Saki S2 – The Scariest Of Nopan Mahjong

Themes of war begin to ring within the tournament of nopan mahjong, Saki’s “episode of side A” – while Senriyama was certainly a tough contender, Achiga has yet to encounter a certain unstoppable bishoujo.

Battle scores pulsate upon the start of this episode – apparently, everything up till now was hardly the real challenge faced. The players assemble for their game, and Kuro is playing for Achiga once more – as she says herself, while Senriyama’s ace was quite frightening, and is a contender she’s facing off against yet again, there now sits across her someone even scarier than Senriyama, a bishoujo who the announcer for the games will go on to annoyingly yell out in a near-constant burst, “Miyanaga Teru!!”.

Accompanying the sound of war, this episode delivers the highest quantity of supernatural dramatics to be seen thus far – and the end-result is a song of terror playing to sight of purely ridiculous, yet lovable, dissents into alternative realms. The cute bishoujo Kuro-chan quickly comes to realize the caliber of player she’s against – and while she doesn’t give up, she’s left shaky for the remainder of the game, as if surrounded by snipers awaiting one single mistake in her play.

In fact, that’s actually not too far off a comparison as Kuro-chan is indeed terrified of the thought that a move on her part could lead to a repeat of her tragic defeat last time.

Yet she does enough to sustain her sanity at least – and the episode shifts most of its attention to Senriyama’s girl who evidently is not exempt from the concern of being against a monstrous mahjong player, the reigning inter-high champion, Miyanaga Teru. Senriyama’s bishoujo carefully calculates her moves – yet she’s simply met with a loss to Miyanaga Teru, as is everyone else at the table. The Senriyama ace doesn’t take long to figure that her mode of play has been compromised to the feared Miyanaga Teru – yet even worse for her, nothing she does has an effect.

A flashback shows us a day from the life of the Senriyama ace, she wasn’t the most skilled at the game of mahjong – although upon being discharged from the hospital, it appears her friends were quick to reel her in, a point at which she shares her ability of being able to “see one turn ahead”. Unfortunately for her however, this superpower is ineffective against the demonic Miyanaga Teru who can seemingly see everything, all the time.

Interestingly, a less important side-character does manage to dent a six-win streak of Miyanaga Teru through a petty hand – this character also seems excessively joyful, an aspect which looks to revitalize Senriyama, who then advances her efforts to make a breakthrough and succeed. Even with that being the case however, our main characters are Achiga’s girls, not Senriyama – thus, the ultimate point of ponder is how will this eventually lead to Achiga to at least manage to sustain a score enough to not get dropped from the tournament bracket.

Episode of side A has finally slowed down, and this is essentially a “make or break” point – it’s of course immensely doubtful that our protagonist unit of Achiga will fail, and thus, we must wait to see how they will operate around this grand chasm in their road to success. It’s perhaps too late for Kuro-chan yet again, particularly as she seems entirely clueless to her current scenario – therefore it will more than likely all come down to the leading loli, Shizuno, at some point, and there’s little else to be done but idle till that time.

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  “Saki” Nopan Mahjong Officially Continues
• 
  Saki S2 – Another Victory For Nopan
• 
  Saki S2 – “There’s Only Room For One Nopan”
• 
  A Third Season Of “Saki” Nopan Mahjong?