(CR) Saki

[Duo Maxwell]

Originally Posted by qmeister

I second that.

I'm still not sure whether I'll follow Saki when it begins proper, I guess I'll give it the three episode judgement.

Not enough. The coolest moment starts from 2nd volume onward, where each school has its own "Ace".

[qmeister]

^ Ooh, that sounds fun, so long as it doesn't bore me to tears, I guess I'll just go along for the ride.

[kyouray]

Some screenshots on Dengeki Online.
Hot Nodoka

[einhorn303]

CrunchyRoll's updated with the air time of the first episode: 1:30 PM on Sunday April 5th.

Also, awesome oppai are awesome.

[TCman]

Wow, the first episode is quite nice and the anime adaptation is very faithfull to the manga. Good job!

It's almost Saki versus K-On! Both are about clubs, Mahjong club versus Light music club.

I must say you have to know some basic rules of Mahjong, otherwise you can not follow the anime well.

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by TCman

Wow, the first episode is quite nice and the anime adaptation is very faithfull to the manga. Good job!

It's almost Saki versus K-On! Both are about clubs, Mahjong club versus Light music club.

I must say you have to know some basic rules of Mahjong, otherwise you can not follow the anime well.

Here's a writeup I made of the rules:

Mahjong has a large number of variants around the world. There's classic Chinese mahjong, there's American mahjong, and there's the style of mahjong played in Saki called "Riichi Mahjong" which is the most common style played in Japan.

For terminology I will be following the official rules of riichi mahjong by the European mahjong association:
http://mahjong-europe.org/filer/riichirules.pdf

The setup:

Spoiler:

There are 136 tiles total, which consist of 4 copies of 34 unique tiles.

1 through 9 of circles (tiles with pictures of small circles on them).
1 through 9 of bamboo (tiles with pictures of bamboo rods. The 1-bamboo traditionally also has a picture of a bird).
1 through 9 of characters (tiles with the Chinese character for 10,000. In Japanese mahjong sets they are labeled in katakana)
4 winds (tiles with the Chinese characters for east, south, west, and north)
3 dragons, which consist of the red dragon (a red Chinese character "chuu" or "chung" which means "middle"), the white dragon (a blank tile), and the green dragon (a gree Chinese character "fa" which means "growth").

That's 9*3+7=34 different tiles. There are 4 copies of each one giving 136 tiles total.

Sticks (or chips):
Each player gets 30,000 points worth of sticks at the start of the game; 1 stick worth 10,000, 2 worth 5,000, 9 worth 1,000 and 10 worth 100 points.
At the beginning of the game, each player sets aside a certain amount of points that ends up going to whoever has the most points at the end of the game as a bonus. Usually this is 5,000 points from each player. In some variations the bonus is split it between the player who got first and the player who got second.

The flow of the game:

Spoiler:

A standard length game of riichi mhjong is played over 2 rounds, with at least 4 hands in each round. The first round is the "east wind" round and the second round is the "south wind" round. The wind direction of the round factors into the scoring and will be covered later. The players are seated in certain positions as East, South, West, and North (in that order counterclockwise), and after the hand is over the seating positions are rotated (Exception: If the player sitting East wins that hand, then the seat positions do not change and there is a bonus hand played in that round. This can happen up to 8 times... A bonus hand is also played in the case of a draw when only East has a waiting hand(see below) ). When the player that was east for the first hand in a round becomes east a second time, you enter the next round and the prevailing wind changes. Originally the game was played over 4 rounds, one for each compass direction, however since that takes a very long time only 2 rounds are played in modern games. Games with only one single east wind round may also be played to speed things up. At the end of the game, the player with the most points wins, and is awarded the bonus points set aside at the beginning of the match.

The start of a hand:

Spoiler:

To begin, a 17x17 square wall of tiles, face down, two deep, is made in front of the players. A pair of dice is rolled to determine where to begin taking tiles, and the players each form their hands by taking tiles from the wall until everyone has 13 tiles. 14 tiles are separated from the back-end of the wall, called the "dead wall", and the top tile from the third stack from the end is turned over, called the "dora indicator." For an explanation of this, see the section on "dora" later.

The player seated East begins by taking a 14th tile from the (living) wall, and then chooses a tile from their hand to discard. The player counterclockwise then does the same thing, and the hand proceeds in this order unless a player declares a pung or kong (see below). If all the tiles from the wall are used up (except the dead wall), or if 4 kongs have been declared, the hand ends in a draw. Otherwise the hand ends when a player declares a mahjong.

