(L) Saki manga

[The Green One]

Originally Posted by Sol Falling

However, there are a lot of people who are simply not very happy with Achiga winning and the way this side-story ended, and the fans are just going to have to accept that.

There's also the fact that you did not get what you wanted and you're just going to have to accept that. Claiming one side or the other has a majority which validates their opinion is also silly. Naturally absolute agreement with all parties is 100% impossible which I suppose is the one only true truth here.

Also, I was under the impression we watched anime for entertainment, not to bicker with each other. I suppose I wish more people could just enjoy the ride to get to the end, regardless of which character and/or team they like rather then get all bent out of shape about the ending.

For the record I liked all the teams for different reasons, I'm not defending Achiga out of any particular attachment to them. I really just don't like the categorizing of haters and fans depending on which characters you like.

[seemmeriast]

While I'm happy that Achiga advances (I feel really sorry for Senriyama though), there are at least three issues that keep frustrating me. Like many people have said, the problem is about how they advances.

1. Shizu's ability. While this series is full of characters with supernatural power, Shizu has been portrayed as a normal girl all the time. Well, she has a strong determination, but that's all she has. As opposed to Saki herself, I had hoped to see a normal girl leading a team to the final when fighting those monsters in Side-A arc, but I have been deceived all the time.

2. Achiga's performance. No sign has been shown that Achiga can be this strong. During practice matches they were struggling even with Nagano's second or third place team. Also, in Round 2 they were about 100K behind Senriyama. But now they become able to beat not only Senriyama but also Shiraitodai, which is supposed to be even stronger. It's ridiculous that their performance becomes this much better by only two days.

3. Shiraitodai's performance. In both main arc and Side-A arc, I have viewed Shiraitodai as an unstoppable evil all the time. But it seems that aside Teru, the other players aren't even close to what I had expected, and the overall team was also defeated by Achiga. I basically lost faith in them, and if the so-called number one team fails to do this job, I don't expect to see any "unstoppable monster" in this series anymore.

The ideal situation I had hoped is like, Shiraitodai (or maybe Senriyama) made a very huge lead, and Achiga got a second place with a narrow margin above the third place, like they did in Round 2. I had thought that's the only way a not-so-strong team like Achiga can advance to the final.

[orangejuicetang]

You know, not sure if it's been mentioned before, but Achiga's practice matches against Nagano's third/fourth place teams were never shown, so there's no way to tell if they were close or if they were one-sided. As for against Nagano's second place team, one needs to remember that even though Ryuu didn't make it to the national tournament this year due to the 'only top school per region advances', they are still easily national level. After all, they were the team that went to nationals last year, and quite a few of their players have made lasting impressions (Koromo and 'Cold Touka'). I'm pretty sure that even if they didn't win, Ryuu could still put up a decent even fight against any school short of Shiraitodai.

On the subject of Shiraitodai, it's been mentioned many times already, but if they did live up to the hype, the game would have been over after 1-2 players after some person gets taken below 0. Which would frankly be super anti-climatic since it would be less 'which teams are the best and deserve to advance to the next round' and more 'which team does Shiraitodai feel like gracing and allow into the next round'. This is in the hypothetical case that they 'lived up to all the hype'.

It could also be mentioned that on top of Shiraitodai reportedly 'holding back', it was often 2 or 3 vs 1, since most schools seemed to target them specifically or to tailor their strategies against them specifically.

Achiga has always been a strong team with potential. It's just that the manga went out of it's way to hide their strengths. They beat easily beat down all other schools in their region including regular-nationals appearing Bansai. They beat every other second place school in other regions except Ryuu. They managed to take a few games off of Koromo.

Taking a look at the quarterfinals, even that game seems somewhat skewed because of how utterly Kuro got dominated in the first round. Achiga started off after Kuro down about 40k in points. But apart from Kuro, in the other matches Achiga more or less kept up and continued to gain points until they were in 2nd/3rd. And speaking specifically on the last round, Shizu entered that round in 3rd place. However, on the second to last hand, she deals into a non-riichi haneman and loses a lot of points, and so on. But if you take a look at the scores, you'll see that up until she dealt into that haneman, she was in second place, meaning that in the mysterious blank first majority of the match they didn't show us, Shizu actually overtook the second place team. Of course, they didn't show us Shizu overtaking the second place, they just skipped ahead to that part, which made Shizu look weaker than she might have appeared if they showed us the entire thing.

