(L) Saki manga

[Requiem-x]

Originally Posted by Flower

*sighs happily*

Finally got what I was waiting for!

The anime made it ten times more intense for me. And also emphasized how manipulative Saki is acting. Everyone else's nerves are already wrecked. I expect nothing short of absolute horror from Kyoko's face next episode.

You have to wonder how the semis will top this performance in any way.

[Fragment off]

Originally Posted by Requiem-x

The anime made it ten times more intense for me. And also emphasized how manipulative Saki is acting. Everyone else's nerves are already wrecked. I expect nothing short of absolute horror from Kyoko's face next episode.

You have to wonder how the semis will top this performance in any way.

Yep , and I'm already imagining the anime only viewer's reaction with the +/- thing and the f act that Saki was actually ... scared . I still can't believe that .

As for semi, Well how about this time Saki hit Kyouko back with the exact same hand Kyouko will pass in the next episode

More seriously Captain's S-F Will be a festival of WTF , there is no two way about that. We already know that 3/4 player are God-like level :-
-Maya Hyped as being above far Monster class(which is the one I hope the trauma will come from for Saki)
-Nelly The greedy World monster with AFAIK terrifying flow control and a wish to go all out.
-Saki, Our resident Demon-Lord who should finally be pushed farther ( Because there she still had her socks ... we all know what that mean, Saki wasn't even trying in the Q-F)

And the last player , Kyouko should also come with her armory vastly reinforced.

...

Spoiler for Terrifying Thought:

What id they're isn't even a Captain's match and They finish it in Vice-Captain like last time?

[Flower]

And that is exactly it - when I was reading the manga after all this and Hisa pointed out "Don't worry, you never took off your socks!" my jaw dropped....

[Fragment off]

Originally Posted by Flower

And that is exactly it - when I was reading the manga after all this and Hisa pointed out "Don't worry, you never took off your socks!" my jaw dropped....

I have the image Of saki shocking everyone in one match ( Preferentially the 2nd Hanchan of the Final where the journalist finally should have a clue ) coming from the Team room to the table already barefooted

[Requiem-x]

Originally Posted by Flower

And that is exactly it - when I was reading the manga after all this and Hisa pointed out "Don't worry, you never took off your socks!" my jaw dropped....

If that's the entirety of Hisa's plan for the captain's match then I'll be both dissapointed and impressed. And probably a bit scared.

Don't forget now Saki is closer than ever to onee-chan, so that might also help. Help her, everyone else will lose all desire to play mahjong for the rest of their lives.

I'd like to use an example to more properly pinpoint what will happen in the semis, but I don't know of any shounen battle showing enough amounts of sadism and anger.

Originally Posted by Fragment off

I have the image Of saki shocking everyone in one match ( Preferentially the 2nd Hanchan of the Final where the journalist finally should have a clue ) coming from the Team room to the table already barefooted

Better yet, she's carrying Etopen. Remember the clothes swap in the achiga semis? This would be their equivalent. Just imagine Saki supercharged with Nodoka's 100% raw yuri desire.

[Flower]

Let's stop with the good luck trinkets, cuz at this rate we will be adding Yuuki's cape and a taco, Mako's glasses, and Hisa's hair ties too.... -_-

Back on topic (cough cough) regarding the semi finals Captain match I had not thought of Maya being the one to scare Saki... for whatever reason I always assumed it would be Nelly. We don't know a whole lot about Mayu yet, though, so I guess it is certainly possible.

[Peanutbutter]

Seeing Saki in control of her +-0 ability was awesome.

Though I dun think it will work in the semis, unless she helps Uzusan to gain a lot of points from Rinhai.

We will see what Ritz has in mind.

[Requiem-x]

Originally Posted by Flower

Let's stop with the good luck trinkets, cuz at this rate we will be adding Yuuki's cape and a taco, Mako's glasses, and Hisa's hair ties too.... -_-

Funny you say that.

