Kamigaki Megumi appeared in episode seven of Saki, for about long enough to utter three or four lines of dialogue whilst being used in a floor-wiping manner by Nodoka. Despite the brevity of her appearance, she has managed to generate a disproportional amount of fanart in Japan – where disproportional is more than none.

Oh, Japan, how I’ll never fully understand your zaniness. This is where I’d normally insert a quick sketch of the character in question, but it wasn’t working out. It would, however, have explained the relevance of me starting the post in this fashion, rather than just the kind of general amusement it inspired in me that would have been better served in a post merely about Saki.

The actual point is this – I’m going to take a break from the comic-ing this week – I need a break from the slog, and could really do with the time to catch up on watching stuff, plus I’m struggling for direction a little right now. To be quite honest, I’m quite surprised that I’ve managed to keep things going for as long as I have without missing more than one comic update.

Anyway, back to Saki. If you’d told me when the series first started that it’d end up being the highlight of my viewing week, I really wouldn’t have believed you. I still find it hard to comprehend how something that hits so many of the points that I generally consider to be wrong with modern anime can somehow be so, so right.

Part of it is probably down to the honesty of it all – they’ve admitted early on that the Mahjong in the show is completely ludicrous in a conversation between Nodoka and her father early one. This week Hisa proclaims that they are going to the pool because she wants to see Nodoka in a bikini. I think she’s speaking volumes about the intentions of the production staff, and half of the audience, with that one.

This weeks episode, however, is actually called “Sisters”, and rather than being about the trip to the pool (which is really just a spot of filler to break up the tournament a little), it’s about Saki’s desire to see her sister. It’s also got the first appearance of Teru in non-flashback form that I can remember and, much to no-one’s surprise, Saki’s opinion of her seems rather rose-tinted – Teru comes across as being really rather unpleasant. Then again, they hinted at that back in the third episode – Saki mentioned that she’d been to visit her sister and mother once since her parents had split, but her sister wouldn’t listen to her. They also hinted at something having happened between Saki and Teru, as Saki thought Teru was still angry about some unspecified event. The fact that the children have been split between the two parents strikes me as odd, and it strikes me doubably so that the mother wouldn’t want to see Saki more often as well. That doesn’t seem normal, not that you should really judge the events of an anime series by that kind of standard. I guess she’s probably the one who used to punish Saki if she played too well or too badly when she was younger, presumably because she was so focused on developing Teru’s skills. Fostering Teru’s “I have no sister” attitude in a move to remove any kind of distraction may well be a deliberate move on the mothers part.

Not that any of this is going to be particularly relevant to the rest of this series right now – I’d be surprised if we see Teru again outside of maybe the last episode of the season.

In other things going on in this episode, I was pretty amused with Hajime’s costume in this episode, in so much as that even in swimwear she’s sporting handcuffs, attached here to the back of her shorts. I’d have thought that, you know, that’d be rather inhibitive, if not downright dangerous, when it actually comes to swimming.

Fencedude over at the AoD/Mania forums also pointed out that, with her usual casual wear being even more revealing/slutty than her swinsuit, Hajime probably wouldn’t actually be admitted entry into a family restaurant – they’d probably think that she was trying to proposition the male customers ^^;

Honestly, I could probably have done without Koromo constantly threatening to fall out of her dress for much of this episode as well…

Also, Touka owns the sports facility everyone goes to the pool at. It seems to be quite an anime trope for the rich members of the shows cast to own some kind of health spar – one of the Negima OAVs saw the class visit such an establishment owned by Ayaka, whilst one of the cast of Ouran owned one as well. I’m sure there’s far, far more such examples, but I’m struggling to remember any more off the top of my head (this is a not-so-subtle hint for you to post a comment should you remember any yourselves).