I'm weak. My download site had the first two episodes of Saki so I just downloaded them. And I just watched the first one.

And you know what? It was really good!

Why? Because Saki isn't a wimp. She's a strong person, one who knows what she wants and doesn't get pushed around. She's also an awesome MahJong player, almost superhuman.

In the first episode she gets dragged to the MahJong club by Kyoutarou, her friend from middle school, who plays but isn't very good. She plays three games and ends up with a score of 0 each time -- which, it turns out, is damned near impossible. Yet she seemed able to do it. The president of the club notices this, and since the president had been looking over Saki's shoulder and had seen her hand at one point, she knew that Saki had thrown the game.

Nodoka, the gorgeous one who is also by far the top player in the club, ends up chasing Saki through the rain and begs her to keep playing, but Saki refuses.

Next day, the club president is handed an opportunity to get a favor from Saki, and the favor she asks is that Saki play two more games. In her fourth game at the club, the other players all are aware that Saki is trying to get a score of 0 and they actively work to make it difficult for her. Even Nodoka, who isn't really trying to win; she's trying as hard as she can to make it so that Saki's score is non-zero.

And Saki still does it.

Presumably ep 2, which I'm about to watch, is about two things: trying to convince Saki to join the club, and trying to convince her to try to win when she plays instead of scoring zero. Because if she has both the luck and skill to score zero, then she should really kick ass when she's trying for a high score. The president (Mako) is seeing championships in her future.

The fact that Saki isn't a wimp and isn't a klutz is what made this work for me, I think.

As to the yuri elements, well, yeah there's some of that. The first scene in the show is Saki outdoors during lunch, reading a book, and seeing Nodoka walking by -- and blushing because Nodoka is so gorgeous. And there's this:

It isn't what it looks like. Or rather, it's a tease. It's suggestive to the people who are looking for yuri elements, but it can also be read completely innocently. Nodoka just was running through the rain to catch up with Saki, and is out of breath. And she's not there to confess love or anything like that; she's there to beg Saki to play against her again. And Saki says "Atashi wa Mahjong suki janai n desu." I don't like Mahjong.

At least in the first episode, all the supposed yuri elements amount to double entendres, whether in words or actions or pictures. They're deliberate on the part of the director, but apparently not on the part of the characters.

But damn, that episode was fun to watch. And it's nice for a change to have Kugimiya Rie doing the voice of a character which is neither loli nor tsundere.

UPDATE: Ep 2, and as expected, at the end of it Saki joins the club. But it didn't come about the way I expected, and I rather liked the way it did come about.

Ep 2 tossed in an element that looks ripped off straight out of Angelic Layer. Which is not a good thing, but may be tolerable. Saki lives with her dad. Her mother seems to have left them, and evidently is making waves, having shown up in some sort of magazine. It occurs to me that one of the things that's coming is that eventually Saki will compete in some sort of big tournament and be covered in the news, and eventually her mom will come back because of it. Ick.

But for the most part it remains the case that I like what I see. And Saki is still not a wimp.

I don't understand this imagery:

The first is from the OP, and after Nodoka's transformation she's shown fighting against another magical girl.

The second is from ep 2. It's a vision Saki has; as if she can sense Nodoka's ki or something like that. Is there something supernatural going on in this series? Sure hope not. This, on the other hand:

Everyone likes dancing chibis, don't they? That's the ED. (J, this is for you.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 07:18 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
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