Spoiler for Spoiler:

One of the pages from the Biyori special I didn't download (because I'm dumb like that sometimes) has Saki wearing Yuuki's cape. She doesn't like it too much, though.

Don't worry, Saki's sight is too good for glasses, and her hair's too short for pigtails. It is likely she'll carry Etopen, though. If not now, in the finals.

Oh, I see someone in the anime thread has already figured out there's something funny about the way Saki is going about things. Next week is gonna be interesting.

The +-0 really blew my mind when I first heard of it, because of both the implications in-game and about Saki's mindset.

[The Green One]

That fact that the murderous super monster is not full power is definitely a sobering part. I actually feel bad for poor Teru having to play multiple games against that when they were young.

[XGeneral2000]

I always end up enjoying the anime version of Saki more - the music and timing really add to a series like this.

Originally Posted by Flower

Hence her mode of playing, already rooted in avoiding conflict, becomes shakey when the aspect of being "found out" somehow comes to light. Yumi's chan-kan in season 1 is one example of this, and in the recent anime ep Kyouko's (perhaps unintentional) pon of a tile she was going to use to build a kan disrupted Saki mentally. In both cases because there was a degree of her unannounced actions being somehow "discovered" (or at least she thought they had been discovered - Yumi had, Kyouko is another question).

This is a pretty interesting interpretation...I don't know if it's been mentioned yet, but this could also explain why Saki was so shaken when Maho copied her ability at the training camp (as opposed to Yuuki and Nodoka, who were mildly irritated at worst). I remember Hisa even noted that "people are afraid of what trespasses on their territory".

If Saki's style represents what she wants to keep hidden, even from herself, than Maho's emulation of that style goes beyond even "discovery" - it's "confrontation." Even though she (probably) didn't understand it, Maho was literally forcing Saki to face her own dark secrets, which she was likely unprepared to do. No wonder she stays in the corner long after everyone else has likely forgotten about it.

Along this same train of thought, Saki seems to be bound unusually tightly to Mahjong. More than a game or a hobby, it's a method of communication for her, a method she hopes to use to patch together her family. As such, it's not too far a stretch that Saki considers Mahjong games like conversation, where she and the other players learn about each other. She seeks out powerful opponents because they may have interesting things to "say", and even when she loses, as long as the "conversation" was interesting, she has fun.

So I might add the additional interpretation that Saki's rinshan kaihou is her psychological "defense", the face she shows to others when they "talk" through Mahjong (the equivalent of personality, i.e. how one speaks and acts in social settings). She is comfortable with it, and for the most part, her opponents are "comfortable" with it as well - rather than face her rinshan kaihou directly, most of her opponents prefer to circumvent it or win before she can use it.

However, as you mentioned, tactics that confront her rinshan directly - Yumi's chankan and Kyouko's pon/Jindai's subsequent "theft" of Saki's draw - put her off balance. These tactics do not just say "I am strong, like your rinshan" but rather "I am stronger than your rinshan." This might be the conversational equivalent of pointing out the flaws in someone else's argument as opposed to simply presenting an alternate perspective - direct attack. It puts Saki on the defensive. If one were ever to play against Saki, I suspect this would be the most effective strategy - win by countering and exploiting Saki's rinshan, rather than trying to win around it. This also offers an alternative (or additional) explanation to why Saki considers Kyouko the scariest opponent in her quarterfinals match - even if she's not the "strongest" player, she's the only one that actually interfered with Saki's rinshan kaihou. Saki might see a subtler insight and threat in Kyouko that others have missed in favor of Toyone's and Jindai's flashier wins.

Well, reflecting on all that, it might be reading too much into what is essentially a sports series with cute girls and yuri overtones. But eh, why not, right?

[raincrow]

Originally Posted by XGeneral2000

This also offers an alternative (or additional) explanation to why Saki considers Kyouko the scariest opponent in her quarterfinals match - even if she's not the "strongest" player, she's the only one that actually interfered with Saki's rinshan kaihou. Saki might see a subtler insight and threat in Kyouko that others have missed in favor of Toyone's and Jindai's flashier wins.

