Saki

Due to childhood circumstances, first-year high school student Saki Miyanaga hates anything related to mahjong. When she does play the game, she keeps a low profile to avoid standing out. One day, her friend Kyoutarou Suga drags her along to the school's mahjong club. There, she meets Nodoka Haramura, the champion of the previous year's national middle school mahjong championship, and Yuuki Kataoka, a fellow club member.

As the club play a few rounds, Saki attempts to hide her talent. However, the club president, Hisa Takei, notices Saki's unusual playstyle. Realizing her potential, she puts Saki's real ability to the test—proving her to be more talented than expected. This revelation damages Nodoka's pride, and their relationship gets off to a rocky start.

Saki ends up joining the club, and after clearing up the misunderstandings between her and Nodoka, friendship blooms between them. As Saki slowly warms up to mahjong once again, she and the rest of her club only have one goal—to win nationals!

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Miyanaga, Saki Main

Ueda, Kana Japanese

Takei, Hisa Main

Itou, Shizuka Japanese

Haramura, Nodoka Main

Koshimizu, Ami Japanese

Kataoka, Yuuki Main

Kugimiya, Rie Japanese

Someya, Mako Main

Shiraishi, Ryouko Japanese

Amae, Koromo Supporting

Fukuhara, Kaori Japanese

Fukuji, Mihoko Supporting

Horie, Yui Japanese

Miyanaga, Teru Supporting

Nakahara, Mai Japanese

Touyoko, Momoko Supporting

Saitou, Momoko Japanese

Kanbara, Satomi Supporting

Kuwatani, Natsuko Japanese

Kumagai, Takuto Producer

Takahata, Yuuichirou Producer

Aoki, Takao Producer

Sakurai, Yuuka Producer

Reviews

Aug 8, 2020

Agent_Redacted

Recommended

Probably one of, if not the most intense 38 episodes I've ever seen in my life. An anime about this thing called "mahjong" where all the girls blush too many times it's already considered as a soft yuri at this point.

Story : 10/10

Despite the fact that I don't know shit about mahjong ( had to watch a few videos and guides because the anime explanation wasn't enough ). Watching Saki felt like eating mapo tofu for 15 hours straight. It's so hot damnnnnn. I think I'm still burning.

Art : 10/10

Eh its ok. The breasts of a certain someone is too large though. ... Don't really know if i should appreciate that or not.

Sound : 10/10

OPs too good. EDs are even better. Yeah, it's perfect.

Character : 10/10

It's pretty much OP MC. However, all the characters doesn't really feel left out so it makes the mahjong matches more unpredictable. It's still OP MC though. Saki's pretty much Goku.

Enjoyment : 10/10

Really enjoyed this. Too bad season 2 and the side story was left as a cliffhanger. Why? Why? Even the manga's left as a cliffhanger. Uh, regardless its still fun.

Overall : 10/10

Very fun. Very good. 10/10. Recommended to all. This CGDCT is good. Yeah, you're probably hesitating because of this "MAHJONG" thing but trust me. It doesn't matter. Eventually you'll understand and then you'll have fun watching Saki.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Apr 3, 2021

JoeGar96

Mixed Feelings

I really like gambling anime and among those were some really great mahjong anime like Legendary Gambler Tetsuya and Akagi, which I watched and thoroughly enjoyed without knowing the rules to Mahjong. I decided to learn richi mahjong as a result and now that I have become reasonably cocmpetant I wanted a new anime to watch and see if I appreciate it more now that I know the game.

I really didn’t know anything about Saki other than it being a Mahjong anime I knew nothing about it. Its actually not really a gambling anime, whilst mahjong is a gambling game, its not played for money ... just friendly points, and it comes off more as a sports manga with highschool girls trying to get to nationals with their respective clubs.

The plot synopsis isn’t really much more than that, its about a girl named Saki, who doesn’t like mahjong much, she gets pulled into by her friend Kyou into joining the Mahjong club, after discovering she enjoys playing Mahjong to win her and her club aim to compete in the nationals, which unlike regular mahjong is played a team where you take in turns swapping between members after one has played both an east and a south.

Saki isn’t as enjoyable to me as a regular gambling anime what I like is the high stakes thrill the psychological warfare and tension, Saki has this a bit, but it doesn’t have this much. A few characters namely like the president focus on reading people and gauging their weaknesses in order to out play them which I really love, but mainly this anime is about absurd powers, rather than outplaying each other for the most part.