The object of the game:

Spoiler:

The object is to make mahjong, which means 4 sets and 1 pair.
The sets can be of 3 types:
Chow: 3 tiles in the same suit in numerical order. (e.g. 2 bamboo, 3 bamboo, 4 bamboo)
Pung: 3 identical tiles
Kong: 4 identical tiles

You can claim the discards of your opponents if they will let you make a chow, pung, or kong. (exception: if you are making a chow, the discard has to be from the player immediately proceeding you, i.e. to your left). If you do that, you must declare "chow", "pung" or "kong", and place the tiles face up in front of you on the table. The set is now "declared" and that factors into the scoring later. (It's always better to have sets that are concealed.)
If you declare a kong, because that set has 4 tiles, you need an extra tile, so after declaring a kong you draw a replacement tile from the back end of the dead wall before you make your discard. (Optional: At the same time, the tile next to the dora indicator is turned over as a second dora indicator.)
When a player has a kong in their hand completely hidden, they can do a "concealed kong" whenever it's their turn, and draw the extra tile from the dead wall. This does not count as revealing the kong and it can be strategic to wait to do this until later in the hand (because the extra dora indicator might give another player extra points if they declare mahjong first.)

Riichi: If you have a completely concealed hand (i.e. you have not declared a chow, pung or kong), and need only a single tile to make a mahjong, you can decalare "riichi". When you do this, you put a 1,000 point stick on the table as an extra bet, and from then on any tile you draw from the wall must be discarded until you make mahjong or someone else wins, or in other words, you are not allowed to change anything in your hand except for wait for someone to discard the winning tile or for you to draw the winning tile.

Winning: There are two ways to declare mahjong. One is when drawing a tile yourself from the wall. This is called "tsumo". The second way is by claiming another player's discard. This is called "ron". This effects the way the points are distributed. In riichi mahjong, it is also a requirement that your hand have at least one "yaku". See below for a list of yaku. If you don't have a yaku, you cannot declare mahjong.

After someone declares mahjong, they count the point value of their mahjong, and the other 3 players (in the case of tsumo) or 1 player (in the case of ron) pay the winner the appropriate amount. See the section below for scoring. Also, riichi bets and bonus round counters are distributed to the winner.

Scoring:

Spoiler:

Scoring is complicated. This is especially important in Saki. It's so complicated, in fact, that most Japanese players use large charts to help them figure out the proper scores.

Outline of how to score a hand:
1. Count the number of minipoints in your hand.
2. Count the number of fan in your hand.
3. Round minipoints up to nearest 10, then multiply by 2^(number of fan+2). This is your hand's base value. Or, if you have a table, look up the value in the appropriate table depending on whether you are sitting East and whether you won with a tsumo or ron.

Some terminology: 1's and 9's are called "terminals". Dragons and winds are called "honors". Anything that isn't a terminal or an honor is called a "simple". A hand that is not concealed is called "open".

Counting Minipoints:

Spoiler:

0 points for a chow.
2 points for a pung of simples.
4 points for a pung of honors.
8 points for a kong of simples.
16 points for a kong of honors.
These points are all 2x if the sets are concealed.


2 extra points for:
Pair of dragons
Pair of seat/prevalent wind
Edge wait, closed wait, or pair wait. (I.e. the final tile in the mahjong was the "only" tile that would make a mahjong)
Tsumo (except in case of pinfu, see below)
Open pinfu

You also always get one of these below
30 points for winning with a concealed hand
25 points for having 7 pairs (this is a special hand, see below)
20 points otherwise.

Total the number of minipoints you have and round up to the nearest 10 (exception for the unique 25 minipoint hand).
If you have more than 4 fan (see below), counting minipoints is irrelevant because you will always be in a limit score situation (see below)

Counting Dora:

Spoiler:

The tile 1 after in numerical order (or east-south-west-north, red-green-white) of the "dora indicator" is the dora, and for each copy of that tile in your hand you get 1 fan. (Optional: If there are more than 1 dora indicator revealed because people have declared kongs and revealed extra ones, those are also dora. Also Optional: If the player who declared mahjong declared riichi, then the tiles underneath any dora indicators are revealed and ALSO become dora indicators. This leads to a theoretical total number of dora of 24 dora!)
(Optional: Red Fives: One each of the 5 bamboo, 5 circle, and 5 character are colored red. These also count as dora.)

Counting Yaku:

Spoiler:

Yaku are bonuses you get for having special hands. The more rare the hand more yaku you get.
There are a total of 25 different types of hands that give different numbers of yaku, and you can stack them in which case the total number of yaku add.

