This is a side story to the original Saki, where are lesbian high school Mahjong hijinks continue but with a different cast of main characters.
The shows biggest problem is that the new cast of characters is weak. Everyone in the world of Saki has both some incredible quirk for playing Mahjong or some incredible personality deficit. For example, we have people who can see into the future, people who wear rabbit ears, and people who speak with ridiculous accents.
The original Saki’s main cast was the same. We have Nodoka with her crazy math skills and deformed body, Saki with her crazy powers, and taco girl. Not boring. Not at all.
But Achiga-hens characters bring nothing interesting to the table. They are all lifeless. The craziest personality trait that any of the girls has is being constantly cold. Whoo-hoo. In terms of crazy Mahjong superpowers, two of them are more likely to get specific types of tiles. How exciting.
The best part of the show is when the original cast makes cameo appearances. Not exactly a great selling point.
- Storytelling – D – Not much happens, we don’t even finish the tournament.
- Voice – B – Saki’s usual crazy antics, although this doesn’t apply to the main characters.
- Characters – D – Terrible main characters, but the rest of the cast is mostly interesting.
- Attention Grab – B – It’s lesbian Mahjong.
- Production – C – Not the best animation, but who really cares?
- Overall – D-
Recommendations – Saki, YuruYuri, Bamboo Blade
BAMBOO BLADE = BEST SHIT ANIME HAS EVER PRODUCED.
I think this spin-off would have been ten times better if it was renamed Saki Senriyama-hen which clearly has the better characters. I mean it speaks volumes towards the last match that out of Teru, Toki, SUBARA!, and Kuro, the former three are clearly 1000 times more interesting.
Also, season 2 probably won’t be for a while (At the moment, the original crew is at the semifinals, just like Achiga).
Bamboo Blade was pretty awesome.
It was weird that the main characters of this season were so lame. Everyone was more interesting than them…
I haven’t watched the first Saki and dropped this show after a few episodes even though it’s yuri of some sorts. Why? One of the reasons is the same as yours – the characters are lifeless. There were some many of them, they looked all the same to me and none of them involved me. Best character for me was Stealth Momo but I think she’s from season 1. Oh, and you forgot to mention the quirkiest quirk – the girl where everyone kept guessing if she was wearing anything under her tracksuit top!
Apart from that it was also the boring visuals as everything was uniformly pastel colored and it didn’t help that I don’t know anything about mahjong. But one day I’ll watch the first season and maybe then I start liking this series more!
The first season is actually pretty decent, you might like it. It does have a lot of yuri elements, and you don’t really need to know anything about Mahjong. I didn’t. The characters are much more interesting in the first season.
Your D rating hasn’t been held in high regard by the voters on 2channel, and rightfully so. Just sayin’.
People on 2channel read my blog and keep track of when I give out D ratings? Seriously?
They look at it and salute your rating…with both middle fingers extended. Listen, if you’re gonna go ahead and bash a series, go into detail and explain why you don’t like it; otherwise, it’s just another useless blog post that says a lot about you more than the show.
@draggle are you going to review the special episode of achiga hen which was released subbed few days ago?
No. I am too far behind on everything else as it is…
I don’t know if it deserve a D score, thought I don’t know about your ranking, but personally I’ll give it a C, a 6/10, an average for this show is that, average…
Though probably the problem is the original Saki has 25 episodes, allow for a lot of detail that missing in manga to be inserted and gives us, viewer, an in depth of each competitor, make a unique feeling when you wish other player to win…
Though with the current 2 episodes bonus out of 4 in total, the ‘vibe’ return a bit but still not enough (especially when the true season 2 has been announce thus this series litteraly become a one big filler arc)…
For me the length of the series wasn’t the problem, I just couldn’t bring myself to care about the new lead characters. I was rooting for their opponents over them. I was watching the new bonus episode the other day, and some girl I didn’t think I’d ever seen before showed up. She was one of the main characters.