Adalisa Zarate
Board games are amazing. They’re a perfect way to make families or friends spend time together –even if sometimes they raise the competitiveness levels to an extreme. They’re also one of the oldest forms of entertainment that mankind has created. Chess, Mahjong, Shogi and Go, for example, are so old that we don’t know their exact origins. Because they’re also great strategy exercises, some of them are considered sports. And thus, there’s a lot of great manga and anime that are about board games and their players.
About Saki
- Episodes: 25
- Aired: Apr, 2009 – Sept, 2009
No one takes Mahjong as seriously as the Miyanaga family. Every New Year, the whole family gets to play together, and those who lose have to give up their New Year money to the winners. This is why Saki Miyanaga, the youngest of the family, hates the game with a passion because there’s no way she can actually win. If she does, her parents would be really upset with her. If she loses, then she is without money. This is why she learned to keep her score as a perfect zero: so she won’t win, but she won’t be the absolute loser either. When the Mahjong club at her school finds out after she’s dragged there by her best friend, she has no choice but join the club where maybe she can learn to enjoy the game a bit more.
Board games are amazing. There are so many of them, that we can go from the really childish and bizarre to various degrees of strategic thinking that can make mathematicians confused with their rules from time to time. The more complex the game, the harder it may seem for newcomers to grasp the rules and the emotion of playing. This is why series like Saki are good, because they serve as small tutorials for the games at the same time that they give us a great story and thus, make us feel the same emotion that longtime fans of the game feel with each play. So let us know if you liked these series and if you know others that are also a great gateway for new players of old traditional board games.
Author: Adalisa Zarate
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