[Sol Falling]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

So based on this latest episode of Achiga-hen, I'm going to alter my previous theory on why Saki and Teru are estranged from each other. I hope people find it interesting.

Spoiler for Updated Miyanaga Separation Theory:

The Miyanaga sisters' talent with mahjong was obvious at an extremely young age. This really excited their parents, and made their parents want to do everything they could to see both daughters become successful pro mahjong players.*

Saki once mentioned that if she came in last during mahjong games with her family, she'd "lose her New Year's money" or something like that. This hints at how seriously the Miyanagas took mahjong - even to the point that monetary incentives were put on the table. This may have been the Miyanaga parents' way of trying to push their daughters forward into being better mahjong players.

Now, perhaps Teru thrived under this pressure (or accepted it, at least) while Saki chafed under it. Saki didn't like how intense these Miyanaga family mahjong matches were - They weren't any fun to her due to all the pressure surrounding it.

So while Teru pleased her parents, Saki stopped trying to win and adopted her plus/minus 0 approach as a coping mechanism. Once Saki's parents noticed this, they became upset with her.

One thing to keep in mind here is that, in real life, the parents of sports prodigies can be rather insane about it. Not all such parents are like this, but many are.

Perhaps Saki's parents (or at least her mother) were similarly insane about it. Since Saki is living with her father, but not her mother, I'm going to guess that Saki's mother was the person must bothered by Saki adopting the plus/minus zero approach.

Perhaps Saki's father eventually accepted, regretfully, Saki's decision to not try to be good at mahjong, while Saki's mother was incensed by it. So the two parents argued over Saki, which may have played a key role in their separation.

From Saki's perspective, mahjong tore her family apart, which is why she started out hating mahjong way back in the first episode of Saki's original season.

From Teru's perspective, Saki tore her family apart. If Saki had simply tried to please her parents like Teru herself did, the family would never have broken apart. And so Teru no longer considers Saki her sister; perhaps Teru views Saki as someone who dishonorably disrespected their parents' wishes, so family ostracization is called for.

While Saki blamed mahjong for splitting her family up, Saki also knows how Teru blames her for it. Saki also knows that Teru isn't necessarily wrong - Maybe if Saki had tried more to keep being good at mahjong, the family break-up never would have occurred. So Saki is privately living in deep guilt, and can't face her sister at all given the shame that she feels.

Saki's one hope is that if she competes head-to-head with Teru at mahjong, in an official competition where it really matters, perhaps Teru will forgive her based on clear evidence of how Saki is embracing mahjong again.

One other thing that fits nicely with my theory here is how, back in Season 1, there's a brief scene of Saki's father talking about throwing out his long-unused mahjong table. There's something vaguely melancholic about that scene, and if mahjong is what tore Saki's family apart, then her father feeling a certain bitterness towards the game itself would make sense.


* For this theory to work, it presupposes that mahjong is a BIG DEAL in the Saki-verse. It would need to be at or near the level of pro baseball. In other words, it would need to be a highly prestigious sport, and probably one with a lot of money involved at the professional level.

Well, there you have it. What do people think?

I do think the scenario that you've painted here is probably more or less accurate. On the other hand, I actually still wouldn't go so far yet as to say that Teru is a normal girl, or that she isn't a monster. Although in mahjong terms, Teru did get caught off guard here, and ended up conceding some points to Kuro, I think Teru's moderate response to it came from a combination of the fact that it was the last hand of the game (i.e. thus everything was over after that) and that the change in point totals, in terms of the reduction in Teru's lead over everyone else, was still almost miniscule.

The other aspect is somewhat related to the suggestion Peanutbutter made below: that I do think its likely, that we haven't even seen Teru's full power/potential yet.

Originally Posted by Peanutbutter

I waited 3 years to watch Teru in action. I won't say it's a disappointment, but I have this niggling suspicion that we have not seen the real Teru yet.

If Saki's +-0 is the counter-ability to Teru's continuous streak, what's Teru's equivalent of Saki's kan and Rinshan Kaihou? I guessed that answer will keep me going for another 3 years.

I also share your suspicion, but not really because I think Teru has a "special move" like Saki's kan/rinshan or anything. Moreso I'd say it's based on the conditions in this match that Teru was playing under.

Basically, I think what Teru's real power is is her mirror ability, which lets her completely analyze a person's core and playstyle. After analyzing her opponents playstyles, I think what Teru does is use pure skill to completely dominate/crush their abilities and continue winning consecutively. Two further aspects apply here: on top of her skill in avoiding/defending against her opponents' abilities, Teru does get a boost in terms of unnatural luck/fate which helps her get the tiles/yaku she requires quickly. However, as a cost/requirement for either that luck or her mirror ability, Teru has to build up her wins in an order of increasing value.

So, by these conditions, I think Teru's play in this match was limited by two factors:

1) Of course, the fact that Kuro was hoarding all the dora, meaning Teru had to search for more complicated hand formations to keep increasing her winnings
2) Kirame's pons. Teru's ability to advance her hand obviously depends on having the opportunity to draw in the first place. Because Kirame kept ponning tiles from the others, sometimes cooperatively even just to let the other players have a chance at winning, Teru often lost her turn. Although Kirame was the best example of this throughout this match, in essence you could just say that Teru was held back by the cooperation of her opponents.

