Okay, so I watched every episode of Saki last week just because I keep hearing so much about it. The few words I have to say are: I don’t get it. It’s not the show that I don’t get… It’s why the show is so popular. Now don’t get me wrong… I’m not saying it’s a bad show, and it’s got some great characters, but it doesn’t really stand out like you would expect for a show people are raving about. I described this after a few episodes as being like Angelic Layer with mahjong and boobs… And after watching it I have to say my opinion hasn’t really changed.

I guess I assumed this was going to be some slice of life anime centered around mahjong, but it seems they forgot to include the slice of life part. The show is literally about mahjong and very little else. To me the best parts of the show happened whenever they weren’t playing mahjong, but those parts were few and far between. Maybe it’s just me, but mahjong is a rather boring game and adding quasi super powers doesn’t really up the watchability factor. It’s kind of like watching poker on TV and I still can’t understand why anyone does that either. It confuses me to no end which makes me wonder if this show is popular strictly for the characters rather than the plot because in all honesty if it wasn’t for Tacos and Koromo I probably would have stopped watching after just a few episodes.

Maybe it’s just me… I was really expecting more from the show after all I’ve heard, but spent most of the time waiting for some plot to develop which never came. It simply seemed more and more repetative as it went on. I know I’m making the show sound awful, but I can only say what I saw personally. Based on the reviews on Anime News Network I am pretty certain many disagree with my opinion. I’ll admit that everyone has their own tastes and I like to think that I’m a fan of most anime genres, and while the show itself is pretty decent I just can’t justify the high marks it gets. If I were to rate it then I’d probably say average for the show itself, and above average for the characters.