Anime Discussion Thread - Page 4764

I do question what Ais is thinking about Bell though. I mean, that other adventurer with her was going mad after he got drunk and wanted her to chose between him and Bell. Why? Did she mention something about him to indicate that she likes him without us seeing it? I do like how serious Bell was after hearing them talk about him and how Hestia acts around him lol.

Reforming the club was fine. Regional qualifiers were basically skipped, but since it's all noob stomping, it doesn't really matter.

The quarterfinals I actually thought were pretty good. Toki rapes Kuro. Yuu has an ok run. Arata and Ako do nothing interesting. Shizu does some never give up thing that was actually fairly well executed.

Next we get a training arc as a kind of break. And then semifinals start, which is where things start going awry.

The vanguard round is dominated by Teru. This makes sense, as she's been established as a powerhouse in the main series. Her position as a monster is basically confirmed by this point. What's strange is that the Toki becomes the focal point of the round. Kuro is completely ignored. And then, at the end of the round Toki gifts a win to Kuro. Congratulations Kuro, you're as likeable as Bundou.

The sergeant match is a travesty. Here, we see Yuu trash Sumire because the coach says Sumire has a tell. Let me go on a tangent here. Saki is basically a sports manga, and the whole point of a sports manga is to showcase how far much the main characters have developed since the start of the series, and their struggles along the way. Having the coach announce that Sumire has a tell bypasses all of that, and in general, is just pretty fucking weak. I honestly don't know why this got written in. Sumire also mentions at the end of Achiga-hen that she'd fix the tell, so chances are good that it won't even show up in the main series. This part begins and ends within 50 pages, far less than any other round.

Again, Arata and Ako have fairly pedestrian rounds. Both were decent, but neither was particularly memorable.

And then we get to the captain's round. Here, we finally see Awai, who has been hyped up for ages in the main series (being a monster alongside Teru), play for the first time. She wins a bunch, and then Shizu pulls out her King of the Mountain stuff. Her power is basically to nullify other powers, which is fine, if a bit on the boring side. The real problem with this round lies in the fact that they don't even detail how the hands are played! All they did was show random one tile discards and the resulting ron. Yes, all the strategy and thought is superficial, but if I didn't care about the details, I might as well flip to the end of the chapter and read the end result. Besides, a large part of why I read Saki in the first place is to see the silly implications of how superpowers affect normal play. It's novel stuff to think about. The Vanguard, Lieutenant, and Vice-Captain matches all showcased this kind of play, so why did things change for the penultimate round? Shizu's original trait of perseverance also never showed up because of the mountain shit. All in all, it was just a baffling way to write the climax.

In terms of character development, Achiga wasn't really fleshed out too well either. Kuro is developed as a punching bag. Yuu is mostly ignored. Ako is as notable as Mako. Arata actually got some decent characterization. And finally, all we really know about Shizu is that she likes to play and lusts after Nodoka. Senriyama arguably got more development than they did (especially Toki, and to a lesser extent, Ryuuka).