I think it stems back to analytical/tactician players. As a few of you all have stated, there's a good possibility that Saki really does hate being 'examined'. Obviously, anyone would feel threatened when their skills are exposed, but Saki gets plain freaked out. It's different from, say, when Yuu realized her style had been seen through. She did get worried, but she didn't go and hide in a corner afterward either

So, Kyouko might be proving to be a huge threat to Saki because she picks up on those subtle things that other players seem to miss. I'm hesitant to say that she's a direct counter to Saki though, because we haven't seen what Nelly can pull off. Like Touka showed, Saki doesn't seem to do well against monster flow control either (or at least she didn't during the training camp - maybe she's improved or gotten advice from Hisa). No telling what Maya will do either.

[Flower]

Just a guess here, but Saki seems best able to exercise her monster flow control when she feels somehow "safe", I think. People who use it against her aggresively may "scare" her and be therefore an effective tactic - like Koromo and "cold Touka". If this is so I could easily see Nelly scaring her quite a bit.

Kyouko, though, is going to train under people who will emulate her style to a degree to sharpen her strategical mindset against Saki specifically. In other words, Kyouko will be semi trained how to "discover" a bit of how Saki operates. That will also be tough for her....

But getting back to Saki most effectively exercising control when she feels safe or even protected in a way, another hint of this is the fact that she very regularly wins but showing very few of her cards until the very end of the game, or until she has had a chance to read the patterns of the other players. So a further possible effective strategy against Saki would be to do the same... Especially this could be effective if you are also a monster. Again, just guessing,here....

[raincrow]

Originally Posted by Flower

Kyouko, though, is going to train under people who will emulate her style to a degree to sharpen her strategical mindset against Saki specifically. In other words, Kyouko will be semi trained how to "discover" a bit of how Saki operates. That will also be tough for her....

That to me is what makes the dynamic of this manga very interesting. We usually have to talk about how other players will handle Saki, and not the other way around. What I mean is, in any other manga or anime, someone like Kyouko would be the main hero: the regular player who has to fight all the monsters and scrap her way to victory. In this case, Saki is no novice fighter and routinely decks everyone, and a lot of the time the PoV of the match is not from her perspective either. It makes it feel like the other players are the ones struggling against her (which they are) as the viewer sits beside them.

So, her dominance makes the outcome of the story hard to predict (which is a good thing). Someone said this earlier in the thread too: I really think the semifinal match with her and Nelly/Maya/Kyouko is going to be a big turning point in the story and how we possibly view Saki. We might get a peek at what really makes her tick if things go very wrong for her in the match.

[Felyndiira]

Originally Posted by mhazaru

I think it stems back to analytical/tactician players. As a few of you all have stated, there's a good possibility that Saki really does hate being 'examined'. Obviously, anyone would feel threatened when their skills are exposed, but Saki gets plain freaked out. It's different from, say, when Yuu realized her style had been seen through. She did get worried, but she didn't go and hide in a corner afterward either

So, Kyouko might be proving to be a huge threat to Saki because she picks up on those subtle things that other players seem to miss. I'm hesitant to say that she's a direct counter to Saki though, because we haven't seen what Nelly can pull off. Like Touka showed, Saki doesn't seem to do well against monster flow control either (or at least she didn't during the training camp - maybe she's improved or gotten advice from Hisa). No telling what Maya will do either.

Night_sentinel and I had a discussion about this topic earlier in this thread. This blog post from him contains a few scans of the manga, but I think it shouldn't be that big of a problem) sums up the conclusions that we made back then:

http://randomwalloftext.com/2013/03/...aid-of-kyouko/

Essentially, if you recall from the very first chapters of the manga, Hisa taught Saki to think of matches as "1000/33000" rather than starting off at even scores so that she would end up using her +/- 0 ability to play to win. Saki came into the final round with that mentality, and within the first three matches got more than 1000 points taken from her by, of all people, Kyouko. Compounded with the fact that Kyouko's pon (though unintentional) was what ruined her kan in the first round and brought her to "below zero" in the 1000/33000 mental trick, and Saki ended up being pretty scared of her.

