Anime Review: Saki

Review SakiWritten by WarpshadowRating good

Saki is a nice show that I liked even if I found the protagonists to be a bit flat. The nice thing about sports shows is that you can easily make up for that with interesting antagonists.

Saki Miyanaga is a girl with a strange skill, that she can get a score of zero (neither gaining nor losing points) just about all the time when she plays Mahjong. One day she is invited against her will to the Mahjong club to help round out the school team. In play it is found that Saki in fact has amazing skill at Mahjong and the fact that she gets a score of zero is a result of her timidity. Can team prodigy Nodoka pull Saki out of her shell and allow her to reach her full Mahjong potential?

Saki is a sports anime after a fashion (to the degree that you could call Mahjong a sport). It comes with many of the sports anime clichés including the training trip and the extended tournament arc. I found the main characters to be a bit flat but this is made up for by the existence of a colorful and interesting array of secondary characters, particularly those in other schools that attend the tournament. This is a show that courts the crowd that likes cute girls and fan service (just take one look at Nodoka) but overall this is a decent show, but nothing really more than that.