Soulsavior42 review:

Saki (咲)
Animation: 8/10
Story: 8/10
Music: 10/10
Action: 10/10
Overall: 9/10
Length: 25 Episodes
Themes: Mahjong, Tournament, Yuri
Highlights:
Awesome Factor – Being able to see the “Tile-Slam” 2 times in one series by the president almost got me off.
Battle Factor  – So imagine Dragonball Z, an all girl cast, no powering up, they don’t sound like they are constipated….and its Mahjong
Insanity Factor – This is only series you’ll ever watch that will get you excited about something as boring and complicated as Mahjong.
Yuri Factor – VERY BLATENT, Its your choice if you like it or not.
Brief Summary
Miyanaga Saki is a first year high school girl whose family would get angry if she won the family mahjong games. But losing would also have its consequences. Because of this she develops a new way of playing that allows her to stay on the thin line between winning and losing, the +/- zero score, an almost impossible score. In a game that relies mainly on luck, the +/- zero score is harder than winning, but Saki can achieve this every time. Having always hated the game, her friend from middle school, Suga Kyotoro, forces her to play in the schools mahjong club. Her developed skill and superhuman luck has made her a worthy mahjong opponent, even to the middle schools national mahjong champion. (AnimeNewsNetwork)
When I first read this summary and looked at some pictures on ANN last year right before Spring Anime season, I laughed, quite hard actually. I mean who honestly would make a series about Mahjong, especially with big series like Full Metal Alchemist, Dragon Ball Kai, Canaan, and a few others to compete with. Well apparently Pony Canyon does. Picking this series  as a complete joke at the beginning of Spring season as “filler” between watching some of the bigger more anticipated series I wasn’t expecting much at all, I mean it’s just loli’s playing Mahjong right? Well I was wrong, very wrong.
After the first episode of Saki I was hooked, no doubt. Not because of the loli’s, or the very blatant laced yuri scenes between Nodoka and Saki, but because of the Mahjong, which mind you I had no knowledge of Japanese style Mahjong before watching episode 1.  Luckily MakiMaki subbers were kind enough to add in basic rules of Mahjong throughout the episode to keep us un-educated viewers in the know.  Now the next few episodes follow the basic structure of promises, crazy “how did Saki pull that off moments” during friendly games between her club members, and mild fan service till around episode 6 where the club has finally gotten to the prefectural qualifiers for the Japan National Mahjong Tournament.  This is where the series kicks it into high gear and leaves you behind in the dust trying to catch up introducing a slew of new characters from each competing school, the main players being Ryuumonbuchi, Kiyosumi, Tsuguru, and Kazekoshi with their respective players. This is about as far as I go story wise since it would ruin the matches and the final outcome of the tournament. On to the technical’s.
Animation
After picking up Saki you’ll notice that the producing company spared no expense in above average animation quality and sleek CG Mahjong tables, tiles and other random “battle” effects. The largest problem throughout the series was the reuse of certain animations towards the end of the series, the biggest being most of just placing tiles on the table and maybe a few facial expressions. Though this may be a fault for most people and a chance to deduct points from the score which I did, but I mean there are only so many angles that you can animate of 4 people playing Mahjong, you’re eventually going to have to reuse something and for the most part Saki did a good job at keeping very recognizable scenes out of the recycle bin.
Story
This is the make or break point for Saki as with most series since without a story I mean, what do you have? well nothing.  Sadly the actual overall story is pretty thin and not really explained that well except that the audience knows that Saki and Nodoka have a promise to go to nationals together which we are reminded of way to many times during the series, followed by the typical embarrassing yuri-esque moment.  Aside from some small hints of Saki having a sister who has disowned herself from the family and Saki’s anterior motive for going to nationals is to make up with her sister by beating her in Mahjong, that’s all you get for a main plot. For everything in-between you get small back stories on the rest of the “main” members of each team in the finals of the tournament. Towards the end of the series I came to find myself rooting for the other schools over Saki and Nodoka, thus being somewhat disappointed when I remembered the series was actually about Saki and not about Momoko the stealth Mahjong player.
The largest problem I found in Saki was the blatant yuri pairings from each competing school, and how much they emphasized it especially in the final few episodes of the series. Now nothing ever “happens” between said pairings, nor is it ever officially confirmed during throughout the series since it could be played off as they are just really good friends, and good friends meaning they want to hop on each other the second they get alone. This aspect of Saki can get very tiring and boring, most of the time I found myself screaming in my head, GIVE ME MORE MAHJONG!!!
Music
Well Aside from the fact that Saki had some of the best OP/ED’s along with a very well put together OST throughout the series, full of energy and awesome themes. Maybe I wish they had the OST cd for sale earlier than Oct 12? Yeah it was that good.
Action
Tile Slam should be all I have to say for those who have seen the series. For those who haven’t well here’s the run down of what you can expect. Awesomeness, topped with a side of Awesome. All sillyness aside, the best way I can begin to explain the action is ask you a question. Have you ever been playing a game, doesn’t matter what type and whenever you laid down that winning card and imagined lighting hitting the table and awing everyone your playing against? Well that’s what happens in almost every match throughout Saki, each player has their own “moves” even though the game stays like it should all the action takes place purely for viewer entertainment and in the players imagination I should say. So when a big wave of wind shoots across the table or water rises from the ground it’s just that imaginary feeling of pressure, or being overwhelmed since a player is doing good in the match.  I love this type of action as it doesn’t lead to long drawn explanations and useless banter and well I think along those lines when I used to play games that are similar like CCG games and what not.
Overall
This series is great, hands down one of the best series of the year and definitely on my top 10 of personal favorites.  Keep in mind that if you have no interest in Mahjong, Loli’s, Yuri, or over the top action scenes then this isn’t the series for you, if you enjoy any one of those pick it up and give it a shot, you won’t be disappointed.

Full series download(torrent batch – English subtitles):
[Underwater-Mahjong] Saki – 01-25 [TV]

Saki – Wikipedia

Thanks to Soul for the review!