[seemmeriast]

Hmmm... I sort of got it now. It seems quite reasonable if Achiga is always a Senriyama/Shiraitodai-level team, but the author just didn't tell us, explicitly.

In Round 2, aside from Kuro-Toki match, other Achiga players can fight Senriyama pretty close. If excluding the first player's score, Senriyama will get +36,500, and Achiga +28,000 (without that Haneman it will be +40,000).

[teja208]

Originally Posted by seemmeriast

3. Shiraitodai's performance. In both main arc and Side-A arc, I have viewed Shiraitodai as an unstoppable evil all the time. But it seems that aside Teru, the other players aren't even close to what I had expected, and the overall team was also defeated by Achiga. I basically lost faith in them, and if the so-called number one team fails to do this job, I don't expect to see any "unstoppable monster" in this series anymore.

I feel your pain.

Loosing faith in Shiraitodai is indeed hit hard for me. A mistake that some people, myself included, made is try lumping Teru together with Shiraitodai as a large entity of antagonist. As antagonist team, they are supposed to be presented as the hardest, toughest, strongest challenge that the protagonist team, namely Kiyosumi, has to face. Therefore, people are expecting that they are unbeatable until they reach the final. OTOH, there are others who seem to view Teru as one single sole antagonist meaning they view Shiraitodai as just another team which is why they are more accepting Shiraitodai placing second. Of course, there are also those who try to defend that they are holding back, or their opponents are a bad match up, but the fact still remain that they are beatable.

IMO, perhaps the disappointment for some isn’t actually caused by Shiraitodai failling short of the hype, but from the fact that Shiraitodai was defeated HERE and NOT at the end of the finals.

Few questions for those defending Shiraitodai:

1. Back then, at the time when Achiga anime just ended, are you looking forward to seeing the match between Kiyosumi and Shiraitodai in the finals?

2. Had those feelings begun to change after you had seen how the rest of Shiraitodai members handled their matches?

3. Now that block A semifinal captain match has finally over, and someone top Shiraitodai in score, are you still eager to see them defeated again by Kiyosumi in the finals as much as you did back then? (referring to the two previous questions above)

My own Answer:
1. Yes, very much
2. I had my doubts, but I still have faith in them as the strongest HS team in Japan.
3. Not really, not after what happen here in the semi. Am I supposed to start calling Achiga the strongest HS team now?

You see, this is why some people feel cheated after they found out that Shiraitodai placed second. It simply ruins their desire and anticipation to see Shiraitodai defeated for the first time in the finals, preferably by non other than Kiyosumi. What we have here is Achiga taking all the glory from Kiyosumi, thus, the beginning of the rage toward Achiga.

[Proto]

You could always turn it around and see this side story as the building up of the true antagonist that Kiyosumi will have to defeat in the finals, namely Achiga. And what better way of building a likeable antagonist that giving them a whole side series of back story. Heck, Saki has already done this in the past (giving the opponent teams some spotlight in order to make them more empathetic. Here we are just taking this pattern to the next level.

[MarkS00N]

Spoiler for Long Post:

Originally Posted by Sol Falling

I don't particularly care about Shiraitodai not dominating, I never expected much from them aside from Teru, to a lesser degree Awai, and then maybe Sumire. Regardless of their skill level, the only plot-important character (as in, with regards to Kiyosumi's story) is Teru so as long as Teru's credibility is maintained that's all that matters (of course, it's a shame that none of the other Shiraitodai members are attractive/interesting enough to be particularly likeable, but Saki has tons of characters so that's less of a problem).

