2012-07-02, 07:58 | Link #1781 |
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night_sentinel - What I probably found the most interesting in this episode was those humanizing moments for Teru. Her reaction to Kuro discarding a dora, her saying "good game" at the end of the game, and of course her showing even a modicum of concern for Toki. These all made Teru seem a bit more like, well, a normal human being shall we say, lol.
Oh, Teru has very impressive professionalism. She usually has a total poker-face (her show of surprise over Kuro discarding a dora being the only time that poker-face broke). She never says more than what is absolutely necessary. She's obviously very good at PR (as we saw several episodes ago). Truly the consummate professional. But she no longer seems like an ice queen, or a sadist, or anything even remotely villainous to me. Koromo was more of a 'bad girl', really, given how she trash-talked the competition, lol. ... Meanwhile, Saki is out there scared to death to even watch Teru play a match. Something doesn't quite add up here, does it? You'd think by Saki's level of trepidation that Teru is a monster away from the mahjong table as well as at it. But Teru seems like, well, at least a decent human being. So maybe what you, night_sentinel, hinted at half-jokingly a long time ago is actually correct - maybe Saki is the one most responsible for the sister estrangement. Saki wasn't surprised when she heard in Season 1 that Teru proclaimed that she had no sister. Saki looked hurt, of course, but she didn't look angry or resentful really. 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:
Well, there you have it. What do people think?
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Last edited by Triple_R; 2012-07-02 at 08:11. |
2012-07-02, 07:59 | Link #1782 | ||
阿賀野型3番艦、矢矧 Lv180
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Hell, even Saki and Kuro were similar, on the fact they rely way too much on their ability and get ambushed because of that (leading to self pity), but the vast difference between them, aside of the scale of ridiculousness of their respective ability, is that you actually have Saki developping during matches and outside of them, while Kuro had to be lead by Kirame and Toki to finally discard a dora. Whereas, well, everything was solely based on Toki on the last part, even if we factor Kuro's "passive" hindering ability towards Teru snowballing hand ability. At some point, you really had to wonder why it was called "Achiga hen", when it was just Teru and Toki.
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2012-07-02, 08:21 | Link #1783 | |
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Comments on the series. The story was very unevenly paced. Even for mahjong, there's really not a lot of real action compared to the original. But if one thing's good, it's the BGM. I can care less about art and animation quality. If the music's good, I'm in. And this is a prime example. Honestly, I almost shed tears when Kuro made her decisive move. Everything, music-wise, was perfect. 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. |
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2012-07-02, 08:41 | Link #1784 | |
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However, there are plenty of obvious reasons for why it had to be this way. For one, from the audience's perspective the fact must be accepted that Achiga cannot be called the main characters. For two, from the author's perspective we have to consider Ritz's writing speed and the necessity of continuing her work on also developing and progressing the main story. From the anime production team's perspective, we also have to consider the necessity of this adaptation in the first place to keep awareness of this series' alive and maintain anticipation for the real second season of the series. So in the end, as fans, I think we should just accept that the only important parts of this adaptation were just this match with Teru (which I think can be rightfully described as masterfully executed, right up there as one of the best matches of the series), and the final expectation that the fourth team which will show up in the Finals of this tournament will be Achiga. And in any case, although Kuro has received most of the focus (amongst Achiga members) in this adaptation up to now, I think we should certainly wait for the last three episodes and the conclusion of the SemiFinals before making any judgements about the screentime of the other characters. As for Kuro herself, while I can more or less understand that it is quite easy to be harsh on her, in the end I really have to harshly disagree with any statement to the effect that Kuro had to be "babysat" or did not contribute to the effort against Teru. Really, if you take into account the nature of Kuro's ability and the options available to her, Kuro has already done the best that she conceivably could have done in competing against Teru. In the end, all of the contributions of Kuro, Toki, and Kirame were necessary in specifically this order for them to have managed to stop Teru the way they did this time. Complaining about the way Kuro played during the rest of the battle is pointless, because: 1) If Kuro had discarded a Dora at any point earlier, they would've stopped coming to her and Teru could have gone on an even greater rampage much more easily 2) If Kuro had changed her playstyle at any point earlier, Teru would not have exposed herself to a vulnerability based on her analysis of Kuro's playstyle and thus Kuro, Toki and Kirame would not have been able to end Teru's final consecutive dealership. In the end, I don't think there's a valid reason to hate any of the characters who took part in this battle. |
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2012-07-02, 09:11 | Link #1786 | |||||
阿賀野型3番艦、矢矧 Lv180
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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. Again, it is a huge issue regarding how it was presented and lead to this point, more than really the decision itself. Quote:
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Last edited by Klashikari; 2012-07-02 at 12:54. |
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2012-07-02, 09:22 | Link #1787 |
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Something that has been a bit strange for me: Has anyone noticed that the narration keeps mentioning "hundreds of millions of players"? Yes, I know that there are actually hundreds of millions of "casual" players in China, but taking that number out of the picture, it would mean that mahjong is serious business. Seems like we do have something on the level of soccer in Sakiverse.
