(L) Saki manga

[night_sentinel]

Originally Posted by Marina2

I would say that both of them are occult players.

Similar to other abilities we have seen in Saki series, each ability has its own rule and limitation.

In Mairu and Himeko case, the limitation of their abilities are: You have to use it in combination with your partner.

I think what serperior is getting at is we could consider Marui a normal player/non-hax player since her hax doesn't benefit herself. Though she is undoubtedly an occult player because she has an ability - her playstyle is more or less that of a normal than that of an occult.

Marui's ability is more or less useless to herself when you think about it. It affects Himiko more than it affect her so I imagine, Marui more or less play like a normal person - no skewing draw orders, no feeling the flow, no seeing the future, etc.

Originally Posted by Marina2

In the end Saki will just show how powerful she is , and to make Saki's victory more EPIC, strong enemy(s) is/are needed. I expect that Shizuno will be able to annoy Saki a lot even if she can't win.

Originally Posted by JW1

The net result is that Shiraitodai are starting to suffer from Achiga Syndrome: the way they are being portrayed makes them look weak and far from "the best team ever". Having two really good players and three fillers whose job is to lose as few points as they can manage is hardly being the 'Best Team'. In fact, it makes them look rather like Shindouji.

I think you guys are both right. Both Achiga syndrome and Saki effect is at work here.

Let's admit it, Saki is jaw-droppingly broken as a player. To have compelling fights she must have powerful opponents or we risk curb-stomps. And even then, Ritz-sensei slants the conditions for her opponents and give Saki psychological blocks to make the game more even. Thus, If Achiga is the one who will continue on to the finals. Shizuno needs to have some sort of power-up beside her despair shield or she is going to be Kana/Kyouko 2.0.

On the other hand, Achiga has the opposite problem. They are not really that strong in my opinion compared to powerhouse schools like Ryuumonbuchi, Eisui, etc. But, they are our protagonist in this manga and they must win their fight semi-realistically. Thus the author arranges the fights so that the teams that Achiga face are more or less on their level. Hence, the Achiga syndrome. Notice the draws seems to be rigged in such a way that Side-B receives the troublesome schools.

But, due to the way Achiga is set-up they are going to meet Shiraitodai. Since curbstomp battles are unfun especially if its happening to our protagonist. The Achiga syndrome kicks in and they temporarily nerf Shiraitodai.

The nerfing of Shiraitodai actually started at Teru's match wherein there is a collection of 3 abilities that work well together to stop Teru. We just didn't notice because even when Teru is being nerfed she's still overpowered. Then the pattern continues with Sumire who confirmed that yes Shiraitodai is taking it easy on this match. Beside that, Achiga discovered Sumire's tell so they managed to avoid her ability. On the other hand, Takami might not be trying to win actually and just observing, using her harvest ability to offset the point loss. Though, I do agree that there is not much excuse for Seiko.

But, this nerfing is temporary though - come finals Shiraitodai will probably be presented in their best condition and they would be very motivated to win - no more data collecting.

1. Teru is going to use an ability (probably her nine lantern) and she would undoubtedly met with less resistance there; unless Ritz is going to introduce another character that has an ability that directly counters Teru.
2. Sumire will probably be aware of her tell and she will not be data collecting this time around. She'll try to end the round quickly sniping the lowest point player. This will be actually easier since after Teru's round all of her opponents will have low points.
3. Takami is going to be the last dealer. Sera's possibility that she will keep getting yakuman hand due to dealer repeats is going to be very probable.
4. Seiko.... no comment yet
5. Awai is being hyped as the most dangerous first year. She's going to be a monster class.

. Please, please don't tell me that Shizuno is the final boss!

I think I can wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. Even if Shizuno gets more skilled ( unlikely, since its just 1 day of training) or has some sort of hidden ability that we haven't seen. I don't see her being the final boss, Ever.

[Felyndiira]

Originally Posted by night_sentinel

3. Takami is going to be the last dealer. Sera's possibility that she will keep getting yakuman hand due to dealer repeats is going to be very probable.
4. Seiko.... no comment yet

Spoiler for Response:

I don't think Takami will get a chance to use yakuman repeats even in the final round. It's somewhat exactly like why the three major members of Eisui were either nerfed or had their abilities sealed: having them get baiman or above hands back-to-back would have pushed their score so high that there would be no point for any other team to even be there. Similarly, if Takami collected 12/13 tiles of a yakuman and used her ability as last dealer, the game would just be over unless if the other teams pull a Deus Ex.