My dissatisfaction with the Achiga ending lies solely with the fact that Achiga, as the main characters, never managed to prove interesting enough to make me happy that they're going to the finals (or, happy that they won the semi-finals). I still like Senriyama better in almost every way due to Ryuuka and (especially) Toki. Sera and Ako kind of cancel each other out for me, but I don't like any other character in Achiga. So since Shizu's win can't really be called anything but arbitrary authorial plot armour I don't need to bother with any sort of logical argument aside from "I don't like Achiga."

Originally Posted by Sol Falling

Haha. Not having to justify yourself is one of the luxuries of being in the majority, though. Here on this forum there hasn't been as much of a shitstorm about Achiga winning, and ultimately it doesn't really matter because as far as the main plot (again, Kiyosumi's story) Shiratodai is still in the tournament. However, there are a lot of people who are simply not very happy with Achiga winning and the way this side-story ended, and the fans are just going to have to accept that. "Logic" has nothing to do with it. Sure, plenty of people like to think of themselves as logical or rational creatures, but fundamentally "logic" has never been the sort of reason why people would watch Saki (or anime in general) anyway.

Which exactly why I want to tell you that the root of your hatred isn't in Achiga as cast...
What exactly unlikable of Achiga?
See Kuro, the primary hated character, what kind of character is she?
She is a kind, caring, and warming character who loved by Dora tile when play mahjong due to treasuring it as her late mother ask her to. Unfortunately, she must choose between her friend or her precious memory of her mother, two thing she loves most in the world.

And the reason people say she useless fat girl is because we don't know anything about her mom or how important she is to Kuro, due to the show try to keep the development of Kuro dropping Dora as secret. They put the flashback in the last episode, they put Kuro's monologue in last episode, they put the decision she must take in the last episode instead of doing it since her match with Toki.

This very late action gives impression that a) Kuro will never drop dora thus she must've had another trick, b) Kuro is a selfish girl who for no apparent reason choose to keep dora so she can always get dor instead of her frined...
We as reader and viewer never been given enough time, enough scene, enough picture, or enough dialogue to sympathize with Kuro's affection to her mother, to know more about what kind of relationship they had in such short time, etc.

This isn't the fault of Kuro as character and in the same spirit, it isn't Achiga's fault as character or team...
It is the fault of Achiga as series which isn't 25 episodes to explore about their character, how they build up their power, also their fault to hid the surprise till the very-very end...

I am not being logical here, I am very emotional, else I won't post it here...
I simply wish people not blame the wrong part, for Achiga themselves are very interesting and their ability also unique and worth theorycrafting...
If people hate achiga as character (or as I said here, they thought they hate Achiga especially Shizu as character due to plot hax), they will hate it even in original and accuse Ritz of plot armor every single time achiga do something which only help in lessening their enjoyment of the series...

Ofcourse the above statement won't hold water if you exactly hate achiga as character, I mean something like I hate never give up character, I hate girls (which beg question why you read Saki), or I hate boobs (... Sure...)...

Note: Though the reason you don't need to be logical not because majority beat logic, it because being in majority there will be a person who do the logic part for you...

Spoiler for Speculah:

I've given link of picture in my previous post which seems to indicate the power of Shizu is a symbolism of Buddhism, in particular it seems Shizu is Buddha, which has understanding over suffering and no longer affected by circle of karma...

If this is true, then it gives a very interesting perspective in final match...
Instead it about battle of demons (Saki vs Awai vs 'another demon from another school' vs 'the unlucky normal girl')...
The match now exactly about battle of humanity, to be precise about between the temptation of demon and the enlightenment of Buddha...)

I read this particular quote in another forum to be amusing:
"Madoka, do nothing for 10 episode, suddenly become God, everyone like. Shizu, do nothing before final, suddenly become God, everyone hate."
Though as I already know the answer (please, I make 3 long post about this) so just put it here to be a read...

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Proto

You could always turn it around and see this side story as the building up of the true antagonist that Kiyosumi will have to defeat in the finals, namely Achiga. And what better way of building a likeable antagonist that giving them a whole side series of back story. Heck, Saki has already done this in the past (giving the opponent teams some spotlight in order to make them more empathetic. Here we are just taking this pattern to the next level.

