Saki – Breaking Even on First Impressions

And don’t ask me for a Ladies’ Meal.

For one, I have no actual love for gambling. It’s not all about the win-lose specifics, or the money or something you have to bet in order to be able to play. Rather, it’s the fact that I have to bet something (trust me, betting your most precious Haagen-Dasz English Tofee half gallon tub after losing a battle of hanafuda is BAD), or denote myself within some sort of stature or position, be it good or bad, just because of a game. If so, why do I feel a sense of interest and humility when I grazed upon Saki, more than everyone going ga-ga and raining K-ON posts all over the world?

Mahjong, as the pros say, is a game based mostly on luck. Well, that’s half-true at most. Most people say it also requires skill. Winning requires luck, not ending as the sore loser requires skill. And like most of us believe, you’ll need both of those if you’re to survive in any game. For sure, that was one of the charms that Saki won over me than any other K-ON post out there. It sports this innate talent with the intent to win everyone’s hearts via a hearty conquest from bottom to top, and the utmost humility along with skill only adds more fuel to the already burning fire.

Question: What did you first notice on the picture? Saki leaving, or the dripping between Nodocchi’s legs?

Think: If mahjong was all about winning, then main character Miyanaga Saki would only boil up into something along the lines of a supporting role. Clearly not good for the worth of the title. But she sported something else, something that nobody with the pure intent of winning has ever thought of doing. Now, it’s not that this makes Nodoka Haramura a bad person who got played around when she and Saki first met on the table. A win is a win, but if your luck and determination to win is blown away by someone’s skill to prove that winning is not all there is in the game, how would you swallow the facts?

Then again, since the series still follows the canon events from the manga, the humility wears off eventually, getting mellowed down, and sometimes drowned by Saki’s renowned desire to win so she can go for a destined meeting with her sister, Miyanaga Teru. Even with Nodoka and the others being there, I can’t help but think that Saki’s stealing all the spotlight most of the time because of her hell-bent objective: to try to unite a family held only by the tiles of mahjong. But isn’t it okay? Saki only wants to have fun and meet friends along the way to her goal. This made think of Asu no Yoichi’s Karasuma Yoichi for a second because of some similarities, but okay, I’d point out that Miyafuji Yoshika lookalike reference as well.

WHY HALLO THAR CENSORSHIP-SAN!

To sum it up, the start was very down-to-earth and all. Ecchi implications and cameo appearances of Censorship-san may dot events here and there, which means added perks and MARKETING PROSPECTS for the series, and I ain’t complaining. I know I sucked (damn you for this, Rakkun) because I didn’t get quite a following on the manga (which was released before the anime), but I’m willing to follow this while I go find raw volume copies of the manga (BADASS RAW MANGA READER, with special thanks to Zeroblade for providing me some scans instead, though I dunno if that’s any good for me), with high hopes that the anime will continue to stay canon till the last episode.