咲- / Saki- (season 1)

I haven’t the faintest idea how to play Mahjong. You sit around a table, taking it in turns to draw tiles and trying to make hands that you have to memorize. You set these up by putting tiles on one side of the table, and there are advantages and disadvantages to being the dealer. Throwing in sticks ups the stakes. And there are also some dice in the middle, but I have no idea what for. Even after watching Saki, I would still call myself almost entirely unaware of how Mahjong works.

But I am aware of how sports anime work – encompassing competitive board games – and after all I knew nothing about go when I started Hikaru no Go, and that became my favourite manga of all time. Knowing that I would probably enjoy the way the anime worked, I got hold of Saki, though soon forgot that I had it, so that when I started to watch I had entirely forgotten that it was a mahjong anime – for all I remembered, it was going to be about H.H. Munro.

But no. Based on a Young Gangan manga, it is a typical but nonetheless highly enjoyable sports anime. It follows a tried-and-tested formula: a rather ordinary young person reveals an uncanny talent for a competitive game in front of an established top youth player. The youth player becomes a bit obsessive – with a hint of romantic attraction – and manages to coax the peculiarly talented one into playing competitively. Though there is a hint of rivalry, the series settles into a series of matches in a competition format, with the sympathetic team encountering opponents with unusual approaches to the game, and after reaching some inner revelation, overcoming the challenge. Meanwhile, the simple actions of the game become highly dramatised, so that the power of moves may be represented by strikes of lightning, visions of mighty creatures or sudden changes in air pressure. This is almost exactly the formula Hikaru no Go had.

But for all the similarity in outline, Saki is very different in feel from HikaGo. With its predominantly female cast, cutesy art style and readiness to have really bizarre character types – including a girl so hard to notice that even her tiles begin to disappear, and a tiny loli who is effectively kept chained up for her immense mahjong prowess – it is rather more like Bamboo Blade. There’s also a propensity to put all the characters into romantic pairs – all but the goofy main guy and the childish teammate being lesbian pairings – that owes something to Maria-sama Ga Miteru, though with about a fiftieth of the subtlety and gentleness. This is a series happy to send its almost all-female cast off to bathhouses and hot springs so that they all get naked together, and does not hesitate to use the old trip-over-and-fall-on-top-of-the-one-you-like conceit.

But that Saki doesn’t mind being a bit lowbrow about its presentation is part of why it’s so much fun. It’s bold and obvious and very obviously geared towards otaku tastes – but that’s why it has an infectious exuberance. It’s just enjoyable to watch, enjoyable to rush through and enjoyable to laugh along with. It’s not trying to change the world or to offer something new and daring, but wants its audience to enjoy – and I certainly did.

It’s no Hikaru no Go – it doesn’t have the sincerity that allows for much more heightened emotion, but then again anyone who might find HikaGo tedious would be better-served here. I think mahjong is fundamentally less-suited to this sort of presentation anyway, being much more luck-based, whereas go has no random factor. Mahjong is evidently about trending towards winning rather than winning every time, but that’s not what this anime shows, and even with my lack of knowledge I know that a lot of the amazing winning hands shown are amazing because they involve ridiculous luck, not just in arranging your hand but in picking a random tile to complete it.

Since I know nothing about mahjong, though, it doesn’t really matter to me how realistic the presentation is. What I enjoy is the absurdity, and the sense of triumph when a character wins. The anime is also very, very good at making the audience root for every character it gives a background to, when of course only one player can win.

This was only the first of three seasons. There is very little sense of closure here – it’s made clear the national tournament is the real goal of these characters, and this entire 25-episode series, after the exposition, is about the qualifying tournament to get to the nationals rather than the tournament itself. It also seems that when Studio Gokumi split off from Gonzo, they took Saki with them, so after this there comes a change in studio – if not staff. I may not swallow it up quite so ravenously, but I will certainly be watching the rest of Saki 

すもももももも〜地上最強のヨメ〜/ Sumomo-mo Momomo ~The World’s Strongest Bride~

Anime like Sumomo-mo Momomo, adapted from a Shounen Gangan gag manga, have a definite place in the landscape of modern anime. They lack originality, are cheaply and poorly realised, their humour is largely recycled and they will never stimulate or uplift anyone, but they are cute, silly, brainless entertainment with very cute girls drawn to look markedly younger than they are implied to be. The fanservice is unlikely to really turn anyone on more than things like beach postcards or a Carry On film, so even if there are a few times that Sumomo-mo Momomo is little more than softcore pornography, it’s mostly silly, cheeky fluff that passes by pleasantly.

Its lack of substance is also why I wasn’t particularly bothered about actually finishing the series until now, a good three years after I first saw it. Inuzaka Koushi is a studious young man who works hard to become a lawyer and battle injustice with his mind. Unfortunately, he is the successor of a powerful house of martial artists, one of six eastern families engaged in a war with the six from the west. One day, a young girl from the western families comes to tell him she is to be his bride, ensuring peace between all the families. However, there are some amongst the twelve families who do not wish for this union to take place, but no assassin is a match for the fighting prowess of little pink-haired loli Momoko.

This flimsy set-up gives way to lots of fanservice. It’s a classic comedy set-up to have a girl that lots of anime otaku will fall for endlessly trying to give herself to a boy, only for him to show no interest. See Rizelmine et al. Added to the mix are another cute blonde loli, some meathead guys who are never lucky in love and one girl whose fighting style hinges on the embarrassment of losing more and more of her clothes. It’s dumb, lowbrow and very very silly, but that’s really the appeal of it. Disengage brain, smile guiltily at the cuteness of the lolis, and enjoy.

(originally written 23.11.09)

バンブーブレード / Bamboo Blade

Sports anime tend to fall into three categories: slapstick manly comedy (Slam Dunk), moody and usually cheesy drama with homoerotic appeal for the girls (Prince of Tennis) or slice-of-life whimsy with lots of moé sweetness for male otaku. Bamboo Blade is in the latter category, and it does the concept the best I’ve ever seen it done.

Revolving around a kendo club and its quirky female members, it is reminiscent of other feelgood, small-scale stories about groups of girls like Azumanga Daioh and Manabi Straight. There are prominent male characters too, budding romances, powerful rivalries and a neat balance of very successful comedy with warm moments of friendship. Tama-chan, the central figure, is as moé as they get, spacey and innocent and childlike, but with a prodigious talent for kendo. It catered both for people with no knowledge of the game and those who have trained in it without alienating either, while good production values complimented the great acting, facilitating a very pleasant aesthetic and nice smooth animation. The characters are all loveable and the humour is some of the best I’ve seen in recent years.

The only thing I can fault about Bamboo Blade is the cheesy way it ended, with very artificial ideas of strong feelings allowing people to catch up on years of training, which simply isn’t the case in any sport, but then again, is rather a staple of anime. For all people moaned about the ending of Hikaru no Go, though, one has to respect that it was realistic and mature when it came to wins and losses. Bamboo Blade is, on the other hand, intentionally lighter and cuter.

If you want something heavy and sophisticated, or if you find moé frivolous and unnecessary, this may not be for you. But anyone who wants something nice and light and genuinely funny, I’d recommend Bamboo Blade highly.

(originally written 2.3.09)