Think Kuroko’s no basket, and how you like have emperors eye, invisibility, copycat, but I would say this anime seems even less grounded than that one. Abilities to see the future, being possessed by Gods, and just straight up drawing the tile you want are all abilities you can see in this anime.
And that’s my problem its fun in how absurd it is and it can be pretty cool, but to me it’s a bit too ridiculous, that and I dislike the main character’s ability.

Saki the main characters, isn't bad per se, but she is quite bland and passivein terms of personality. What's more she comes across as the superman of mahjong despite not playing since she was a kid. She has absurd luck and game sense and the ability to draw any tile she needs when she gets kan. Whenever she is loosing its because of her own mentality, whether she doesn’t want to win, lacks confidence, or is scared by the other characters, its more her own mental blocks which stops her. Her ability is so op when she is in the right frame of mind nobody can really stop her.

The other main character is probably Nodoka who gets sexualised a lot through this anime as the big breasted champion of middle school, she plays a more logical style of mahjong based on probability, which is nice, however she mostly zones out when playing so I don’t get see her thought process as much as I liked.
The coolest club member to me would probably be the club president, she is the cool schemer always watching over her group, and her style of mahjong is about exploiting her opponent’s weaknesses, she was always the most fun to watch whenever it was her turn to play
The rest of the club members are there but I don’t think there is much to say they’re kind of flat to me, I think the worst culprit of this is probably Kyou, he is like the one male character in this show who sucks at Mahjong to the extent they state he isn’t even worth training. Alls he does is run errands and think of sexual fantasies of the other characters, It would be better if they did something with him, as it stands he seem kind of pointless.

Going outside the main club members I have to say there opponents get a decent amount of back story and development, that there were some cool characters who I ended up liking. But equally this show could bore me with the flashbacks within in the match with the characters I wasn’t interested in so its equal sums here.
So what do I think of Saki? I think it is an enjoyably absurd show, which the knowledge of Mahjong doesn’t help too much as the absurd powers makes it feel pretty detached to me. Its fun but it isn’t great, known of the characters are well developed and the games do feel like they’re a competition of crazy powers rather than skill. But despite that there is a tension and enjoyment to the games in this anime, its just nothing compared to the other mahjong I have seen namely Akagi or Tetsuya.

Overall I would give Saki and its sequel a 6.5/10 it could be fun, but was lacking in many ways.

A warning if you do want to watch this that it doesn’t finish its final arc, and if you want to swap to the manga to finish it, it is going painfully slow and looks like it will take years to finish.

If you want a better mahjong anime which is more tense and focused on skill I would recommend Akagi. Or if you want another absurd sports show there is always the aforementioned Kuroko which has its own crazy powers and is about a highschool team going to nationals as well.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jul 9, 2015

pikachu2510

Not Recommended

I started watching this anime because i wanted to watch another mahjong anime as the only one i've watched before was "Touhai Densetsu Akagi: Yami ni Maiorita Tensai". I have to say I'm disappointed in this anime.
This review is solely based on the first season of Saki as i never watched the sequel nor do i plan on watching them.

Plot - 4
I think this is a very average kind of plot and not really unique in any sense, i was hoping that since Saki always gets a score of ±0, it would make the plot more interesting but overall its kind of average. The fact ... that the anime doesn't really explain the basics of mahjong makes me rate this plot lower than average though. People that don't have prior knowledge to mahjong are probably going to have no clue how this game works. In addition, although the anime is about mahjong it seems like they focus more on character relationships than they really do with the mahjong.

Character - 4
I don't actually see a character development inside this anime. It more like there's a strong opponent and they just end up beating them by using the same moves as they previously did.

Art - 6
Usually, i am really picky with art so i tend to rate it hard. The art in this anime wasn't beautifully eye catching to me nor was it ugly.

Enjoyment - 1
I came here to watch a mahjong anime but it seemed more like i was watching a shoujo ai (girl love) anime. This anime has a lot of girl love moments, i have to say there's like at least one "lovey dovey" moment in each episode. The anime also had quite a bit of fanservice, two things that i don't really enjoy watching.

Overall - 3
- Quite a bit of shoujo ai (even though its not tagged) and fanservice. - Doesn't really explain how to play mahjong
- Characters don't really develop

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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