Saki – 22

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Right off the bat, Kyoutaro substantiates his role as the sole male character of reproductive age in an all-girl anime more concerned with yuri by dreaming about spending a summer day with four melons and the two girls they come attached to. I can relate. In other news, grass is green, the sky is blue, and Kanye is a douche.

The individual tournament continues as Yuki is matched up with Southern Gal, and with the match starting in east round, Yuki gets off to a quick start. Unexpectedly, however, as the match shifts into the south round, Southern starts blitzing Yuki and leaves her in a listless pile of three day old soggy tacos.

Speaking of tacos, I’ve been on a Mexican food binge lately. Anyone in the San Jose area frequent La Vic’s? Can’t get enough of that orange sauce…

Anyways, it seems like Saki isn’t doing too well in the tournament, but a more astute Nodoka notices that Saki’s scores look quite familiar: plus-minus zero in four consecutive rounds – 2nd place at each table, so she keeps advancing anyways. Nodoka isn’t having any of that throwaway crap, so she confronts Saki in a sweaty blob of yuri guilt tripping. I’m not really paying attention to what they’re saying at this point because all I can think of is their arms wrapped around each other, their bodies melted together in a fondue of intertwining ecstasy…

Saki’s weak excuse is that since she’s a freshman, she should let others have the chance to go to the nationals since she’s already in the team nationals and can always do it next year. Bitch. Anyways, apparently Nodoka doesn’t just have monster jugs but also has a pretty good brain too, and convinces her less-endowed but much cuter soulmate to start trying. Meanwhile, Hisa is eavesdropping on the two as she decides to step up her own game, which apparently means tying her hair. It goes quite well with her character design, I gotta say.

Golly gee, Hisa is matched up with Momo, Ryuumonbuchi’s Nagato Yuki, and unfortunately, Saki. I say unfortunately because Saki is the name of this anime, which kinda sucks for everyone else. If it was called something less obvious, like “MBZ”, or “Tengen Toppa Mahjong Lagann”, or “Mahjong-sama ga Miteru”, I would say Saki has a chance of losing, but naw. At any rate, supposedly Hisa is serious about winning against Saki, so she proceeds to do some “straight zone” thing to keep Saki from getting her kans. The two other girls are pretty sharp and start doing it too, so for the meantime, Saki is getting worked. But of course, Momo has to try to beat everybody so she can have yurisex with butch-senpai-su, which will probably end up killing the whole thing and let Saki bust out some monster hand in the last second…

Preview

Up next on Saki: We all know whos gonna win but it’s fun to watch regardless

Some things I wanted to bring up:

– Where I’ve been the last 3 weeks: reeling from the shock that is the new bakemono OP. Made me think of calmer, happier times, like the time ARIA was still airing.
– If this ep is any indication of the quality of non-manga based Saki, I’m all for it.
– I wish Yumi was hotter so I could appreciate her feet more.
– Wahaha
– Momo… I dunno, I’m not too interested in her anymore-su.
– If you think about it, Mihoko’s whole one eyed thing could be a play on the Ayanami bandage-moe, which is probably a combination of the bandage-like wrapping women used to use as underwear and the fact that injured girls need taking care of. An eyepatch would have looked gaudy and out of place, even if it had some cute character printed on it, so to go with the whole no-pantsu theme of the show, might as well get rid of it altogether and just have her close one eye. If not genius, then at least very interesting to watch the evolution of moe trends…
– Neck exposure: trailing behind ankles and feet as sources of alter-moe would probably be collarbones and necklines, and those little strands of hair at the bottom of the hairline that escape the hair tie and drape slightly over the nape of the neck like bangs over a slightly exposed forehead. Ponytails are notorious at showing off the neck (the only reason that southern gal even had a chance), Hisa powers up when she ties her hair around to expose the back of her neck, twin-tailed Nodoka parades it around like her obnoxious oppai, and Saki’s hair is just short/long enough to be right at the borderline of covering and showing. Kinda like the length of her skirt. Similarly, this is why Momo and Yumichin are not as hot, even though they routinely out-cup the competition. Mihoko isn’t that kind of showoff character, so it would have been inappropriate for her to show any neck-skin, hence the good girl hair. Details, they matter.