Saki

Due to childhood circumstances, first-year high school student Saki Miyanaga hates anything related to mahjong. When she does play the game, she keeps a low profile to avoid standing out. One day, her friend Kyoutarou Suga drags her along to the school's mahjong club. There, she meets Nodoka Haramura, the champion of the previous year's national middle school mahjong championship, and Yuuki Kataoka, a fellow club member.

As the club play a few rounds, Saki attempts to hide her talent. However, the club president, Hisa Takei, notices Saki's unusual playstyle. Realizing her potential, she puts Saki's real ability to the test—proving her to be more talented than expected. This revelation damages Nodoka's pride, and their relationship gets off to a rocky start.

Saki ends up joining the club, and after clearing up the misunderstandings between her and Nodoka, friendship blooms between them. As Saki slowly warms up to mahjong once again, she and the rest of her club only have one goal—to win nationals!

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Adaptation:	Saki
Side story:	Saki Picture Drama, Saki Achiga-hen: Episode of Side-A, Saki Biyori Animation
Sequel:	Saki Zenkoku-hen

Kuwatani, Natsuko
Japanese

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Staff

Takahata, Yuuichirou

Producer

Matsuura, Hiroaki

Producer

Ono, Manabu

Director

Tsuruoka, Youta

Sound Director

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Opening Theme

	1: "Glossy:MMM" by Miyuki Hashimoto (eps 2-14)
	2: "bloooomin" by Little Non (eps 15-25)

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Ending Theme

	1: "Glossy:MMM" by Miyuki Hashimoto (eps 1,25)
	2: "Netsuretsu Kangei Wonderland (熱烈歓迎わんだーらんど)" by Kana Ueda, Ami Koshimizu, Rie Kugimiya, Ryoko Shiraishi, and Shizuka Itou (eps 2-6, 8-9, 11-14)
	3: "Zankoku na Negai no Naka de (残酷な願いの中で)" by Kana Ueda and Ami Koshimizu (eps 7, 10, 16, 18, 22)
	4: "Shikakui Uchuu de Matteru yo (四角い宇宙で待ってるよ)" by Kana Ueda, Ami Koshimizu, Rie Kugimiya, Ryoko Shiraishi, and Shizuka Itou (eps 15, 17, 19-21, 23-24)

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Reviews

Oct 1, 2009

Skadi

Recommended

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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Feb 15, 2015

HaXXspetten

Recommended

There once was a woman named Saki
Who used to think Mahjong was yucky
But her friends got the chills
When she showed off her skills
She was so unbelievably lucky

Then the Mahjong club was reinstated
In a manner that made it seem fated
And Saki fell in love
With a woman part of
...

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Sep 29, 2009

game8910

Recommended

What do you get when you take mahjong, you shoot massive amounts ridiculous special effects, you add a huge cast of high school girls, you give them POWERLEVELS, and then you make them 90% lesbian? Does it sound ridiculous yet? Regardless of how you feel about what I just described, Saki somehow managed to take all the above points, mush them up together, and regurgitate one of the most fun and entertaining show I've seen in a while.

Story:
+ Simple and straight through story
+ Easy to swallow and get into
+ The mahjong games are SO MUCH FUN to watch and the show has PLENTY of them

- ...

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TV Anime Saki: National Championship Announced

According to the Tweet of seiyu Fukuhara Kaori, a new season of Saki was announced. The new series titled "Saki: Zenkoku-hen" (National Championship) will be the seq...read more

Oct 28, 2012 4:45 AM by dtshyk | Discuss (99 comments)

Japan's Weekly DVD Ranking for Feb 1 - 7

Here is the weekly DVD sales ranking for February 1st - 7th. *1, 5,652 **5,652 Saki vol.8 *2, 3,963 **3,963 GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class vol.4 Limited Edition *3,...read more

Feb 9, 2010 6:45 PM by dtshyk | Discuss (19 comments)

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Poll: Saki Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Plate - Apr 5, 2009	155 replies	by GakutoDeathGlare »» Feb 11, 12:02 AM
Is this interesting enough for me??? Sylpheed - Jun 30, 2009	4 replies	by Mechakai »» Jan 16, 9:15 PM
Poll: Saki Episode 14 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Blackbird - Jul 5, 2009	56 replies	by 0ni_Link »» Mar 27, 2022 6:02 PM
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