I think many people are ignoring the fact that Seiko's ability is pretty much on-par (if not better, even) than Toyone's second ability. The only reason she doesn't seem to be shining very much is not really due to her being a mediocre player as much as much as the opponents she's facing are really good, and that she's not an absolute monster that can shut down other player's hands in the same way that Saki, Koromo, and Teru are portrayed. Both Mairu and Arata also won mostly off of tsumos, so a pretty big chunk of his point losses were really due to the fact that FunaQ - who is an extraordinary player and really showed us why Senriyama was one of the seeded schools this chapter - basically shut her down. Of course, the chapter did prove that she's weak without her ability, so that does say something.

Spoiler for My Own Analysis:

Sumire's not weak at all. She was taking potshots at random teams this round just to make note of their response, and was, so far, the only Shiraitodai player that proved that she can still play a good game without resorting to supernatural hax.

I think a lot of people are viewing the other teams through rose-colored glasses and not looking more deeply at what some of Shiraitodai (and, in fact, Shindouji and Achiga as well) have shown us in the actual games. Starting with Ryuumonbuchi:

• Jun: Aside from getting crushed by Mihoko, Jun's only ability is basically a fraction of what better players like Shiromi is able to do. A single flow disruption basically can't stop semifinal!Yuuki anymore, so if she ended up in a game against semifinal!Yuuki, Yuuki would have crushed her in East Wind.
• Tomoki: Made a poor showing in her first game, and did not demonstrate any competence afterwords.
• Hajime: Played decently well, albeit around two not-so-strong players (Hisa also danced circles around her, but that's less the point). She did do admirably in that match, although she did not show any ability that could match up to, say, the national-level players.
• Touka: I think screentime and informed ability is the only reason why we even think of Touka as a strong player anymore. She ended with a net loss in every single match she played except for a single cold Touka incident, and cold Touka is not reliable at all.
• Koromo: Obviously, monster class and such.

Really, in the end, Ryuumonbuchi also consists of one awesome player and four "mediocre" players, with most of their players being strictly inferior to the corresponding player in Kiyosumi (or, in Jun's case, inferior to the cast of Kiyosumi as they are now).

If you use "marvelous performance on-screen" as the metric for gauging whether a player is good or not, Eisui, I think, is the only team that really has more than two players that fall into something other than "mediocre" player. This is also only because Eisui is so ridiculously overpowered that it's a wonder why they never ran away with the gold last year (two of them has the distinct ability to pull yakumans out of thin air at any point they wish - if something like that isn't nerfed to the ground by author fiat/imagine breaker mahjong version, that kind of just ends any match right there).

For Achiga, I agree that Kuro is pretty terrible overall as a player. Her ability is both easy-to-read and restrictive, and she has no mahjong skills to speak of other than her ability to gather dora - to the point that even the weak teams in the first round noticed the holes in her defense. Ako, however, is an excellent strategist in every game that she's shown in and consistently plays well against strong players like Sera. Yuu's ability is shown to be difficult to read, and although it wasn't really her that figured out Sumire's tell, she was skilled enough to change her hand on the fly to adapt to the situation (in contrast, a lot of the supernatural hax Mahjong players that aren't monsters are pretty terrible at basic mahjong). We haven't seen enough of Arata (other than the fact that she tsumos easily) to really peg her as either terrible or great just yet, and Shizuno played all of a single round for all that we know as the audience. Still, the two skilled players that we've seen from Achiga certainly are not weak in the slightest.

For Shindouji, Hanada did pretty well against the force of nature that is Teru (we were focused on Toki the entire time, but Hanada did make a lot of the calls that prolonged each round and made it much more difficult for Teru to win). Yoshiko was also shown to be a good player when she could basically adjust her entire playing style on the fly to directly counter Sumire. As Mairu and Himeko are the team's aces and Mairu has shown an excellent performance so far, the only weak player in Shindouji's team seems to be Ezaki.

[Proto]

Then again, as Nodoka said and any person who has played Mahjong can attest, one or two hanchan means jack when trying to peg down a player's ability beyond the very basics. You have to statistically track someone down in order to be able to say anything meaningful.

[Serperior]

Felyndiira: What a nice analysis! I agree with most of what you have pointed out except for two points:

Spoiler for for tl;dr:

1. Touka - You indirectly pointed out that Hatsumi would have been a terror if not for Sae sealing her, and that is what exactly happened to Touka. You could say that Nodoka and Momoko are Touka's kryptonite. Remember that Touka is a digital player like Nodoka, so that would mean that she has the exact playstyle as Nodoka.

