Key Events:

Shown some background story on the Senriyama team.

Toki from Senriyama can see one turn into the future and easily reads Kuro’s play style to dominate the first match.

We find out Kuro can’t discard a dora, if she does, she won’t draw anymore.

Senriyama sends Nijou Izumi for the second match and Yuu steps up for Achiga.

Thoughts

After giving Senriyama school some background story, you know that they’re going to be this good. It would’ve really annoyed me if they put this much effort into the characters but only for them to be knocked out so easily. However luckily that wasn’t the case and for the first time we finally saw some proper Mahjong played.

It’s rather unfortunate that Kuro had to face against Toki, although to be honest, anyone who knows her usual dora win style will be able to defeat her. The strategy is too obvious, she will not discard 5 of a certain suit, because dora is 5, so you can tell by the surrounding tiles she discards whether she’s gone for 3, 4, 5 or 4, 5, 6 or 5, 6, 7 and then build your win on a tile she’ll likely discard. It’s not as easy to do as I make it out to be, but if you get the hang of it, and these are good Mahjong players which means they will, then it’s an easy win. Coupled with Toki’s ability to see the next tile then it’s no wonder she won.

I do like that they’ve introduced everyone’s unique play style again, like how Koromo was last tile win, Saki was rinshan kaihou, Kuro is dora and Toki is next tile prediction. Now I’m eagerly waiting to see what Yuu’s play style as I’ve just realised we don’t really know much about how Achiga team members plays apart from Kuro, the dora player.

Of course the best part of this episode for me was that there was finally some overdramatic lightning Mahjong. I was more hoping they’d throw down the riichi stick in an overdramtic way like, I think, I remember Nodoka used to, but slamming it down with one finger is fine too.

Definitely getting better, and it looks like it’s quite likely the anime will drag the national tournament out long enough to fit into the series if it’s an episode per person, and then some relaxing episodes in between matches perhaps.