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 ing 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]

Miyanaga, Saki Main

Ueda, Kana Japanese

Takei, Hisa Main

Itou, Shizuka Japanese

Haramura, Nodoka Main

Koshimizu, Ami Japanese

Kataoka, Yuuki Main

Kugimiya, Rie Japanese

Someya, Mako Main

Shiraishi, Ryouko Japanese

Amae, Koromo ing

Fukuhara, Kaori Japanese

Fukuji, Mihoko ing

Horie, Yui Japanese

Miyanaga, Teru ing

Nakahara, Mai Japanese

Touyoko, Momoko ing

Saitou, Momoko Japanese

Kanbara, Satomi ing

Kuwatani, Natsuko Japanese

Aoki, Takao Producer

Sakurai, Yuuka Producer

Kumagai, Takuto Producer

Takahata, Yuuichirou Producer

Reviews

Oct 1, 2009

Skadi

Recommended

I have to it 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 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 ing 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 ing 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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Apr 28, 2018

JrDetectiveUBet

Mixed Feelings

Funny

Such a disappointment.

Over 38 episodes, story never concludes.

Yuri for no reason.

Magic for no reason.

Artificial intensity for no reason.

... Mahjong is obviously a fun game, or no one would bother playing it. The creators of this anime went through a lot of trouble building a method to accurately animate all the tiles with high fidelity.

Then they invalidated those efforts by making this a show about magical girls who interact in public virtually naked from the waist up (and sometimes the waist down) and hold hands and blush between matches instead of making a show about Mahjong that WOULD HAVE BEEN INTERESTING just by virtue of showing how the game is played.

And tacos. Don't forget the tacos.

I still have no idea how Mahjong is played, and I WANTED to know.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jul 9, 2015

pikachu2510

Not Recommended

I started watching this anime because i wanted to watch another mahjong anime as the only one i've watched before was "Touhai Densetsu Akagi: Yami ni Maiorita Tensai". I have to say I'm disappointed in this anime.
This review is solely based on the first season of Saki as i never watched the sequel nor do i plan on watching them.

Plot - 4
I think this is a very average kind of plot and not really unique in any sense, i was hoping that since Saki always gets a score of ±0, it would make the plot more interesting but overall its kind of average. The fact ... that the anime doesn't really explain the basics of mahjong makes me rate this plot lower than average though. People that don't have prior knowledge to mahjong are probably going to have no clue how this game works. In addition, although the anime is about mahjong it seems like they focus more on character relationships than they really do with the mahjong.

Character - 4
I don't actually see a character development inside this anime. It more like there's a strong opponent and they just end up beating them by using the same moves as they previously did.

Art - 6
Usually, i am really picky with art so i tend to rate it hard. The art in this anime wasn't beautifully eye catching to me nor was it ugly.

Enjoyment - 1
I came here to watch a mahjong anime but it seemed more like i was watching a shoujo ai (girl love) anime. This anime has a lot of girl love moments, i have to say there's like at least one "lovey dovey" moment in each episode. The anime also had quite a bit of fanservice, two things that i don't really enjoy watching.

Overall - 3
- Quite a bit of shoujo ai (even though its not tagged) and fanservice. - Doesn't really explain how to play mahjong
- Characters don't really develop

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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