The only reason that Touka didn't play digitally was because of her personality: She views Nodoka as a rival and wants to stand out much more than her. Obviously, she wouldn't stand out very much if she plays exactly like her. If you re-watch that episode, the audience watching the match (the one badmouthing her) was talking about how Nodoka was 'boring' as she bails when needed (she goes on the defensive when the dealer declared riichi) and that "watches the pond" (discard pile). It's true, Nodoka is already hailed as a mahjong idol and what better way than to stand out more than the idol than to have a flashy play? If you guys don't already know, it's quite a bad play to declare a riichi while your in first as it warns other players about your hand. The reason Touka did that was because, what better way to take down the mahjong idol than getting ron'ned when you declared a riichi? It's basically the equivalent of getting punched when you already warned your opponent that you're going to punch them and to defend themselves.

Next is Momoko, she's pretty easy to explain. Her ability allows her discards not to be seen and her calls not to be heard. It means that even when she declares riichi, it will not be heard by anyone on the table (sans Nodoka, Saki, etc). I told you about the punching someone metaphor right? It's basically saying that you're going to punch someone and you should defend yourself in your head. Obviously, if you're not careful, you'd get punched. Touka already has the majority of her attention to Nodoka. You can't say that she's not paying attention to the table because she managed to figure out that Sumiyo was collecting bamboo tiles when they were playing. Momoko is just very troublesome to play against with. It's kinda like playing in damaten except you have the extra bonus of the riichi stick.

2. Hitomi - Don't forget that she's playing against Sera and Ako. She's exactly in the same position as Seiko: Her opponents are just too strong. Not only does Sera plays with VERY big hands, Ako plays fast with cheap hands. I'm sure if you'd played mahjong, you'd understand the frustration of forming a 12000 hand only to be destroyed by a 1000 point hand. That's what Ako is doing to Hitomi. Also, like the announcer said about her, the constant tsumos made her points dwindled. A 1000 points tsumo doesn't seem so bad but if you lose 1000 points + a big 4000 point hand in every other turn, it will pile up.

Also, I think she's in the same position as Yoshiko: She knows about Takami's Harvest Time and that's why during the last round, she tried to stop it. During the last round, she's in riichi and her hand has the 3-4-5 characters, 1-1-1-2-3-4-5 circles, and 5-5-5 bamboos. The dora tile is the 4 of Bamboo, so she has a whooping 6 dora tiles. If my basic mahjong is correct, she has a 4-sided wait. Um, I'm still not very confident about my score calculation (could someone who knows how to calculate score help me with this? ;~; ) but it would be very big. Not only because she has a 4-sided wait, but because she has 6 dora tiles + riichi and an unknown uradora! (if she won by tsumo!) Disregarding the dora count, Hitomi was trying to counter Takami with a 4-sided wait, and a 4 sided wait has a better chance to win. So I don't think it should be noted that Hitomi is the weak Shindouji. (Kirame tried to stop Teru's hand by calling tiles. It's not a bad strategy since not only does it skips Teru's turn, you're more likely to get your winning tile, but it constrict your hand and basically shows your opponent what tile you're after [This is what they mean by Kirame and Toki ganging up on Teru. Kirame is basically showing Toki her hand and Toki would willingly play into her very cheap hand; this is exactly what Kurumi and Haru did to stop Hisa, didn't work on Hiroe though.])

[King-Slayer]

Felyndiira makes some good points but i'll only disagree with a few like the Ryuumonbuchi and Seiko ones. but overall i get what your saying in that you can't judge a player by on screen performance.

[tarajis]

Originally Posted by Felyndiira

For Shindouji..... the only weak player in Shindouji's team seems to be Ezaki.

How can you say this to poor Hitomi~chan? Not only was she up against good players but the government was conspiring against her... the only reason Shindouji was at the last place was because of the government's doing... like she said, IT'S ALL THE GOVERNMENT'S FAULT!

[Marina2]

@Serperior I think Momoko is not that hard to play with. You just have to play cheap/fast hand and hope that you will tsumo/ron before Momoko can be in Tenpai. (You can do the same to counter Hisa's bad wait, I think.) A player who like to play fast hand like Ako shouldn't have much problem with Momoko. In the end, it's all about the luck.

By the way, I'm still confuse about the definition of "Digital Playstyle" I know that Nodoka is the Digital Player but I still don't understand how can that make her stronger??? (or, luckier)

[The Green One]

A digital player is said to play like a computer would, operating completely by analyzing percentages keeping track of whats been played, discarded, and so forth. This can allow for ultra high speed accurate play which can be difficult for opponents to keep up with or to keep track of. When done right this style of play doesn't give openings to exploit as the player just doesn't make mistakes like this.

However this style is hardly unstoppable. Like Nodoka for example, she's weak to occult style play as she just can't, or won't, understand it as it's so outside of the logic/percentage style of digital play.