For a complete listing of yaku, see the appendix chart here in the link above. Some examples:
Half Flush: A mahjong consisting of only one suit plus winds/dragons. Counts as 2 yaku.
Riichi: declaring riichi counts as 1 yaku
Fully concealed hand: Declaring tsumo with a fully concealed hand 1 yaku
Twice Pure Double Chow: Two different pairs of identical chows plus a pair, 3 yaku

Yakuman:

A few hands are SO special they get a special type of yaku called "yakuman". These have their own special point chart. There is even a hand called the Four Big Winds (four pungs/kongs of winds) that gives 2 yakuman, which can result in a 96,000 point win). For a listing of all 13 yakuman hands see the rules sheet linked to above.

Counting Fan:

Spoiler:

You get a fan for each yaku and each dora in your hand.

Final base point tally and point distribution:

Spoiler:

Take the number of minipoints, multiply by 2^(2+number of fan). This is your base score.
Now, the way you get paid depends on 2 things: Are you currently sitting east? and Did you go out tsumo, or ron?
Put simply, the player who sits east gets double points from people, but also pays double points. If you go out with a tsumo, all three players pay you the base score. If you go out ron, the player who discarded the winning tile pays on behalf of all three losing players.
All payments are rounded up to the nearest 100.

E.g. The winner is sitting north, and has a 40 minipoint, 2 yaku hand. This gives them a base score of 640. If the player went out with a ron from west, then west has to pay north 640*4 (1 for west, 2 for east, and 1 for south) = 2560->2600 points.
If north went out on a tsumo instead, then west and south pays him 700 points, while east pays him 1300.

If you are using the handy charts, just look things up in the correct chart.

Extra points:
Whoever wins takes any 1,000 point riichi sticks that are on the table.
If this is a bonus round, an additional 300*(number of consecutive bonus rounds) points is added to the base score.

Tenpei: If the hand is a draw, any player that is "waiting" for one last tile to make a mahjong is paid by the non-waiting players a total of 3,000 points.

Limit scores:
If you have more than 4 fan, then there is a special set of scores tables called limit tables. The actual calculations are somewhat tricky, but all that matters is to look up the value on the limit score table in the rules sheet above.
5 fan is called "mangan", 6-7 fan is "haneman", 8-10 is "baiman", 11-12 is "sanbaiman", and 13 or more is a yakuman.

E.g. for a baiman, you get a base score of 4,000. For yakuman it's 8,000. This means that if east goes tsumo with a double yakuman, they'd receive 32,000 points from each player... for a total of 96,000 points.

Plus-Minus scoring:

Spoiler:

At the end of the game, the final points are rounded to the nearest 1000 (500 rounds down), and for each ,1000 points above or below 30,000, you get + or - 1. The person with the most points gets a bonus of +20 (the 20,000 points set aside in the beginning). To get plus-minus zero like Saki always does requires you score between 29,600 and 30,500 points and NOT be in first place.

And that's it! There are a few other rules, like furiten or chombo, but you can read about them in the rules sheet I linked to above.

Hopefully this can help you understand a bit better what's going on in Saki, and where all those random numbers come from.

[BrokenWingz]

Thanks Quarkboy, For a beginner in mahjong well a scrub everything just went in one ear and flew out the other. hahhaa, well going to learn mahjong now ^^,

I enjoy the subtle usage of music in Saki quite tranquil and fitting. As for Nodoka and Saki interaction, well I'm expecting more than just rivalry having my fingers cross.

[Jiyuu]

loved the first ep, adapted the manga great with high production.

hopefully they'll keep this up

[TCman]

@ Quarkboy

Wow, that's a very good guide for learning the basics of Mahjong, thanks!!

Once you can play Mahjong you can not stop with playing, since it is quite addictive; no gambling involved of course, just for fun.

It's kind of funny that Saki does not like playing Mahjong at the very beginning (allthough that will change very soon). By the way, the lightning/thunder effect with Saki's eye when she wins the match is kind of cool.

[bayoab]

Gonzo will probably stay faithful to the story here at least.

The animation is definitely something I'm worried about. Normally ep1s are supposed to have awesome animation but this one definitely wasn't awesome. The early scene animation especially looked very odd. Maybe it was just the horrible TV Tokyo encode. (What the hell TV Tokyo? Learn to encode damn it.)

