Mouse over screens for captions
 
Summary
It wouldn’t be called anime if shit made sense – so after Saki donates almost 17k points to the newb, somehow Koromo is so shaken that she can’t control the table anymore.

But before all that, we have some cheesy flashbacks to show how close Mako-chan Kana is to Cyclops-senpai, and then some more cheesy flashbacks with Momo and Yumi-chin. For someone who got zero screentime before the ep where she showed up, Momo is sure getting a ton of coverage these days.

At any rate, Kana lets out this kitty roar / Rock Lee gate releasing howl (I’d call it Goku charging but this only took 5 seconds, not 5 episodes) that supposedly gives her a rush of adrenaline and now all of a sudden she can see potential hands she couldn’t before. Oh, great, that’s all it took? Girl needs to carry an epi-pen with her for these situations or somethin…

Regardless, she somehow continues to build her hand until she busts out with some mighty “ippatsu riichi tsumo pinfu, terminals in all sets, pure double mixed triple chii” (jesus christ) that nets her 32,000 points.

And the on the next hand, Yumi-chin calls ron with a short hand and grabs 11,600 from Koromo. Ohhhh Koromo is getting annoyed… all her attention is on Saki, and now all of a sudden Kazekoshi and Tsuruga are winning hands. In her frustration, Koromo busts out this epically-translated line: “those knave’s visages holds nary a trace of defeat’s color.” Oh CrunchyRoll, you do us proud. We all know someone of lesser medieval Japanese mastery would’ve translated that as “they don’t look defeated at all!”

So when’s Saki gonna make her move? She can’t figure out why she’s not right yet – turns out her shoes have been cutting off her circulation or her comfort level or those lickably cute feet – so without flinching, asks the judge “hey, can I take it off?” Naturally the judge is already doing his hardest not to have his raging hard on show up cuz of all the short skirts and moe at the table, and he almost loses it when the most bangable chick at the table asks him if she can take it off. The shoes, she means the shoes. He calms down, while some anime foot fetishist named jaalin watching from his room in California screams “YESSSS TAKE IT OFF”. Anime has perfected the art of visual and aural nirvana, and they do quite a good job with touch (read: Nodoka’s boobs), but where they lack in the adjective department is in taste and smell. Yakitate tried and while some may call it a rousing success, I think of it more of a cop-out, by taking taste and smell and reinterpreting them as fanciful visual feasts. Luckily for us, feet usually taste and smell bad, so we can imagine all we want how candy sweet and warm Saki’s feet are.

And just like that, Saki gets rinshian tsumo on some junk hand worth 500/800. And then, 300/500. Basically she is screwing everybody over, because there’s only a few hands left before the end of the match and she’s wasting them on throwaway hands not worth anything, with Koromo still way in the lead. From what I can figure, she’s trying to get to the East turn as soon as she can. Anyways, on the next hand Saki calls a double kan and then calls ron on Koromo for 3600. But is she done yet? Hell no… up next she calls kan, then another kan, and then calls a third kan, and draws a third bamboo in a row… for “all simples, three concealed pons/kans, three kans, all pons/kans!” Baiman! Whatever the hell that means, but it sure looked tight as she was doing it. Only 45,100 left to go!

Wait, there’s still 45,100 left to go? Shit…
 
Preview

Up next on Saki: Yo dawg, I heard you like rinshian kaihou so I put a rinshian in your rinshian…
 
Thoughts
Dude, this show is awesome. I’ve gotten better at understanding what’s going on with the mahjong side of things, but even without that, this show is like everything I like about sports/game type anime. Take something normally inaccessible and monotonous to the none-consuming casual observer, and turn it into something freakin cool in a way only anime can do it. Oh, and Koromo is kawaii.

Anyways, Kana’s comeback, albeit unlikely and not very convincing, was at least nice to see, cuz now Saki can do the only move she knows how to do over and over again. And boy did she rinshian the hell out of them. It’s a bit weird to me that Saki is such a single-trick player, considering that in most other sports/game anime, the main char is always one of those all-rounders and real good at learning his or her opponents moves. Don’t see Saki sprouting nekomimi or doing any haitei draws, so I guess that possibility is out.

One reader pointed out last week that since Saki is so good at getting plus-minus 0, there’s a good chance that she will just control everyone’s scores until everyone ties at the end, and all 4 teams end up going to the nationals. I mean, after all this, I really can’t see it happening any other way – ok, I can see Kazekoshi and Tsuruga get ousted, but to see Ryuumonbuchi lose will just be weird. If they do, then I guess Koromo will end up being friends with everyone at Kiyosumi, so that works out nicely. Either way, Koromo is probably gonna get spanked next week as she’s thinking about her dead parents, until she mounts one final defense, in which Saki’s optimism will conquer Koromo’s grief with some mighty flower petal tile slams.

There’s still a good amount of eps left to go – perhaps they make it all the way to the nationals and meet Saki’s sister at the table, then we gotta wait until season 2? 🙁

31 Comments

  1. Okay… I started watching this show because I saw some Valkyrie-ish screenshots. Then, I found out it was a friendshippy story about mahjong. I was like “WTF? MAHJONG!?” The only experience I had with mahjong was the worthless time wasting matching game on windows. I had no idea it could be played AGAINST three people. (I’m black and american. leave me alone.)