In the Sakiverse at least Digital style is a stable but hardly extraordinary playing style that apparently will let you curbstomp the mook level caliber players but you'll have a harder time vs the upper tiers. Now players who can mix Digital and Occult style would truly be deadly as Cold Touka seems to demonstrate.

[sandhy88]

From what I know, Digital Playstyle is using a lot of probability teorema. By counting the discard tiles and construc your tiles with high probability tiles that will comes.

My question is, who is faster, Nodoka's full power or Ako?
Nodoka always consider the time and the point that she will get.

[atua]

Originally Posted by sandhy88

From what I know, Digital Playstyle is using a lot of probability teorema. By counting the discard tiles and construc your tiles with high probability tiles that will comes.

My question is, who is faster, Nodoka's full power or Ako?
Nodoka always consider the time and the point that she will get.

Ako goes for speedier hands, but that isn't always the best tactic when it comes to the points total at the end. Eguchi Sera proved that just a couple of chapters ago. Nodoka takes the expecting winnings into account, as well as the probability. Her efficiency is a hallmark of her play, so given enough games, her points total will eventually pass Ako's.

[night_sentinel]

Its that time of the month again. Time to dump leaked pictures of Saki 105.

Spoiler for Its just as we feared....:

The continuation of Nodoka's interview. Hopefully, Nodoka will reveal information that we don't know from reading the Achiga manga.

Spoiler for Who are you?:

Now to more interesting stuff. Megan of Rinkai is talking to someone? Can you guess who?

Spoiler for Answer:

Follow this transformation sequence ....




Its Satoha of Rinkai!!! Rinkai's vanguard and the 3rd ranked in the individual tournament. I must say, she looks better without the ponytail and the glasses.

[The Green One]

Originally Posted by night_sentinel

Its that time of the month again. Time to dump leaked pictures of Saki 105.

Spoiler for Its just as we feared....:

The continuation of Nodoka's interview. Hopefully, Nodoka will reveal information that we don't know from reading the Achiga manga.

Spoiler for Who are you?:

Now to more interesting stuff. Megan of Rinkai is talking to someone? Can you guess who?

Spoiler for Answer:

Follow this transformation sequence ....




Its Satoha of Rinkai!!! Rinkai's vanguard and the 3rd ranked in the individual tournament. I must say, she looks better without the ponytail and the glasses.

lol dang it you beat me to it, I had just found those.

[night_sentinel]

Originally Posted by The Green One

lol dang it you beat me to it, I had just found those.

Lol ^^
If its any consolation here is the link for the raws of chapter 105 courtesy of a kind anon.

http://www.mediafire.com/?tkm4b79118lpmem

Spoiler for Saki 105:

Well the highlight for me in this chapter is the introduction of Rinkai. Satoha truly looks like a different character without her glasses and ponytail... sigh... seeing her like that gives me the feeling that Yuuki is going to be thwarted again in the vanguard round.

And on Nodoka's interview.... I'm just happy that it wasn't a copy paste of Achiga's first chapter which I feared.

[JW1]

Nishida mistakes young Ako for Yuuki. Easily done!

[tarajis]

A 16-page chapter 105... when will we see the semi-final for side B? With the way things are going... do we have to wait for Side A to conclude their semi-final before the semi-final for side B starts? I just hope we get to see more from the Miyanaga story and not just some glimpse of what's happening from side A... I want to see Rinkai and Usuzan in action...

[The Green One]

Sadly it looks like this chapter is a whole lot of nothing. Just more tired Nodoka boob jokes and a brief showing of Rinkai. Pretty much expected but still disappointing. Guess next chap is on 12/7

[King-Slayer]

One thing i can say about the raws;

Spoiler for raws:

Satoha is a hottie . Megan is also less serious than i thought.

[tsunade666]

Rinkai's members are being introduce but still..... its slow -_-

I will grow old before it even finish the finals. I wish side B will have more pages done 16-20 pages. 20 pages are usually for weekly manga but Saki is monthly right? or is it bi-weekly? its kinda... nope, Not Kinda but SLOW PACE like a snail.

I'm more excited with Side A achiga than the main series.

[Myssa Rei]

tsunade666: Saki is suposedly bi-monthly, but Ritz has been known for being somewhat erratic. Though yes, at the rate Igarashi is going, there might come a time that Achiga would overtake the main manga's page count.

[arsonal]

Originally Posted by tarajis

A 16-page chapter 105... when will we see the semi-final for side B?

The first two panels on page 11 of the 105 already transitions to the next day, which means it's now Kiyosumi's semi-final day. Satoha is also heading out to the Inter High location. Some Usuzan introductions may be in order for 106.