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2012-07-02, 09:26 | Link #1788 | |
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P.S. Who was credited for voicing Mrs. Atago?
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Last edited by Myssa Rei; 2012-07-02 at 09:53. |
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2012-07-02, 09:40 | Link #1789 |
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A few general points:
1. My favorite Saki mahjong match of all time is still Saki vs. Koromo vs. Yumi vs. Kana. That's going to be very hard to beat for me, as I just loved it to pieces. I suspect it'll be my favorite Saki mahjong match until Saki and Teru go head-to-head. However, I'd now put Teru vs. Toki vs. Kirame vs. Kuro as a solid second favorite Saki mahjong match. After those two, there's a bunch of interesting matches in both shows, but none stand out to me all that well. Nodoka vs. Touka vs. Stealth Momo vs. Sumiyo had its moments, but it was actually a bit of a letdown for me in how Nodoka vs. Touka had kind of been built up (especially by that flashy OP ) as "the first half of the double main event" (the second half being Saki vs. Koromo, of course). Touka's performance in that match was pretty disappointing for such an important antagonist. So, on the whole, I would say I like the mahjong matches in both shows about equally well. Maybe a slight advantage to the original Saki. 2. A good friend of mine compared Kuro's handling of the Teru match to Kyon's handling of Haruhi's Endless Eight. I think that's a rather fitting comparison, actually, lol. In both cases, how you view Kyon/Kuro depends on what you think is more important - The epic final episode comeback, or the epic suckitude in the episodes before it. I do get Sol's points. But for me, the problem with Kuro was less a matter of statistical performance, and more a matter of how she carried herself at the table. Here is where me being a pro hockey fan colors my opinion some, admittedly. This sort of heavy crying and whimpering during competition is a MAJOR turn-off to most pro sports fans (likewise, Teru's professionalism is something I have to tip my hat to, also due in part to my experience as a pro hockey fan). I really hope Kuro shows a bit more spine and composure next time. For me, that's more important than her actual statistical performance. All of that being said, I'm glad Kuro did get to win a hand, and a big one at that. It would have royally sucked for her character if she came out of this without winning a single hand. 3. I think Sol is right about the format issues here. The way this anime series went was largely unavoidable, baring the creation of anime original material, and that can be risky. So I don't fault it much for that.
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2012-07-02, 09:57 | Link #1791 | |
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It has been pointed so many times that I thought everyone know or at least notice this... @Triple_R Spoiler for Theory:
Overall I don't actually satisfied with Achiga-hen... The flaw actually come from the fact that it is a 1-cour anime instead of 2-cour anime like the original... Flashback is typical of Saki (or most shounen) that a 12 episode won't do justice not even counting those Mahjong plays before national that I believe have potential... I like a faithful adaptation, but when it is too faithful the anime will have flaw that manga has and that rise a question: Why we watch anime then when manga is faster? (It is debatable for Saki though :P ) Achiga however still has everything I love about Saki: It has developed side character, ridiculous mahjong, fantastic atmosphere, moe girl fighting desperately, minimal male, and yuri subtext (or text). These things actually what make me able to see it from beginning to its finale and later on end... Hopefully, the real 2nd season can come soon enough and doesn't have the flaw this side story has... |
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2012-07-02, 10:15 | Link #1793 | |||||
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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. Quote:
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. Quote:
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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. Last edited by Sol Falling; 2012-07-02 at 10:43. |
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2012-07-02, 10:29 | Link #1794 |
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Just for the curious, it used to be theorized that Teru's equivalent to Rinshan Kaihou was Nine Gates or Nine Lanterns, which is essentially a hand whose chance to get is absolutely minuscule, even compared to Saki's rinshan (which people say is just a 2% chance in any normal game). However, Achiga has shown us the truth of the matter, which is the "devil's mirror" that Teru uses to analyze her opponent's play styles, after which she goes after them like a freight train without any breaks.
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2012-07-02, 10:30 | Link #1795 | |
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My point was more of a rhetorical, somewhat punny one, that perhaps was a bit too colorful for its own good. By "You'd think by Saki's level of trepidation that Teru is a monster away from the mahjong table as well as at it." what I meant was "You'd think by Saki's level of trepidation that Teru is a really harsh/nasty person." But I don't get the impression that Teru is a really nasty person. She has a somewhat reserved personality, but she doesn't seem uncaring or so arrogant that she sees everybody else as unworthy of her concern. For all the Teru/Gilgamesh comparisons that have been made (and I've made a lot of them myself, of course), her personality appears very different from his, even while her monstrous power is comparable to Gilgamesh's (albeit in very different fields of battle of course). Basically, I think that Teru might be a normal person when it comes to her degree of caring/concern for other people. She's not a normal girl in general, though. She has an air to her that goes beyond normalcy, of course.