[Jiyuu]

the CR encode looked really bad, its sad, really.
once they actually move everythings goes to hell

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by Jiyuu

the CR encode looked really bad, its sad, really.
once they actually move everythings goes to hell

Yeah, someone needs to teach CR and/or Gonzo a little thing called IVTC.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Jiyuu

the CR encode looked really bad, its sad, really.
once they actually move everythings goes to hell

The IVTC issues and ghosting are the standard problem when TV Tokyo provides the materials. For some reason, this encode looks blurry and bit starved on top of that. Unfortunately Gonzo is only handling Shangri-la this time since Gonzo is actually competent with their handling of the streaming encoding. (Their DTO encoding leaves something to be desired though it's partially licensing issues.)

[Kaoru Chujo]

Personally, I loved ep1. I thought the drawing was good and the animation worked for me. But I'm not very demanding of animation, I admit.

The anime seemed to me to preserve and even enhance the spirit of the manga. It flowed very well, with just the right amount of time spent on the hands, so that you could grasp them if you knew the game, or ignore the details if you didn't. As in the manga.

I thought Ueda Kana was excellent as Saki. Koshimizu Ami, whom I love, was a little too much for me here as Nodoka, but certainly so skilled. And Kugimiya Rie gets to do a totally kawaii/genki girl, without any tsuntsun at all. That goes with FMA to give her two non-tsundere roles this season.

The fanservice -- pantsu, wet shirt, cleavage, etc. -- was a surprise, but not an unwelcome one. Gives the show another bit of electricity. As does the music, which seemed very fitting to me, adding drama without going over the top.

[Falkor]

@Quarkboy

Thanks for the guide... I might be stealing parts of it

As for the first episode, I think they adapted the first two or three chapters of the manga in a very short period of time, which somehow explains why I felt it was a bit too compressed. But overall, it was still enjoyable, mostly because of the characters (Kaichou continues to be my favorite, though).

I can't say that I really liked the music, but it felt a bit odd. I still prefer the music on the Drama CD, especially the one that was played for the second mahjong game. Oh yes, somebody posted this youtube video with parts of the Drama CD/manga, which corresponds to the mahjong game I'm talking about.

The scene from the Drama CD was better paced, while the music carried more momentum, in my opinion. But I guess it's something that couldn't be helped in order to include the second game (the more interesting one) within the limits of the first episode.

[Midonin]

No ED this week, but definitely next. I was looking forward to hearing it.

That said, looks like it'll be fun; always nice to have a sports/game show or two in the mix.

[Jiyuu]

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Yeah, someone needs to teach CR and/or Gonzo a little thing called IVTC.

I'm fairly sure its CR that just doesn't know how to handle that..

[einhorn303]

Man, and I thought Battletech (Classic, not the clix game) had excessively complicated rules.

That umbrella scene was so incredibly subtextual. I was like, "They're not just talking about mahjong, are they?" My favorite part, though, was the scene where Saki first played. Something about the music and the four people coming together to play a game not played in a long time, it felt really nostalgic and nice.

I can't wait to see the other characters, like the long-haired blond cosplaying loli and all.

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by Malintex_Terek

Walls of text and lots of it is WRONG. -_-

Did you post this in the wrong topic? What are you talking about... Saki doesn't have walls of text except for that one scene explaining the different rounds, and there's nothing wrong with it.

[Malintex_Terek]

sorry xris, I had this bookmarked and didn't notice where it was.

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Did you post this in the wrong topic? What are you talking about... Saki doesn't have walls of text except for that one scene explaining the different rounds, and there's nothing wrong with it.

Well, let me talk about the wrong bit, at least.

There is no official English terminology for a lot of Japanese mahjong terms, so by convention the online communities just use the Japanese/Chinese terms rather than the much eschewed English terminology for American "mahjongg" like pung/kung/chow. I mean these aren't even the Chinese terms...I know for a fact Chi is called "Sic".

On top of these weird, confusing and often inter-mixed terms, which frankly would have simplified the subs tremendously and shortened the number of lines, they also got a few aspects of game mechanics wrong.

"Dealer gets double, pays double?"

That's rather misleading. Dealers get 1.5x points on both Rons and Tsumos, but pay 1.5x the hand value (minipoints - lol) when hit by Tsumos. So for a non-dealer Haneman, 12K, the dealer pays 4K while the non-dealers pay 2K. In this case the dealer pays double but only because it's a limit. This is never the case for Rons.

So dealers get 1.5x the payoff when they win, but lose double the hand value when hit by an enemy Tsumo for limit hands.

There's other nitpick stuff but I have to watch again to be sure.