[Von Himmel]

If you ask me, Yuuki's development was very realistic. Shizu's improvement - if it does ever happen - smells in every way like a eleventh hour superpower to me.

We don't even know what her ability that is being trained at so I'm not really sure about it. In what conditions will her ability activates or what type of ability does she have will also take parts on her training.

I mean, it's entirely possible that Yuuki long training with Koromo was because that she needs to take that much time because she's developing a new strategy to amplify her ability. We can take this speculation based on the fact that we knows her ability is and how (logically) that training would take to master. This is not the case with Shizu since we still don't know what strategy will she use in next chapter... it could be like the case with Yuu with her strategy to dodge Sumire's arrow; you don't need to spend a really long time to use that strategy. Shizu short training and power up might have something to do with a strategy (albeit it won't be something like a tell that Sumire has) that doesn't take too long to master.

..of course, if her ability turns out to be something godlike that would be pretty funny.

Come to think of it, since she fought many great players... I dunno, maybe she'll be using the experiences from all the girls she fought and can come up with proper strategy to beat them. She's like a hero in games if that's true though levelling up until she get high level to defeat the bosses while struggling to do so and not giving up.

Still, my biggest annoyance with this chapter is not the potential to deus ex Shizu. I'm mostly ticked that the mangaka decided that Ryuuka's playing style would basically be co-dependent on Toki as well. I mean, yes, I get that they love each other outside of the game and I'm totally fine with it, but at least give her a distinct playing style of her own rather than have all of her wins be attributed to Toki as well.

I'm still hoping for the coming of a true dragon lord

Well, to be fair, three of the Achigas are ability users themselves. Of those, Kuro's skill is actually hampered by her ability, and Arata does seem to depend quite a bit on her ability as well. Ako has been the only concrete skill-based player so far, and her primary opponent just happens to be Sera - who is, really, another skill-based player.

Those things and the constant losing are what I think make them fall to a standard category in sakiverse. They're pretty damn powerful when compared to normal teams though.

In fact, Senriyama players aside, there was no evidence of this 'third year hand completion rate' whatsoever in the Saki universe. Even the Achiga universe did not have evidence of this until the Semifinals (it definitely didn't help Koshigaya or Kentani in the slightest).

Yeah.. they never really state it in the main manga huh?

Then again, it kinda reminds me of what happened during the final against Koromo. That time where Yumi was actually in tenpai Kokushi makes me think that 3rd years student are pretty amazing to pull of something like that without actual occult ability.

My guess is that the 3rd year ability on getting faster tenpai wasn't that prominent because they're constantly overshadowed by Kiyosumi's player ability or when a 3rd year has some sort of ability. Take Mihoko for example, we wouldn't know whether her hand rate is faster or not because she's already a good player to begin with and we'll be focusing too much with her eye ability. It's only on Achiga where we got a view point from a normal not 3rd year student against 3rd year student... of course, I don't think that will happen in main manga since all the 1st year are monsters and Mako is a pretty strong player too