In essence, what I think is the true characteristic of Teru's playstyle is her ability to completely avoid and target your playstyle. By seeing completely through her opponents' abilities, not only was Teru able, for example, to ignore Toki's interference by winning even when Toki made a call and disrupted the winning tile she was going to draw, she was also able to force Kuro to deal into her hand by filling Kuro's hand with too many dora. Because Teru is able to completely see through you and your abilities, individually she is basically unstoppable.

However, in Kuro/Toki/Kirame's case not only were they able to circumvent this via cooperation (i.e. Kirame calling pon a lot in order to skip Teru's turn), but Toki and Kuro were also able to surpass Teru's analysis ability somewhat by evolving their abilities. So I think, in any other match where there isn't a player like Kirame who from the start had devoted herself to cooperation, Teru has the potential to much more completely crush people's individual playstyles, and go on bigger rampages.

Originally Posted by Klashikari

The problem I have with that then is thus the choice of adapting the series -now- whereas the manga itself is basically not complete leading to a dead giveaway that things won't go smooth right from the get go. And really, I really cannot consider them as "not main characters" because they are on, well, another side of the picture, so there is really no real hindering factor to set the premise of Shiratodai going on onslaught towards the finals (with Kiyosumi fated to be there), while Achiga girls trying to reach that part as well. The only difference is "how" you do that, which doesn't have to put into something as being overwhelmingly overshadowed this way.

Regarding the adaptation of Achiga now, like I said this is basically appropriate because the anime studios have to do something to make sure the series stays popular, after already almost 3 years from the first series. In terms of the main manga that Ritz is writing the Finals arc may not even be ready/finished 2 years from now, so that's why it was best for her to take a short diversion to create this sidestory while also showing us a bit of information about the A-side of the tournament. I think it's very clear and correct to say that Achiga has certain huge problems, resulting from the inability of Ritz to truly focus on and develop Achiga and their side's mahjong matches, but I think in terms of the job/function that it does which is necessary for the series it accomplishes that more or less competently.

The actual problem is that it isn't even because of the Teru matches, but really all "proper" matches were only shown with Kuro being either dominating people or literally slaughtered, either by Toki or Teru. You barely see other girls having like 2-3 rounds within seconds/minutes at best. That's really more than half to what we were presented to, and having a packed screentime for the other characters in the last episodes will just confirm how unbalanced the series was so far.

The only point I have to say here is ironically that even Kuro didn't get much focus in this Teru match except in the last episode. So overall, including the last three episodes which will be focused on the other four Achiga characters, instead of Kuro, in the end I don't think it will be true that Achiga-hen is completely imbalanced in screentime towards Kuro. Actually, the real problem of Achiga-hen will be the lack of focus on Achiga in general (including Kuro). :P

It is more the character concept of Kuro that is flawed, not the character on her own. The author basically cornered themselves by using such "gimmick" and restriction for her, to the point that it leads to huge issues snowballing afterwards. Frankly, it isn't the first time Kuro could be in tenpai by discarding a dora in the series, but the problem is how she came to realize it only after so many things that were basically not under her control. Again, the problem is that if it wasn't for Teru forcing everyone to play coop, there wouldn't be any way for Kuro to progress, to which it definitely cheapens such efforts done by her (hell, NONE of the Achiga girls contributed to such development, aside of aiming together towards the finals. By no means we were shown girls discussing about everyone's weakness... hell, Ako -still- didn't get why Kuro didn't discard a safe tile dora during the match against Teru, despite she knows full well Kuro's ability)

Really, it is the whole concept of forcing such situation that doesn't sit well with me: instead of having Kuro cornered and being "guided" by Toki and Kirame, I would have appreciated much more if Kuro would actually had a character development the very moment Toki was dominating her, so having more introspect regarding her dora ability then later a real effort on her own to discard a dora..

I don't think it is really that Kuro didn't "realize" that she should discard a dora earlier, because if Kuro did discard a dora earlier in this match against Teru, the results would actually have been terrible. The suggestion throughout the series actually isn't that Kuro's teammates or Kuro herself aren't aware of her weaknesses but that Kuro's weakness has no real solution, because if Kuro discards a dora then she will stop drawing them. There are/were strong negative consequences for Kuro changing her playstyle, whereas (at least for this Teru battle) the disadvantages were not that huge for continuing it.

Beyond that, I don't think it could be truly said that Toki or Kirame "guided" Kuro to discard her dora. In the end the decision and emotional development for Kuro was her own. The only thing which Toki actually did was to show Kuro that it was safe to do it. Even if Toki didn't do that, Kuro might have had her emotional development (and just discarded her dora, without knowing it was safe); alternatively, if Kuro didn't have her emotional development, she wouldn't have done it despite Toki's actions anyway. It is not like Toki or Kirame could ever really have "guided" or "predicted" Kuro's emotional development, itself, so I think in this regard, Kuro deserves her own credit.