    Now, after watching 12 episodes straight (I’m at work. lol), I STILL barely know what’s going on with the rules.

    But this show is the second coolest shit I’ve seen this season.

    And I want to play. I want to play BADLY. ;-;

    DevilotsAdvocate
  2. Hehehe. I’m getting supah exited they’re finally picking up the pace again.
    Saki just kicks here.
    I just love JAALIN ‘s captions: small question though is Kana’s LSDing a side effect of Saki removing her shoe’s?
    I don’t get japanese ppl. they soooo often change footwear. Me, i’ve gotta look out after walking from my dorm the my collage classrooms or labs, and like Hell anyone’s gonna allow or be allowed to drop their shoes or boots. seriously theose could trigger the sprinklers..

    But what’s up with the preview? Seems like Ryuumonbuchi is happy? (tooka i mean)
    Indeed they’re not gonna get to saki’s sister like this. season 2 lurking?

    Mike4DOA
  3. It would look so stupid if take a tile, (don’t look)Say something really cool like double hidden tora kan ippatsu no kimmi, slam down the tile, gulp and say nvm wrong tile.

    outcast
  4. >>hilarious recap. really cant wait for the next ep. if we didnt have to focus on the boring schools, this tourney couldve been over already.

    Geez, and here I thought that everyone was enjoying one of the first FFA’s in anime history over the done to death one on one match ;p

    Proto
  5. I liked this episode. It had everything that makes Saki so good – the yuri, the superpowers, Yuuki, Kana, this week’s new fetish (foot fetish) and mahjong

    Well, I think Kana is going to run out of steam soon, Koromo is losing control so of course it will be Saki’s time to shine

  6. Great episode!! This anime is one of the best this year so far IMO. Part of the reason is that they are following the manga almost perfectly and adding no filler episodes or switching the order. The anime is up to chapter 49 of the manga and will likely catch up next episode since the manga only has 51 chapters out (according to mangahelpers). Hopefully, they’ll know what they are doing for the last 7 episodes!

    Meat Man
  7. Oh crap, they caught up to the manga already?! That is NEVER good for an anime… unless the author told them what the future of the manga was going to be like, and generally they only have an outline that they flesh out, and those outlines are never set in stone as sometimes they just need to meet their deadlines… Please no fillers Saki!!! This anime is great!

    Cyprinious
  8. lolz, like the probability fact in the beginning…
    actually the probability of “n-1” rinshian kaihou by Saki is guaranteed since she did not get one of them during mid way of the show…

    M@Sk
  9. ‘Koromo busts out this epically-translated line: “those knave’s visages holds nary a trace of defeat’s color.” ‘ lol XD;;
    I didn’t even notice CR translated it that way. lol I just stopped paying attention to subs since my japanese seems to be better than what their translations are. Well, except when everyone starts pulling out these crazy move that are like 10 words long; I need subs to figure out what the hell they’re doing while I’m screaming “Hell Yeah!” as Saki pwns everyone. >_>

    Rinyal
  10. i like how they relate rinshan kaihou with the 3 kan’s. It really show the stages of a flower blooming from seed (2k) to full flower (24k, Baiman).

    quiet a number of foot fetish for this anime but no less this rinshan kaihou is the best so far compare to the first few rounds that saki drawn rinshan kaihou.

    jeffng9
  11. Can someone clear me up on this, the rules in playing MAHJONG is a bit differnt in Japanese compare to Chinese right?
    Cause I know how to play MAHJONG in Chinese ( not expert or anything but I understand the basic) but the way they play seems a bit different compare to how I use to play.
    I have no clue what Ritsu stick are? Or some of the terms they use.

    Mike
  12. i’m guessing you mean “riichi” which is when they declare they are one tile away from winning and when someone discards the one you need you can win and take points from the player you stole it from.

    also, koromo does speak funny in japanese. sometimes almost as funny as that specific translated line. though “defeat’s color” was really ridiculous, no matter how literal it seems.

    umeboshi110
  13. Everyone took turns shitting on Koromo this episode LOL.

    I always pause when they show a full view of someone’s hand so I can try to understand what’s going on but there were too many crazy hands this time. The rare Thirteen Orphans has made quite a few appearances in this show but only in tenpai, no one’s ever won with one yet :O

    zoomj
  14. 45,100 isn’t that far off if you think about it.
    If Koromo plays into one of Saki’s big 24,000 hands, she’ll be down 24,000 and Saki will be up 24,000 making it the equivalent of a 48,000 point advance. So it’ll only take a single dramatic final hand.

    Though a 4 way draw seems most likely, going by how everyone really really really wants to get to the nationals. (Funny how you’d never say this about real life… ^^)

    @Actar: Mahjong isn’t only played by the Japs 🙂 In fact, Wikipedia says Mahjong comes from China ^^

    Dazzer

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