Our theory was that the "maou Saki" that we saw for most of the semifinals was actually Saki subconsciously switching to her +/- 0 strategy due to this initial shock. The anime makes her seem a bit more natural between matches, but that could just be an inconsistency: Saki was uncharacteristically cold during this period in the manga, and we heard practically none of her thoughts except for a single line of reaction to the other players' abilities.

I highly doubt that Saki was afraid of Kyouko because of her analytical ability. After all, she was kinda dancing in the palm of Saki's hands for the remainder of the match, only realizing what happened after everything has ended (we presume that Saki do not know about the extra coaching). Rather, it might just have been a psychological shock - which worried Hisa because she is Kiyosumi's biggest play maker - Nodoka is less capable of large point swings.

[Flower]

In this case Saki's fear would stem out of being foiled in the imaginary mindset Hisa suggested to her. And that makes sense. And sure enough Saki was able to use her in the later tsumos to drop Eisui and Miyamori out of the running.

But after it is done Saki apologizes to Hisa for letting the potentially most dangerous player ofthe three opponents she had at the table through. It is hard for me to equate why Saki would regard her as dangerous if it was just a matter of her being able to win in a way that threatens her freedom to use her playing style. To me it seems there has to be something more than this, and I assumed (just an opinion in other words) that the training Kyouko will undergo to "see through some of the characteristics of Saki's playing style" were an answer of sort as to why Saki was afraid of Kyouko.

Looking back through the style of players that Saki had a hard time with in the manga and the anime, two of them (Hisa in the Individuals with the straight zone and Yumi in the Finals with the chankan) both of the tactics they used were thought out based on what they knew of Saki. The other, Koromo, was pure intimidation, but note that it was very shortly after Saki had been shaken by Yumi. Another time she was scared was when her style of playing was copied by Maho - and that, too, was deliberately arranged by Hisa because of her knowledge of Saki.

Kyouko is also analyst type of a similar sort as Yumi. So I kinda just added a couple of things together, and then went a step deeper into Saki regarding the element of remaining hidden, etc., which you can read a couple of posts up.

So Saki being afraid of Kyouko because of her analytical ability in my opinion is a bit of anover-simplification of what I mentioned above initially, but even if it wasn't the content of the post at randomwalloftext on why Saki was afraid of Kyouko can remain equally true, but just expanded on and deepened in terms of reasons beneath the mechanics.

But like I said, this is just my working opinion for the moment - Ritz is so slow with chapters and stingy with info that everything I, you, or the entirety of Saki fandom assume to be so could theoretically be overturned in a flash. -_-

[Felyndiira]

Saki does have a history of self-esteem issues and overestimating her opponents, like when she sealed her own power because she believed that Yumi will chaingun Thirteen Orphans during the Nagano finals. I admit that it's possible that she's more inclined to fear analytical types. Still, it's not hard to imagine that Kyouko knocking her out of the mental trick would just have cause her to overestimate Kyouko's abilities in the same way.

Kyouko knocking out her mental trick is significant in other ways as well. As much as Saki is powerful, her abilities are limited in a sense that the "perfect control" in the semi-finals only happened because she tried to plus/minus zero in the end. As we know, Saki is Kiyosumi's ace - she's the player that Kiyosumi has to rely on to get a lot of points if necessary. As perfect as her plus/minus zero control of the board is, she can only earn 11000 points over two hanchans at best. It's not a viable strategy when her other (admittedly very strong) teammates get countered and she falls far enough behind.

