12 Days of Christmas – Day 1 – Saki
For the fourth year in a row, the authors of Borderline Hikikomori will write a series of twelve posts for the “Twelve Days of Anime” project. Each day, from today up until Christmas, one of us will share an anime- or manga-related moment or event from 2010 that we found special. Today, I’ll be kicking things off with a post on the Saki manga reaching its national tournament arc. Fair warning: excessive fanboying is involved. Enjoy this, and enjoy the rest of the posts in the series!
In September last year, the anime adaptation of Saki ended on a cliffhanger; we essentially got an extended preview of the series’ national tournament. We saw new characters, new special moves, and, of course, the same Yu-Gi-Oh!-esque tile effects. And then we received an on-screen message that said ‘we’re just getting started, yay~’ and things finished. The wait for the nationals was frustrating. It was made more frustrating by the fact that the Saki anime had gone far ahead of the manga by the time it finished. There were delays to the manga, too, before a series of set-up chapters. The wait stretched out further. And then, finally, earlier this year, the nationals began.
Before that, though, the characters introduced in the first part of the manga – the members of the teams Kiyosumi fought against in the qualifiers – were fleshed out further. The relationships between the various schools’ team members were some of what made the series so much fun (the yuri undertones helped as well, of course), and it was great to see them looked at in greater depth. Particularly lovely were the more subtle friendships that’d developed between characters; you got a sense that the girls had found a sense of belonging outside of their school groups, and that they’d really built solid friendships. It was especially nice to see Koromo, one of the series’ foremost woobies, come into her own and find her place. I also really loved how this was carried over into the nationals, with all the other teams going together to Tokyo to support Kiyosumi High and then Yuuki vowing to do the rest of the girls from Nagano proud when their prefecture was openly called weak.
Speaking of Yuuki, I can confidently say that she irritated me to no end for the vast majority of the qualifiers arc. Sure, she was funny, but her constant hyperactivity was tiring. More than that, the fact that she would melt into a babbling mess whenever things went awry in her matches (and they often did) was facepalm-worthy. It really didn’t help that she was voiced by Rie Kugimiya in the adaptation, either. But, lo and behold, character development happened! The boundless energy was still there come nationals time, but she was able to control it. When things didn’t go to plan, too, Yuuki didn’t break down. She gathered herself and moved on, and continued playing in a style that could definitely be called badass (though it remains to be seen how she’ll deal with the latest thing that’s been thrown at her). And I’ll admit, her turning up to her match wearing a cape and a serious expression was both hilarious and awesome.
No post about Saki would be complete without talk of the ridiculous/ridiculously cheesy/ridiculously entertaining mahjong-related special abilities, and the nationals has offered up a host of new characters and powers. We’re only really one match in, and we’ve already met another of the series’ “monsters”, Eisui Girls’ Komaki Jindai, who is largely a mediocre player… until she goes to sleep during her games and becomes ridiculously strong. Playing against her and Yuuki are the stoic Shiromi from Miyamori High – whose bizarre ability is becoming immensely and very noticeably worried when she has a good hand and then playing better because of her nerves - and Himematsu High’s poor Suzu, who has all the information she needs on her competitors but is struggling nonetheless. Earlier on, we were also treated to a demonstration the skills of Himematsu’s team captain, Hiroe; a match between her and Kiyosumi captain Hisa promises to be a treat. As well as this, we had some fantastic moments pre-nationals with unwittingly goofy ojou-sama Touka finally getting the chance to reveal her talents.
The ‘we’re just getting started, yay~’ note seems like an even more pertinent way to finish off Saki for 2010, with the national tournament in full swing at last. I can’t wait to get to know the new crop of characters better in the coming year – one thing I love about Ritz Kobayashi is her ability to manage an extremely large cast extremely well – and, of course, I can’t wait for more weirdly engrossing games of mahjong to be played.