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2012-07-02, 10:37 | Link #1796 | ||
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" One time... I went alone to go see them. My sister wouldn't say a single word to me... She's definitely still angry at me." The quote implies that Saki thinks she did something wrong that caused Teru to be angry. Of course we have to take onto account that this words maybe biased, I have a feeling that if something went wrong and Saki can link herself to it she'll probably blame herself before she blame others. Quote:
And I think that even if Saki is avoiding her sister right now, its pretty obvious from the brief snippets we have of Teru in Saki's thoughts that Saki still idolize Teru a lot. Whenever a strong player appears who does Saki compare them to ... Teru. Which actually kinda backfired on her on many battles ... prominent among them is when Fujita-pro beat her and Nodoka, she was literally paralyzed by fear due to remembrance. Another prominent example is when Yumi chankan'ed her. After that, she was wary of another chankan and then she thought Yumi can't do it if she calls a hidden kan. But, thought better of it when she remembered her oneechan and Kokushi musou (a ridiculously rare yakuman that can rob a hidden kan)... From this you can infer what Saki thinks of Teru mahjong skills... (hint: godlike) Beside this, Flashback version!Teru which is directly taken from Saki's memories is highly idealized which should show us how Saki currently perceive Teru. Its no cold robotic deceiving shell of a human being but a perfect onee-chan figure. On that dream, it always confused me that Saki is in loli form while Teru looks more like her current self. Since their age gap is probably 2-3 years they should both be loli. Hmm... maybe well get a "true" version of the event from Teru's perspective featuring loli Saki and loli Teru... Anyway, I think whatever is making Saki not face Teru, it isn't because Saki thinks Teru is a terrible person... its quite the opposite every thought Saki has of Teru is flattering. About the revised Miyanaga theory... its a good one. I think mahjong is a major sport judging from the coverage alone in the highschool sector. Heck, the matches are even featured in the newspaper and its televised plus shown on the public screens. I'm feeling its "The sport" of the Saki world bigger than soccer irl. The only fault that I can find in this theory is Saki seems to get along with her mother since she haven't been mentioned having a problem with her. Of course, this isn't proof and Saki did stay with her father... Beside that Saki was technically punished for both winning and losing. "They" actually get angry if Saki won and well losing sucks.
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2012-07-02, 11:26 | Link #1797 | |||
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Awaii-san from MAL has kindly posted a chart. If Teru follows a pattern in her consecutive wins it would look more or less like this... 5th consecutive wins = mangan 6th = haneman 7th= baiman 8th = sanbaiman 9th = would be yakuman nine gates = nine mirrors = nine consecutive wins Maybe when Teru is in 9th consecutive winning streak the yakuman that she will get or activated would be nine gates... considering how many waits is possible with that hand it seems to be the ideal yakuman for Teru. Quote:
To add to what Sol have said 1. Kirame's who have probably called the most in the match is seated after Teru meaning she is the perfect person to call since anytime she calls Teru's turn is skipped. Beside that Kirame has the "not going down below zero ability" which looks useless but its perfect for weathering Teru's onslaught. It also helps that Kirame's personality is just so subara that it even pulled Toki up when she was beginning to despair. 2. Kuro's doras is already explained. 3. Toki is probably the most important component using her mahjong precognition she was able to stop most of Teru's dealer streaks meaning Teru never got to the largest hands. Beside that she is actively hampering Teru's hands if we assume that Teru must make hands that has many waits so that even if Toki disrupted the drawing order she will still be able to win. Now, when the finals come only one ability out of the three would be there to limit Teru so her rampage would be more unchecked. And if previous discussions that Teru is purposely not destroying teams at the vanguard match so her team could get experience is true, then the only time we will be sure to see Teru really serious is in the final match.
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2012-07-02, 12:12 | Link #1798 | |||
阿賀野型3番艦、矢矧 Lv180
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But in general, this is the very reason why this series is ironically more like "shiraitodai VS senriyama" than really achiga doing anything. Quote:
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. 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 the latter 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. Hell, even Teru herself based everything on the fact Kuro wouldn't discard any dora, leading to hands disregarding completely dora as waits. Therefore, her whole strategy would need revision, and not especially fitted with everything going left and right. Quote:
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).
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Last edited by Klashikari; 2012-07-02 at 12:25. |
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2012-07-02, 13:17 | Link #1799 | ||||
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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.) Last edited by Sol Falling; 2012-07-02 at 13:30. |
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2012-07-02, 13:19 | Link #1800 | |
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