We also don't know how "perfect" her control over the board really is. For instance, did she knock out Miyamori and Eisui on purpose, or was it just the best possible path for her to achieve the desired result of +/- 0? Remember that Toyone and Kasumi both have upper-tier powers that she can't fully control, and are dangerous if they are given even a bit of breathing space. If Eisui ended up winning a hand, it will be at least a haneman, which would swing the points far enough that Saki would have to work that much harder to get things back to a equilibrium. Toyone is, aside from unknown abilities that she could still have in reserve, very hard to set up. From my perspective, she didn't off Toyone and Kasumi as much as she had no choice; thus, it is very possible that she can get +/- 0 at a guarantee, but she has less control over how she does it.

It's actually a situation that we are beginning to see develop in the nationals. Kiyosumi is now behind by a metric ton of points, and no matter how well Hisa does, it's very likely that the baton will be handed to Saki where she needs to earn much more than just 11k points to ensure Kiyosumi's advance. I actually think that Hisa won't be able to fully recover Kiyosumi's points (or Nodoka will lose even more points), and Saki will have to break out of +/- 0 again to have any hopes of advancing to the finals; that's my prediction for Saki's character development for the Rinkai arc.

EDIT: But yeah, I do agree. We probably would not know until Ritz finally animates the finals of hte Rinkai arc.

[kona~chan]

Kyouko's is actually pretty good imo, i kinda understand why saki feared her actually.
her ability to change her style depend on the situation is absolutely powerfull, she may got hit much by toyone's persuit but that's just for the sake of confirming her theory, even when kasumi's show her 1 collor auto-pilot draw that pretty much make toyone dead, but in the end kyouko able to fight it back by treating the game as sanma, and not to mention at the 3rd south round, kyouko just as she said thanks to the saki's ability to make a kan she able read the whole players hand. just give her more time and sample i believe even she can fought saki back at equal ground eventually.

[raincrow]

I don't think Kyouko getting wins while Saki was depending on Hisa's mental trick is why she was afraid of her. Kyouko was just getting quick wins, and really, any player can do that. There's nothing specific to Kyouko herself in that regard. Saki also comments after the match that it was all three players that made it tough for that style to work, and not just one of them.

There are a few points in the match, though, where Kyouko does seem to realize some things that the other two players don't. One is where Esui and Miyamori believed Saki was doing a RK to get more kan dora. Kyouko didn't buy that, and instead felt that Saki had done it to change the drawing order (this is when she feels that Saki is mocking her). Whether that was true or not isn't the point though: it's that Kyouko had a different opinion.

The most notable insight (during the match) occurs when she realizes how Saki is abusing Esui's suit-restriction, and feels the game has just become that much easier to read. The next page then shows Kyouko getting a tile she wanted, and it's right at that point that Saki looks dead on at her and pushes her power into an extra gear (where the monocle breaks).

But then, Kyouko's hand comes together and she gets a tsumo, which pushes her up into 2nd place, which is something we learn that Saki didn't want happening.

What I got from that was that even though Saki got her +/- zero, it didn't seem to stop Kyouko's game, probably because she didn't know how to keep her down while also getting +/- zero. If she really didn't want Kyouko to progress, then it wasn't Saki's favorite outcome. On top of that, Kyouko figures out what Saki was doing with the +/- zero thing, and to me, that's the key about everything here: in the entire series so far, she's the only opponent whose come to realize what Saki was doing.

And I think that's the reason Saki is actually scared of her. I think she realized that Kyouko was slowing figuring her out, while at the same time, survived any efforts for Himematsu to be eliminated. What that would lead me to believe is that when Saki activated her powers at the end, she might have actually been somewhat desperate more than actually in control - she knew Kyouko's hand was coming together, and she didn't know how to stop it. As to why Kyouko was able to get through - this is where I feel it was her insights that did it. I can't really directly prove this, but I think she modified her game as she gradually realized what Saki was doing, and that got her through. It makes sense given the fact that most of the match is from Kyouko's PoV, where we can see her slowly pick apart things, and in conjunction with Ritz's push for the reader to view her as the player who only has her brains to rely on.

