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Summary
Koromo gets pissed off and mounts her final attack – apparently her aura is nuclear because she causes some monster EM pulse that makes all the lights go out – and goes straight into another haitei raouyue. Great, now the lead gets bigger again. Everyone is pretty much screwed now, but apparently Saki hasn’t given up and Kana is still forging on like she still thinks she has a chance.

On the final hand, Saki gets herself a pretty monster draw, but it’s still not enough in itself to make up for the 50-something thousand points that separate her from Koromo. Well, so I thought, but apparently there’s this obscure rule called a “melded kan” – whenever you make a kan with an opponent’s discard, that opponent has to pay up all the points. Being the one-trick beast that she is, Saki does just that – first 12k (meh), then a chained kan for another 12k (oh shi-), and then a third kan for one more 12k (IT’S OVER 9000!!!!!) – normally that wouldn’t be enough but since it was all ponied up by Koromo, Saki makes up for the entire difference and wins the game. Well, not before a violently euphoric mahjongasm and some Gurren Lagann galaxy-throwing tile-drawing action. Schoolgirl mahjong – where the fate of the world is always on the line.

 
Preview

Up next on Saki: Poolside training, aka excuse for mizugi episode
 
Thoughts
Well we all knew Saki was going to win somehow, thing is we didn’t know how it would come about. There could’ve been some crazy point controlling reminiscent of her plus-minus 0, there could’ve been some new move that Saki busts out… or there could’ve been the “I’m just gonna kan everyone to death” approach. Unfortunately they went for the obvious route, but much to my surprise and titillated delight, it came out really well!

If there’s one thing in anime that never fails is this huge sense of sportsmanship, even though everyone except for one just got totally owned. There hasn’t been a single sore loser in this show, and in other sports anime like Prince of Tennis, even if someone is a total bitch on the court and goes for the jugular (literally) every time, they always seem to finish the game a total good sport. LeBron James might have something to learn after walking off the court vs the Magic in the playoffs – I mean, cmon LeBron, you guys had no chance. At least Kana was nice about it, then she got a hug from cyclops-senpai.

16 Comments

  1. All it took for Koromo to cough up 48k points was Saki saying “mahjong sure is fun!” Well OF COURSE it’s fun when you destroy your opponents by knowing the next 4 tiles you’re gonna draw.

    Also, I’m disappointed in the lack of screencaps featuring the totally not-so-platonic love between Yumi-chin and Momo.

    Also x2, I still don’t know the name of red-haired-tomboyish-voice-Tsuruga-mahjong-club-prez, but I guess she’ll be known as “wahaha” from now on.

    zoomj
  2. @zoomj: she’s been know as WAHAHAHA for a long time now 😉 Nevertheless when it comes to Tsuruga, the blonde noob is still my #1.

    @Jaalin: less fappin and more writing, please! Though that might be hard with ep 20 😉

    And now seriously – is it true, that the anime caught up with the manga on ep 19, ep 20 was an omake and eps 21-end are done by GONZOOOOOOO based on what the mangaka told them? 21 was great, so I seriously hope they won’t pull a GONZOOOO end here.

    Zenzen
  3. Thanks for the summary. Your point count for Sakis final hand is incorrect though. Its not 12k KAN “another” 12k(24k) KAN “another” 12k (36k).
    Her hand was concealed chin itsu (6) when Koromo discarded the 1 pin (6 Yaku=12k). After the first kan it was open chin itsu (5) rinshan kaihou (1) (6 Yaku=12k), after the second kan its still open chin itsu rinshan kaihou (12k) and after the third kan it finally was open chin itsu (5), toitoi (2), san ankou (2), san kantsu (2), dora (1), rinshan kaihou (1) (13yaku=32k).

    tobi
  4. @tobi

    Shouldn’t the first part of Saki’s hand actually be 16k?

    123 123 123 123 44 (all pin).

    Pinfu (1 yaku) + Ryan peikou (3 yaku) + Chinitsu, concealed (6 yaku) = 10 yaku = baiman = 4000 / 8000 = 16,000 points total.

    kage
  5. @kage:

    I was thinkung about the Ryanpeiko, too, but in some rule sets it cannot be Ryanpeiko if you have two times two chi of the same suit, like Saki does. Touka says she has 12k points right afterwards, so i guess this tournament does not allow a “quad chi” as Ryanpeiko.
    But you are right about the pinfu. (though 7 Yaku is still haneman)

    tobi
  6. One clarification:

    She had 13 fan, not 13 yaku. Yaku aren’t fan. Yaku are *worth* fan, but not all fan will give you a yaku. (Poorly-translated and poorly-written EMA rules are to blame for this, because they’re the English info people keep relating to…) You need to have at least 1 yaku to go out (win) the hand. (Think of it as a winning condition.)

    So if you have a hand with just a dora in it, you can’t go out, because while a dora is worth 1 fan, it is *not* a yaku. (It just isn’t.) Yaku are things like hands in poker, only in riichi mahjong, you can have a hand containing multiple hands, Like Chin-itsuu (a flush), toi-toi (all pons/kans), san ankou (three hidden pons/kans), san kantsu (three kans)

    Chin-itsuu is a yaku worth 6 fan if closed, 5 if open. (5 in this case)
    Rinshan Kaihou is a yaku worth 1 fan
    Toi-Toi is a yaku worth 2 fan
    San ankou is a yaku worth 2 fan
    San kantsu is a yaku worth 2 fan
    Dora are *not* yaku, but are worth 1 fan each.

    So she hand containing 5 different yaku, worth 13 fan. A counted yakuman based on having 13 fan.

    Yeah, like anybody cares… but I feel better.

    weasel

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