[Sol Falling]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

The problem isn't that she keeps dora in order to fend off teru's growing hands, but more like -she can't do anything without dora- prior this episode. Really, Kuro's characterization was grossely revolving on the fact she really doesn't make any hands without a sizable amount of dora (the series never showed a hand below 5 dora), which explains why she was utterly helpless, since she didn't try any alternative.

Yes, I do think this is one of the options which Kuro could have explored, which was to become a good player even without her ability, simply as a "normal" player. However, there are two major obstacles to this happening -- namely Kuro's personality (her dora skill is very closely tied to her personality/memories) and a lack of time for training -- and even then when you consider that the most effective "normal" playstyle would be something like Ako's which mostly gets tanyaos for only ~4000 points or so it's clear that it's really a very small gain compared to the ~16000 point hands that Kuro's ability normally gets.

From a general perspective, it could be said that "unlocking" dora would lead to much easier fat score for Teru, but there is one thing to consider: that it would make Kuro -far less- predictable in the whole mess. Kuro was the main "cause" of Teru's rons, because she always dealt incredibly unsafe tiles, until Toki showed her the way in the last episode, Kirame dealt in Teru's hand due to bad luck/impossibility to predict Teru's waits, and Toki got toasted because of either her riichi backfiring at her, or exhaustion.

Actually, Kuro only dealt into Teru's hands three times during this game, which were two times for very small values (~1300 points or so) and one time I think a mangan (~8000). The only thing which makes Kuro's hands "predictable" is if she's actively pursuing tempai (i.e. trying to win a hand) which means that she could still avoid pretty well if she was just defending passively. In fact, the person who was ronned most during this game by Teru was Kirame, and most of the points that Teru earned were from herself by tsumo. So while you might be correct about Kuro's hands being predictable during the QuarterFinal match when Kuro lost ~40000 points to Toki and even others, it actually isn't true that that had so much of an effect in this match against Teru.

In a way, Teru would have faster "big hands", but she would rely much more on tsumo if Kuro stopped dora cluttering her hands, while she could potentially help Kirame and Toki in calling tiles (Kirame and Toki could sort of keep Teru at bays few turns, but having the 3 of them would definitely affect the flow big time), especially that Kuro knows full well Teru's limitations.

I do think Kuro could have had more potential to actively take part in interfering with Teru if her hand weren't cluttered with dora, but really in terms of calling tiles Kirame was the key position because she sat after Teru. Therefore, only Kirame ponning tiles to take turns from Teru would've been most effective, because nobody else ponning would actually skip Teru's turn (unless it was Toki ponning from Kuro, but then Kirame gets skipped too). From this perspective, Kuro keeping hold of all the dora tiles really was the most effective way for her to contribute to holding back Teru.

It isn't like they directly guided her to discard the tile, but they guided her so the "path" was clear: they forced Teru to declare riichi, which in turn lead to a delay with their calls and all.
Whereas Kuro indeed pulled efforts in there, her growth was instigated by her opponents and the desperate situation, instead of really done on her own or with her team. Simply speaking, my problem was that Kuro was plainly shown helpless and passive (sure, it isn't like she can suddenly make stunts like Toki considering her own ability, but that doesn't stop the fact she wasn't really shown trying anything).

Actually I disagree here, Toki did in no way actually force Teru to call riichi, she simply predicted it due to her foresight ability. The reason Teru called riichi was actually due to her own limitation/ability which means that she has to continually raise the value of the hands she gets. Because all of the dora were hoarded by Kuro, once Teru started getting into the higher hand values (i.e. mangan, haneman, etc.) Teru would have to start depending on things like riichis, ippatsus, or rinshans to keep on upgrading her hand values. This fact that Teru's "increasing wins" limitation might force her to put herself in a position where she was vulnerable was actually one of the things which was foreshadowed by Kuro/Ako earlier on in the match.

The thing which Toki actively did in terms of their last win on Teru was only to play some safe tiles from Teru's riichi to show Kuro which tiles were safe to discard (something that she could've done with just her single turn lookahead ability) and to change the draw order so that Kuro's winning tile would be drawn by Teru.

(The thing about Toki's future sight ability is that aside from her own draws, Toki can only see her opponents' discards (and whether they will pon/chi/ron/etc. or not) so it doesn't actually give her very complete information about her opponents' hands. In general, it's a pretty strong power because it would allow Toki to know when somebody was about to win, and thus try to stop/disrupt them, and also to have advance information about how to build her hand, or which tiles are safe to discard; but it doesn't give her complete knowledge of her opponents' hand shapes and doesn't allow her to precisely influence what tiles they draw (she can only act on obvious/general signs like them winning or calling riichi or something). The idea of influencing Teru to riichi, therefore, is actually one of the things which Toki can't do.)