Yeah, one of the perspective I take...
Though it seems instead of being empathic, people think it is hated... :P

[night_sentinel]

I think this is a bit unfair to Sol falling especially in regards to his supposed hate toward the characterization of Kuro. I still remember him defending Kuro when the vanguard match was airing after all.

As for me, after some conversation with others and distance, I think, that whatever ennui most of the fellow posters are feeling about Achiga's victory is not because Achiga won or if they like Achiga in the first place. I certainly expected Shiraitodai and Achiga to pass so there is no problem there. Most of the comments and complaints I'm hearing are geared on how they won and for them the narrative failed in making it believable.

We can't really contest this since what feels believable for one person, may seem like bullshit hax for the other person. And really, most of the complaint is not Achiga as a whole, I have yet to see a complaint for the vanguard, lieutenant and vice-captain match. Everyone seems to find it believable. The sergeant match, on the other hand, is really unpalatable especially with the tell. And on the captain match, from the comment of my Japanese reading friend, it sucks for all the captain involved, not just for Shizu.

[MarkS00N]

Originally Posted by night_sentinel

I think this is a bit unfair to Sol falling especially in regards to his supposed hate toward the characterization of Kuro. I still remember him defending Kuro when the vanguard match was airing after all.

Ah, I am not using Kuro because Sol hate Kuro, just that Kuro is seemed to be the most hated one by most people who 'hate Achiga'...
Sorry if I make misunderstanding...

Originally Posted by night_sentinel

As for me, after some conversation with others and distance, I think, that whatever ennui most of the fellow posters are feeling about Achiga's victory is not because Achiga won or if they like Achiga in the first place. I certainly expected Shiraitodai and Achiga to pass so there is no problem there. Most of the comments and complaints I'm hearing are geared on how they won and for them the narrative failed in making it believable.

We can't really contest this since what feels believable for one person, may seem like bullshit hax for the other person. And really, most of the complaint is not Achiga as a whole, I have yet to see a complaint for the vanguard, lieutenant and vice-captain match. Everyone seems to find it believable. The sergeant match, on the other hand, is really unpalatable especially with the tell. And on the captain match, from the comment of my Japanese reading friend, it sucks for all the captain involved, not just for Shizu.

Exactly...
My point is it seems everyone goes to 'Achiga sucks!!! Because they are Achiga!!!' when they know that Shizu win with hax power, while previous to this, people find other match to be acceptable...

The problem is how the story tell and not in achiga themselves, so I just want for people who once enjoy to remember about that and those who still don't understand why they can't enjoy achiga to realize about that...

With different perspective, Achiga is still a fun series with a lot of material for theorycrafting when they finally face Saki (especially Shizu) so I don't want people to lose their flame and face final with laze and lamenting because they'll watch achiga once again...

[Myssa Rei]

Include me among the people who actually like the girls of Achiga, and didn't see anything to complain about their matches. I will admit though that the sudden development with relation to Shizu (how does one go from normal if persistent player to an ability-canceller in one day?) had me scratching my head, and I don't think it's helped by the fact that the flashback explaining her sudden ability happens in the middle of the action. ^^;

If some of these things actually occured or were shown at the start, before the Nationals, I don't think we'd be seeing so many English readers complaining. There's this thing called Narrative trajectory, Ritz!

[fukarming]

The main problem is storytelling. They simply didn't give enough evidence to support Achiga/Shizu being that good. Instead of arguing that they did give evidence and write a lengthy post, it is the atmosphere I am arguing that they do not make the portray correctly. Right now, I feel like seeing Krillin defeating Freeza.

So Achiga is the final boss against Kiyosumi, as to be honest, Kiyosumi cannot lose because if they lose, Nodoka need to give up Mahjong and move, thus end of story. Kiyosumi will win national team tournament and build up the final match between Teru and Saki in individual tournament.

[orangejuicetang]

A sudden realization just somewhat struck me, but was the one quarterfinal hand all the mahjong we saw shizu play over the entire course of the manga apart from the final match?

