Dear Internet,
"Saki"
is a Japanese animation based upon the manga of the same name. The story follows the titular character, Saki
Miyanaga, as she enters her highschool mahjong club. Saki is not unfamiliar to the game, for she
played it with her family, she admits.
However, her experiences were less than enjoyable. If she won too much, she was chastised, and
if she lost, she had her sweets withheld.
To combat this, she learned to play without winning or losing, making
her final score plus or minus zero. This
is apparently a very difficult feat that catches the eye of her other club
members. What follows is the journey
into the world of mahjong.
"Saki"
does not feel terribly unique. There are
a few other mahjong centered works out there, not many but there are. I have not had a chance to watch them, but I
definitely feel like I would rather be doing so. If you examine the way the show handles the
game that it centers around, "Saki" falls a bit short. There is little to no explanation at the
beginning episodes. And before I get any
further, let me say this is not solitaire mahjong that most Westerners would
think, which is more like a cross between Old Maid and 52 Pickup. There are a few terms being defined here and
there, but nothing is explained from the ground up. I cannot mark against the show for my own
lack of knowledge of the game of mahjong, but it is hard to follow along when I
do not even know what all the tile sets consist of. I am fifteen episodes in and they may as well
be making up the rules as they go like the first season of "Yu-Gi-Oh"
for all I know. While I was watching
"Saki," "Eyeshield 21" constantly came up in my mind. You can go back and read those reviews if you
wish, but I will try and save you some effort.
Weighing
the two shows against one another exposes a number of things. They both fit one of the most used formats of
Japanese anime/manga, which is to say that they follow a bunch of high school
students who participate in a shared extracurricular activity. Nearly every club, sport, and other group has
been done to the point where it is less a format and more a formula. Take a few tired out character types, throw a
dart at a wall filled with club groups, pull a card from a pile to determine
that weeks plot, and BOOM you have a show.
This is not to say that having a formula is a bad thing, but adding
nothing new to the situation leads to stagnation. It is even worse if the show is not very
entertaining.
Let me
try and weigh a few things between the two shows. "Eyeshield 21" had plenty use of
laser lights. When some player was
racing down the field, clouds of dust would blow behind them having been raised
from a field drenched with hours of rain.
When someone would jump three meters into the air to catch the winning
pass, an image of the great Mountain Everest would appear into everyone's
minds. If someone was able to run a
perfect route, then they would appear as a coal locomotive running at full
steam, plowing into any unfortunate soul in its path. All of this was meant to illustrate
a point. A majority of them were meant
to give physical emphasis to the actions that the individuals were
enacting. The rest were to illustrate
the mental image that other were imagining.
"Saki" does the same thing, or at least it tries to. Numerous times in the show, a character will
pick up or place a mahjong tile and lighting will leave their fingertips. If they lay down a few tiles, they might
spark with electricity for a few seconds after.
One character is apparently able to make all her discarded tiles
completely disappear from the sight of the other players because she is so
invisible herself.
 |
| Perhaps the Japanese should harness that energy as a new type of energy source. |
The
differences between how the two shows handle these overly emphasized actions are
minute but the difference is important.
"Eyeshield" was trying to add more effect to pure physical
actions. The characters were running,
jumping, catching, etc. All of these
were already feats. The additional
graphics are just there to add some extra excitement. "Saki" uses similar effects but only
because the actions that the characters do are not physical. Mahjong is a sitting game. The players only move their arms and never
very quickly. There might be a small
light of hand trick outside of official matches, but those are rare. "Saki" uses the various outlandish
laser light graphics not to add dramatics to actions, but to create it. If there were no lightning bolts shooting out
of people's eyes and fingers, there would be nothing to highlight the
importance of the hands the characters played.
"Eyeshield" had numerous "special moves" that all
had some crazy over the top feel to it, but at least each one was explained as
a certain technique and given real world equivalents. "Saki" just feels like it has to
add the effects to keep its audience interested.
Another
big problem with "Saki" is gender roles, which is only highlighted
when juxtaposed with "Eyeshield 21."
The cast dynamics are completely switched around. "Saki" has a cast nearly completely
composed of teenage girls. At the time
of this writing, there are five guys that have lasted longer than five minutes
as a passing individual. There is the
male mahjong club member, two fathers of the main cast, a butler, and an
announcer. The male club member is nothing more than a
gofer and low skilled player. One father
is a shown to disregard his daughter's feelings about which school she
wants. The other father is Saki's, who
by implication is one of those whose bullying led to her refusing to play
well. The butler is only the only useful
male, but he only exists as a miraculous problem solver. The announcer is constantly shown up in his
examinations by the female mahjong pro. Oh,
wait, there is the photographer who accompanies the reporter, but he has no
real role. The two shows are supposed to
share the same age and gender demographic, except "Saki" is supposed
to have a slightly older group. "Eyeshield
21" is filled with males to the brim.
I think I even counted nearly every female character in one post. The difference here is that in "Eyeshield
21" the female characters were actually important and significant. They managed the teams or provided emotional
support to the players. The dynamics of
the show would be drastically different if they were removed. In "Saki," the only reason guys are
there are to make jokes about breasts, but even those are mostly handed to other
female characters to deliver. Males are
either useless bodies whose roles could be easily completely cut out or are the
source of problems that the show does not want to talk about. Even the most important male character, the
one in the club, has no bearing in the games being played since the games are
gender exclusive. He has had no big
effect on the plot. Even when he runs
out to obtain food for one member of the club in time for the second half of
her match, she still does poorly in the rest of her round. He introduced Saki to the club, but that is
about it. After that first episode, he
is a butt monkey and gofer.
But why
do I mention demographics and "Eyeshield" in all of this? It is because the dynamics of the two seem so
far apart despite its key audience is only different by a few years. It can be argued that the difference is a big
one. For there comes a time at when boys
stop looking at the fairer sex as a foreign concept that warrants self segregation
but is instead as a heavenly body come down from the plane of paradise. Boys begin to like girls. However, each show handles it differently to
such an extent that it highlights the problem with "Saki." "Eyeshield 21" handles the girls
with respect, treating them as individuals with their own problems and
goals. "Saki" treats them as
eye candy meant to gawked at. This is evident
by the gratuitous amount of fan service that is poured out like yesterday's
bathwater. Throughout the show, steam
clouds, blaring gleams of light, and well placed angles abound. I can barely see past all that PLOT. Would "Eyeshield 21" have done such
blatant pandering if it was aimed at an older audience? No, because it aimed for a higher ideal. It was a showcase of ideals that showed what
a male should strive for. It showed that
a man should be determined, hard working, striving for a goal, working together
with his peers, creating bonds of friendship, becoming a better individual for
its own sake, and so on. "Saki"
on the other hand has nothing to preach or impart on its audience. There are no model men, just supermodel women
to look at who are busy looking at each other.
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| Expect to be reminded of this by someone at least twice an episode. |
Tomorrow
will be the final ten episodes, and try to cover the other glaring flaws of the
show. I do not think that it will get
much better in that brief amount of time.
Yours in digital,
BeepBoop
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