Readers’ Pick: Saki Achiga-hen – Episode of Side-A – Episode 3
Posted: April 27, 2012 Filed under: Animu, Readers' Pick of the Season, Saki Achiga-hen - Episode of Side-A | Tags: Readers' Pick of the Season, Saki Achiga-hen - Episode of Side-A 4 Comments
No translation for the title shots anymore because MPC doesn’t like to include subs in them. I used to use VLC for my shots, but for some reason it gave me an error whenever I tried to take JPG pictures. What kind of player can take PNG shots but not JPG ones?
But a far more relevant point of confusion was this damn episode. What the hell, guys? You told me to get ready for practically Yu-Gi-Oh! levels of hacked mahjong playing, and that’s definitely not what was given. I never imagined the show winning the first Readers’ Pick was going to actually make me feel disappointment. I imagined it being more along the lines of either deep loathing or surprised enjoyment.
You know, I actually checked the time it took for their little tournament at match thing at the beginning to finish. One minute and forty-three seconds. And that’s just according to the video timestamps; I didn’t bother to cut out the few irrelevant parts inbetween that didn’t even show any mahjong.
Not only was it disappointing to not get what I was expecting in regards to mahjong, but the whole foreboding atmosphere with Crazy Hairstyle Girl was completely thrown in the trash. What kind of writing is that?
At least it did somewhat remind me of Yu-Gi-Oh!, although instead of being due to the mahjong matches, it was because Shizu almost got thrown in the Shadow Realm.
Though something far more frightening I found in the episode was the revelation that this is a world completely dominated by women, where men can only serve as butlers. That’s messed up. What if the genders were switched, so there were nothing but male characters running around while the only female characters were maids?
Oh wait, I think that actually describes a few different anime shows. …Awkward.
No but seriously, that revelation was kind of creepy. Well, only for about a few seconds, because then I just stopped caring. Being apathetic and having a short attention span comes in handy.
But back to actually relevant points, this episode just kind of felt like a gimmick for the Saki appearance at the end.
Now, I’ve never seen Saki, as I’ve said multiple times before, but I don’t think she’s supposed to look that… demonic? I’m also skeptical, because even though she’s pretty much the character of the series, they did this same dramatic, evil thing with Crazy Hairstyle Girl, and look how awesome that turned out to be.
I’ll be honest, if this wasn’t the Readers’ Pick for this season, I would have dropped it at this point. Being disappointing can be worse than just being bad. But alas, I have to watch it in its entirety, so hopefully it starts delivering in regards to mahjong starting next episode.
Riyoga's Ramblings 
The point of this spin-off series is not to waste time on the qualifier matches for the nationals. The premise itself is based on playing against Nodoka in the national stage, and the title of the show “Episode of Side A” refers to their position in the bracket for the tournament. If you want to see the full matches for games played to reach the nationals itself Saki s1 will deliver plenty of that.
With that said, now that they actually ARE in the nationals the real stuff begins. The anime even tries to drive home that point by using the exact same narration that was used both on ep 1 and final ep of the first season to end this week’s episode (of course with different scenes to fit the new show).
This was imo the best episode of the 3, I’m loving it so far. Fav of the season.
I’m just saying, they’re making me wait a long time. And I wouldn’t know about the narration since I haven’t watched S1 and all that jazz, etc. etc.
So far I’m pretty indifferent towards the show. It’s fun to make fun of and see it in a wacky light, but it needs to do something to impress me.
To be fair the main reason I know to be patient is because I have already read the manga so I knew what to expect of the early episodes. I am not really blaming anyone that thinks like you at the moment since I felt the same way when I had first read it. I felt a bit disappointment (on the mahjong front) that the manga had blasted through the early stages, and when I heard about this being animated I had hopes that the anime would expand of them and fill a nice 2 cour season (which unfortunately didn’t happen since this is only 12 episodes).
However the reason why I play the “patience” card for the anime watchers is because not too long from now the mahjong really does start to heat up, and the original feel of the original series comes back into the side story as well. Not that you’ll figure it out lol.
The manga had a slow start, but in my opinion it really does catch up to its parent story when things get in motion. In fact I dare say the anime has so far improved the manga in every aspect, because the small mahjong bursts you see in the anime were even SHORTER in the manga version.
Oh god I thought I replied to this forever ago. I’m a terrible person.
Well I just had no idea to what to expect. All I heard was that the mahjong in Saki is badass, hence why I was impatient for it.