lily flower on the mountain

I like seeing crowning moments of awesome in any sort of series, but it seems particularly awesome when it's in a specialty manga. I call things like sports, or cooking manga specialty manga because it focuses on one thing and shows you all the awesomeness that could come from something as intense as basketball to something as unexpected as baking.
The specialty series I'm watching right now is Saki, and it's specialty is mahjong. And just like most specialty mangas, it's mostly illogical but mostly pretty cool. Like Mako, who learned to play by watching all those people in the mahjong parlor her family runs. For once I have a real life comparison to tell you why that's not always true! I've watched my mom play mahjong ever since I was 3 and all those all nighters I spent beside a mahjong table never taught me anything about the game. You'd think I'd be a pro by now, especially since my mom and the people she plays with are no pushovers themselves, but sadly real life usually doesn't follow the rule of cool. There's so many styles of mahjong though, and I don't even make an attempt to learn the Japanese style, although its interesting hearing some of the Chinese hands like Rin Shan Kai Hua, or Hai Di Lao Yue.
There are plenty badass normals here, like Hisa, or even Nodoka who's style is pretty logical - putting the whole fever mode aside. But more often than not, people find themselves in a table of monsters, making you think just why are these people using their skills to play mahjong of all things?! You have girls with demonic luck, Medusa gaze, ability to channel gods, cause blackouts, whose skills are affected by the freaking full moon, can disappear entirely and whose mahjong playing can shatter glass. I love that moment when Saki walks by the Ryuumonbuchi club and they all somehow sense her superhuman aura of MAHJONG SKILLS? Or when she walks by the Achiga club and first the 'pros' sense it because they're experienced enough to feel the MAHJONG POWER coming from her, and they have her pictured as this one eyed devil of MAHJONG?
But I love Saki's badassery when it comes to the mahjong table, especially when she gets the glowy demon eye, and makes insane hands and everyone calls her a monster. I usually wish she'd just beat everyone and go home.
Despite all those CMoAs, I still wouldn't call Saki a great series. One because of the totally illogical setup of having demon gods play the game in the form of little girls. Two because said little
girls never seem to wear underwear. Three because that shows off how ridiculously well proportioned middle schoolers are. And four because all of them spend their days off doing yuri-rific things and having moe shipping things with each other. There's only like three male characters in this show and other than Kyoutarou, there's Saki's dad and the commentator dude.