[Myssa Rei]

Originally Posted by orangejuicetang

A sudden realization just somewhat struck me, but was the one quarterfinal hand all the mahjong we saw shizu play over the entire course of the manga apart from the final match?

It's the only one where we've seen any kind of hint of her playstyle, yes. It's the main reason why the impression was that Shizu was a normal player with no abilities was formed, really. Well that, and Hiroko mentioning that none of the Achiga freshmen had any kind of weird draw or distribution shenanigans in their records.

[cedec0]

I have a question for the mahjong player here. Normally, "all players except awai start with terrible hands" right?




Looking at Ryuuka's starting hand below (with my limited mahjong knowledge), it seems better than the three hands above.



Did Shizu "image break" the "all players except awai start with terrible hands"? Or am I making a mistake?

[desrtsku]

^ Actually Himeko has the best hand out of the 3, Ryuuka's is just as horrible as Shizu's.

Edit : eh nah, forget what I said, I mistook that 9-sou for a 6-sou

As for IB Shizu, it looks like she shattered both Awai's 5-6 shanten and her double riichi ability (dat 6 pin lol), and both Ryuuka and Himeko noticed it.

[Von Himmel]

So she pretty much controls the walls territory under certain conditions, huh...

I didn't notice that she negates the 5-shanten when I looked at it. Too focused at shizu's avatar apparently

[desrtsku]

Oh ... and wasn't there a spoiler somewhere where she negated Awai's kan Ura dora as well? I remember it was the one with the spectator meme ... mah, she had it rough ;_;

[night_sentinel]

Originally Posted by desrtsku

^ Actually Himeko has the best hand out of the 3, Ryuuka's is just as horrible as Shizu's.

Edit : eh nah, forget what I said, I mistook that 9-sou for a 6-sou

As for IB Shizu, it looks like she shattered both Awai's 5-6 shanten and her double riichi ability (dat 6 pin lol), and both Ryuuka and Himeko noticed it.

Is this true? Did Shizu break Awai's 5-6 shanten?

I don't have the luxury of time to count but, I dearly hoped this isn't true. Shizu just developing her ability nullification because this is the first time she encounters active abilities like Koromo's haitei and Awai's double riichii is somewhat plausible. It is a bit hard to swallow but that can be blamed to the storytelling.

But, on the other hand, Shizu breaking 5-6 shanten is going an extra mile in ridiculousness and might be rightfully called plot hax. This is because 5-6 shanten belongs to the same category of power like Kuro and Yuu has which is passive. And Shizu and Kuro must have fought each other many times before. If Shizu possess this power, she should have been able to break Kuro's dora hoarding. But, there was no indication of this in the past or in the present.

Ergo, to summarize if any sort of tenuous narrative consistency can be maintained, it should not be possible for Shizu to break Awai's 5-6 shanten.

The only way out of this that I can which would preserve the narrative consistency is if Shizu developed this power in the match itself. But, this would of course lead to another problematic trope which is "new power as the plot demands".

[Marina2]

^
^
One explaination I can make is the Awai power is weaken. Just like how at one point Koromo's power [No tempai zone] seems to be disabled, allowing Kana and Yumi to win.


...............................................

On Saki wikia, it mentions that

[After the final chapter of Saki Achiga-hen manga, Ritz Kobayahsi and Aguri Igarashi are planning a new work that will be serialized in Square Enix's Monthly Big Gangan magazine. The two creators asked fans to wait for further details to be revealed. The announcement did not mention if the new work will be a Saki tie-in.]

Is this true?

If it is, I wonder if it other Saki spin-off or completly new series.

[night_sentinel]

I think its true. I believe I also the news on ANN. On the other hand, its still not announced whether its going to be about the Saki-verse or an entirely new series.

Hmmm... that could be the way it works. On the other hand, the question still remains if it works on passive abilities, why didn't it work on Kuro's dora in the past? Truthfully, the only explanation that I can come up with is its an entirely new ability... I don't like the implication of that though because that feels like some sort of badly written handwave of the author to make Achiga win.