Saki: The Nationals First Impressions--Put a Shirt On

In the first season, I wasn't sure if the main character was wearing underwear. In Side-A, one of the major characters didn't wear pants. And now we have a character who doesn't feel like wearing a shirt. I fear what will happen in future seasons...


In all honesty though, it's good to have a new Saki season. Side-A was...awkward, so I've been looking forward to the series getting back to the main storyline and finally moving forward with the tournament. However, this episode had other ideas.

 
I was expecting at least a bit of a recap, but the entire episode is a strange retcon and character introduction hybrid, covering pretty much every important character as well as giving a bit of screentime to some new ones. The main purpose of this seems to be to reconcile some of the events of Side-A into the main Saki story, which is welcome, but if you're a complete newcomer to the franchise, don't expect this episode to catch you up. It definitely assumes that the viewer has seen Saki and Side-A, and only briefly touches on the big details of the plot--which makes me wonder why it felt the need to recap and retcon in the first place. It also jumps around a bit in the timeline, going back to before the tournament started and then right back to where the last season left off. Aside from that, the premiere focused on going through the carousel of girls with a fair amount of fanservice.

Although I do have to give credit where it's due for the floating towel censor.

Saki has always had fanservice, but a whole episode of just the large group of characters, a drive-by run through of their quirks, and the occasional lack of clothes felt hollow at best. I'm only here for the crazy mahjong battles, so I don't really care about the show's need to sexualize the entire cast... Honestly, all of this at once nearly put me off the season entirely. I want to see the tournament, not naked underage girls!


But that said, since the show is currently set to air for only one cour (barring the possibility of extra episodes or a split cour), it's also possible that the production front-loaded all the fanservice so that there's nothing but tournament matches from here on out. However, my high expectations going into this have been tempered. The familiar background music gave me a bit of a thrill, and the art style borrowed from Side-A works well with the show. But without crazy mahjong, it still doesn't feel like Saki is back. Not yet, anyway.

LOL

Images from Crunchyroll.com. This post is also available at OASG.