Saki

I first thought this would be like one of those ordinary school animes where there is a gay club about one specific activity. I was saying in my head why does CR keep putting crap like this onto the site! We should have the old anime back! But out of everyone, I'm guessing you have the case of natural curiosity. So I clicked on the 1st episode. At first I was like brace yourself here comes the loud Japanese high pitched voices. After watching this anime I was amazed/shocked and made me want to learn how to play "Japanese style" mahjong.

The storyline
It was so unique! I never thought that anyone would use mahjong in a anime. I thought it would be just a bunch of wannabe granny's flipping tiles and screaming there heads off.So back to the point. Ok so it starts of with this freshman saki who just got in a school. One day her friend forces her to play mahjong with him in the mahjong club. Once she gets there and play they realized she has almost the best skills as anything they have ever seen! (too bad im not going to tell you what happens next) :P

Music
ok so i thought the op of the anime wasnt so good. It sounded a little to strike witches just a little deeper and a little more annoying. While the ending was amazing! it was also in the Oricon charts of japan,which is a pretty good reward to many jap artist.

Characters
Every character is different and special in there own way. Ever time one of them plays they each like have something to offer. When I was watching this anime the 2 of the main characters acted like the other 2 main characters in strike witches, You get the feeling there lesbians every time someone pairs them together because they either blush or hesitate. Overall the characters all put in something to look forward too and make every episode exciting. -hiko

First I would like to apologise for any ensuing rants that occur within the review once I get going I tend to not be able to stop, also I didn't write this in order so it might end up a bit all over the place but I think I get the basic point accross. Also the rating is to do with comparison of animes OVERALL which is why it might seem low, I don't believe that a 5 for music happens unless your Skankfunk (Air Gear) for instance.

Well I'm personally a sucker for sports animes, though this is not technically speaking a 'sport' (though god knows anymore), but it follows the character styles and plot devices used in classic sports animes. So I was immediately looking forward to the series. One other reason was more specific, it was another anime about Mahjong, which in itself is a vastly fascinating game and I've always found that animes do a good job using it as a subject.

Why its good
I do consider 'Mahjong Animes' (thats right I'm making a new genre right here, right now) to be fairly special so I feel the best to look at Saki is to compare it with the others. Now the first thing about this is that it is FAR more commercial then the others which has its ups and its downs, the downs I'll talk about later, but the ups that come from it is the spreading of Mahjong as a game itself and the fact that hopefully it will compel people to look back at the others, which are well worth the watch. Also it will hopefully lead to more spins on the Mahjong Anime, this is just speculation the show itself shows this as the other Major Mahjong Animes were very serious and this shows that Mahjong can just be a game. Akagi definitely won't appeal to a lot of people because of its dark nature but its hard to say the same of Saki. All around it is very well crafted, the storyline is not complex like Shion no Ou the characters aren't as strong as in Akagi but I watch it every week and am never disappointed. It keeps things simple and does very well by it

Criticisms
I think my most crucial criticism of the series (so far obviously), is the fact that it dumbs down mahjong quite a lot I think, unlike Akagi and Shion no Ou it was made with us westerners (apparently that is an actual word, I'm skeptical myself) in mind. The depth that Akagi and Shion no Ou went into Mahjong made me stop and have to look back at things which I simply didn't understand, this was made to be easy to watch. This is probably more evident in the fact that the characters are basically there to look cute, I don't find that in itself a problem, but I don't like the idea that animes might loose some of their culture or worse still dumb it down simply because they believe either we won't understand or we are too lazy to find out. I find some of the characters depths to be far to shallow it seems like some characters have no background whatsoever (and they aren't exactly side characters) obviously theres room for expanding but it seems even the characters with backgrounds are given no mystery (except the captain) all the back stories are just handed over to us. This is obviously a little to much over analysis but what almost always draws me to an anime is the rich characters that star in them and how easily I become attached to them.

Summary
Though there are these criticisms, and it appears in size that there are more bad things then good things to say I hasten to add that I love this anime to bits and even got off my ass to get membership purely to watch this as soon as possible. Take the criticisms with a pinch of salt or, as most of you who read this probably will, disregard my comments all together and just sit back and enjoy yourselves =D because its hard to stretch out THIS ANIME IS AMAZING as much as very specific problems.

It’s a nice girly drama/comedy. It is also on the gay side of friendship of young girls. All the characters need to wear different cloths because it gets boring seeing the same stuff over and over the stories just run over each other. I know the story is at a school & they wear uniforms. To me it gets boring when I watch animas with the same theme of school kids doing stuffs. Can someone think up some new?

Storyline- In my opinion, the storyline is awesome and completely takes on a world of it's own. This anime somewhat relates to anime such as Hikaru no Go and Shion no Ou, but the family situations in this anime allow it to stand alone. Even though the story is kind of slow moving with the flashbacks and the many matches, the details make it easier for viewers to catch on to what is going on.

Music- The music is really cute and it lightens the somewhat serious mood in this anime. What caught my eye though is that the endings change depending on the episode (episode 6 had the first ending and episode 7 had the second ending then the first ending came back in episode 8). Normally I see anime with a serious atmosphere and then out pops something cheery that destroys that tense mood, but the ending changes in Saki fixes that.

Characters- The characters definitely suit this anime and their personalities give a bit of fan service to certain viewers. Sure, the characters blush alot and you can easily spot the pairings, but I think it makes the anime cuter. The characters in Saki also relate to the usual types of characters that you see in most anime like the short one (Yuuki), the glasses girl (Mako), the clumsy main character (Saki), and some others which throws in humor to this series.

Overall- When you add my reviews from the other sections, you can tell how much I am hooked on this anime. The humor, the drama, the suspense (as in what will happen in a certain person's match), and the magic quickly swept me off my feet and left me hungry for more. Until the series ends, I can't wait to see more episodes and when it does end I hope there is a second season. That's pretty much all I have to say.

This been bugging me for some time now, i believe that this anime have way too much special effect (you know, the unreasonable amount of flashing lights that wage through out the episode as though if it were a cartoon Power Ranger, being side tracked to another clip just to show the power of the whatever it is to appear).

I personally don't see this anime going very far, more like this anime won't have much episode to it (around near the 10-20). Why i say this, because they are already at the path to the nationals and Saki is using Nodoka to meet with her sister (selfish don't you say?) There isn't really much drama (feeling burst out when you are watching it) in this anime, simply just the cute and cuddly characters. I could only see this anime as an Product Advertisement, because it does not have much plot development going on. Additional to it, are the prolong events of special effect to show the greatness of their ability, it's really unnecessary if it were just a simple school life/sports anime.

As for the plot, nothing major. A simple storyline that doesn't even try bothering in teaching the basic, for all those skilled players that never played before. It has a little too much that i can't really say much for the plot beside Product Advertisement.

For all that, i just can't see why people loves the current popular stuff (such as Lucky Star Op song, Boy Girl Boy Girl song, that Vegi stick dance, Azumanga Daioh, ect). I see people loving it, but i don't understand why.

Saki is a Mahjong anime

- it's for people who like Mahjong
- it's actually more for girls
- including mahjong there is also some special effects - supernatural power in imagination

- a girl named Saki is a very good mahjong player and she has alot luck
- her sister is like a champion-mahjong player
- she makes friends that makes her play even better
- there are alot of rivals/mahjong players
- it has 2 openings at the moment
- little ecchi/yuri
- cute characters