast turns in a solid performance. Saki's enormous cast is brought out well by a bit of a dream team of seiyuu performers. However despite their talent the very fact that there are so many of them means that there just wasn’t enough screen time for many of them to make much of an impact. Additionally I found the music to be pretty plain and uninspired with a few exceptions. Some of the songs were catchy and they were cute many of them sounded like the singer was off-key. Others like the second OP theme I just didn’t like.

Artistically, Saki is very good. The character designs are typical of what you would expect in a Gonzo production. Saki reminds me of another series protagonist from this studio, Miyafugi from Strike Witches who is almost identical in both looks and personality. Also typical of Gonzo, they enjoy mixing in a lot of CGI effects with mixed results. The Mahjong automated tables looked pretty good but the "Nodocci" vs. Touka battle animation looked silly and out of place when compared to the rest of the series artwork. The visuals did a good job though into bringing in excitement and action into the games.

While I would classify my viewing experience of Saki to be very enjoyable, the overload of unnecessary characters and the lack of a proper ending or any substance in yuri relationships bring its score down. Hopefully a sequel will be coming soon that will address all of the plot issues and relationships that were left unresolved. I would say my own lack of knowledge of the game also hampered my enjoyment, though I did watch a sub version with notes that explained most of the terminology, it was still pretty confusing. It’s still overall, a fun and light hearted comedy that I recommend.
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Moe mahjong!? Wait, this might actually just work.

Work it surely does, as Saki proves to be an unabashedly entertaining series that you can watch for either the large cast of girls or for the mahjong. Or both, if you want to have your taco and eat it too.

Saki's story is intensely simple: high school girls on their school mahjong teams go to tournaments and duke it out with one another. Primarily, we follow teenager Saki as she learns to love the world of mahjong and competition while she tries to deal with a messy home life.

What makes Saki work so well is that it manages a perfect balance between being a thrilling mahjong series and being a fun anime about cute or cool girls with quirky personalities. Come for the mahjong, stay for the girls or come for the girls and stay for the mahjong. What also makes it work on the whole is that you do not have to know a thing about mahjong to like or enjoy this anime. There are explanations, but not of the shounen variety (where a character takes about fifteen minutes to explain the delicate artistry of his super special awesome attack). Even if you do not have a clue what a particular move means, the energy that surrounds the characters as they sit around that table will suspend you and thrill you.

If you want an mature, intense mahjong anime, then an anime like Akagi is a better bet. If this were about football, Akagi would be the Goal! or Bend It Like Beckham. Saki would be Shaolin Soccer. So if you want an anime that takes mahjong seriously (not referring to "serious business"; mahjong is pretty serious business in Saki), then this is not the anime you want to be watching. If you want an over-the-top, goofy, slightly angsty, electric, service-driven anime catering for otaku and layered thickly with moe but has surprisingly and conceptually cool mahjong games, then you got yourself a winner!

Saki's art is a hit or miss at most points. Surely, the character designs are cute and it is a colourful and generally easy on eyes, but the anime suffers from repeated scenes, still shots, and sloppy artwork in the background and sometimes even foreground--a clear sign of animators working within a budget or just simply rushing the job. The 3D mahjong tiles are glaringly obvious but they look pretty fine and actually are rendered well enough for them to take precedence in scenes where they should be noticed.

The music for this anime sounds sometimes like it was ripped right out of a kickboxing or karate movie from the 90s, but rather than cheesy, it adds a certain appeal to this anime, making watching what is a particularly uneventful sport in reality seem like you are viewing an intense (if not amusingly hammy) action flick. Mostly, the background music is fun, and the OP and ED themes are upbeat and cheery. Saki though is blessed with an extensively impressive cast of seiyuu. Generally every popular or commendable seiyuu of the last five years (Horie, Nakahara, Koshimizu, Itou, Kugimiya, Chihara, Fukuyama, Kobayashi) show up in this anime along with some promising newcomers.

Even if the mahjong does not interest you, Saki's cast will. Every character has a speciality that is intentionally exaggerated to make them seem like superpowers. There are no tricks or magical arts or Matrix-like mind hacks in the actual games, but the anime makes everybody's talent or skill seem to be a "power" of sorts. For example, it is actually rather fun to witness an unnoticeable and unremarkable girl use her forgettable nature as an advantage in a match--her opponents actually forget that she is there and do not notice her plays; she figuratively "becomes invisible" to the naked eye. Another example would be when the characters "turn into" battling mahou shoujo existing in other realms to show off the power of a particular move they made.

Saki's huge assortment of characters will definitely allow you to make some favourites from each major team: Kiyosumi, Tsuruga, Ryuumonbuchi or Kazekoshi. Almost everyone in Saki is likeable (except for one or two magnificent bastards, but even they have backgrounds and personalities) and quite a handful of them are downright loveable. At least to watch in their antics, anyway.

If you do not mind super-power mahjong and missing panty/boob/loli-service with some questionably homoerotic tones to it, then this anime is definitely an enjoyable and alternatively (it all depends on what you go for) rewarding experience. Saki is what it is, and for that, it is a wonderfully fun, sometimes really silly, and mostly very entertaining anime. There are moments that prove that it could be better, but even as it stands, it is pretty darn good. The story is not actually over as we are left with a teaser of future epic and outer-worldly mahjong skills and crazy players to come, so hopefully someday there will be a second season or sequel in the works--it will be met with great anticipation.

In the good spirit of bad puns, I'll leave you with the one thing you will surely learn from Saki: mahjong has never been this titillating! read more