The analytical thing is also given weight by the fact that, outside of the mahjong table, Kyouko is also the strategist for her team, so it's in her nature to figure out opponents and exploit their weaknesses. She doesn't have occult powers, so her insights and determination are her weapons.

Anyway, from Saki's perspective, it was like having the power to nuke everyone on the battlefield *except* for the one she actually wanted to nuke the most. That must have been frustrating and possibly even terrifying (given her reaction after the match). And now, the player she wanted dead has also now figured out a big part of her game, which places her at a disadvantage.

[night_sentinel]

Regarding that summation Felyndiira, after watching the anime I think we might have used too strong an adjective to describe Saki's feeling for Kyouko. It isn't that Saki is "afraid", I think its more accurate to say that Saki is "wary".

Though, I still agree with Felyndiira that first round was very significant. One, it brought Kyouko to Saki's radar. I already elaborated the consequences of this at length. The other significant event was because of that setback, Saki reconsidered her original plan.

Seriously guys, if Saki decided to go through Hisa's trick that is going to give her something like 40,000 points and above in a single hanchan. lol. Its actually a good thing that her Rinshan was stopped on the first round. That gave Saki enough pause to contemplate if her plan is a good idea. Ultimately we know that she decided that her opponents was too strong and tried for the simpler and more comfortable normal +/- zero trick. (I think the situation helped too, Saki isn't that desperate for points ^^ )

Beside that, I'm beginning to see what Saki saw in Kyouko. I'm still waiting on the anime translation of it, but resilient is a very good description. That and the anime is convincing me that Saki didn't manipulate Himematsu to pass. She orchestrated Kyouko's hand (undoubtedly true with the extra anime scene) but she didn't want Kyouko to get second place anymore than she want Toyone or Kasumi. Kyouko is just the lucky recipient because the condition was aligned as such.

[Fragment off]

Originally Posted by night_sentinel

Regarding that summation Felyndiira, after watching the anime I think we might have used too strong an adjective to describe Saki's feeling for Kyouko. It isn't that Saki is "afraid", I think its more accurate to say that Saki is "wary".

Though, I still agree with Felyndiira that first round was very significant. One, it brought Kyouko to Saki's radar. I already elaborated the consequences of this at length. The other significant event was because of that setback, Saki reconsidered her original plan.

Seriously guys, if Saki decided to go through Hisa's trick that is going to give her something like 40,000 points and above in a single hanchan. lol. Its actually a good thing that her Rinshan was stopped on the first round. That gave Saki enough pause to contemplate if her plan is a good idea. Ultimately we know that she decided that her opponents was too strong and tried for the simpler and more comfortable normal +/- zero trick. (I think the situation helped too, Saki isn't that desperate for points ^^ )

Beside that, I'm beginning to see what Saki saw in Kyouko. I'm still waiting on the anime translation of it, but resilient is a very good description. That and the anime is convincing me that Saki didn't manipulate Himematsu to pass. She orchestrated Kyouko's hand (undoubtedly true with the extra anime scene) but she didn't want Kyouko to get second place anymore than she want Toyone or Kasumi. Kyouko is just the lucky recipient because the condition was aligned as such.

That's what I think too. Here is my interpretation.

The way I see it Saki needed someone to adjust the score as she had gone to far up in her opinion ( That is the weak point in her +/-0 trick I wouldn't be surprised Kyouko Will exploit in the S-F) and She just used Kyoko to set it up as she had the best chance to do it (Kyouko: " That tile felt good" -> Saki " Okay so it's her that I have to use ")

In Saki eyes all three have their good and bad points and infact I think she doesn't really care who go because either way she need to " crush them all" So as you said Kyouko was just lucky. However Saki saw that Kyouko is resilient and know she is the one who is the most adaptable of the three she faced which explain her extreme wariness.