You know I have my gripes with Shiraitodai as a team. Their team creation method that insists on gathering players of a single type is downright ridiculous, making it completely possible that half of the school’s top 10 players end up warming the bench while amateurs (coughSeikocough) that got lucky to team up with Teru somehow go on to represent the school. The result is obviously an incredibly unbalanced team almost entirely reliant on Teru, and even lacking the flexibility to at least try and protect the huge leads Teru gains.
But honestly, Awai takes the cake.
Shiraitodai in last place. Needs a baiman from Achiga or Shindouji (8 han, 16,000 pts), or a haneman from Senriyama or own draw (6 han, 12,000 pts) to advance to the finals.
Make no mistake, this is bad.
Luckily enough, Awai manages to turn her hand into a haneman-capable shape. It is still a difficult situation, as she basically has no choice but to go out on a self-drawn six of bamboo if she wants to move on to the finals (or call riichi and add the possibility of going out on Ryuuka’s discards). Still, Awai is determined to see things through to the end.
Only, all her self-restraint and reason seem to be blown away the moment she draws the tile necessary for her kan. She ignores what she sees as a opportunity for a 24,000 point victory from Shindouji just because “it wouldn’t get her first place”. There’s no benefit to getting first place here, except for bragging rights, so I cannot see it as anything but Awai putting her personal pride before the good of the team.
The result we all know: Awai just barely manages second place anyway. The real kicker is, had she followed her erroneous assumption that she will get four kan dora and did the reasonable thing (winning from Shindouji), Awai would have won a 7 han baiman hand… and lost to Senriyama, making Shiraitodai drop out of the finals!
This really makes me question what Ritz wanted to convey here. Awai wins only because she was selfish AND cocky? That’s a broken Aesop if I have ever seen one. 
Either way, I cannot see Shiraitodai as a serious team anymore, and I am looking forward to seeing them get their assess kicked in the finals. I am sure Ritz will make them look stronger in the main story than here, but Shiraitodai will always be the least team-like team out there, and it is a shame teams like Senriyama and Shindouji had to make place for those “returning champions”.
Yaranakya 
Let me explain how heel factions, like Shiraitodai, work. There is a reason why in wrestling terms, I compare them to The Ministry of Darkness. The whole point of the MoD faction was to get one person over, the Undertaker, in Saki’s case, Teru.
If that does not make sense, let me reiterate using another explanation, Shiraitodai are overconfident champions who somewhat underestimated their
competition, except for Teru who is secretly a sadist, or she just goes all out no matter how weak her victims are. The purpose behind Shiraitodai’s team, stroyline-wise, is to be a typical “evil” champion team who the viewer wants to see get crushed in the end by their favorite hero team, which will either be The Dream Team (Achiga) or Team Angle (Ryuumonbuchi). In a way, it was the same thing with The Koromo’s Million Dollar Team. They were the overconfident champs whose egos led to (except one) their downfall.
Scarecrow Awai is just your typical sadistic apprentice with great potential and a massive ego. She is overconfident, wants to torture her opponents, HAS to be on top no matter what and is a sore loser. All I needed was one scene in Shiraitodai’s locker room with her having a speaking role to realize what kind of wrestler she was.
Like you said, after being “humiliated”, you can expect Shiraitodai to step up their game next time. It’s basic storytelling.
Ah, had humiliation taught Awai a lesson, and thus made her stronger, that would be good storytelling. But it does not seem that she realizes that her overconfidence nearly cost them the finals, which is just painful to watch.
And yes, we all thought Shiraitodai would be the classic antagonist team – difficult to empathize with and just a hurdle to be overcome by the heroes… but there’s one problem. The classic antagonist team must be STRONG. Give Maho’s team in Garupan a force consisting of Type89s only, and nobody would take the final seriously. Shiraitodai barely, just barely, got into the finals, owing to a double mistake of one of its players miraculously resulting in a win. That’s after Teru got them nearly 100k of advantage. Their threat level is ridiculously low.
Look no further than Ryuumonbuchi for antagonists done well. Competent throughout the match, overwhelming at the very end. Overconfident, but slowly revealing the relationships that made the team tick.
I do wonder how Shiraitodai will be presented in the main wing of the story, though, as the portrayal might be quite different from what we got here. Shiraitodai got no flashbacks whatsoever in Achiga, for example, and mid-match flashbacks are often crucial to character building in Saki. Ritz might have held back in fear of spoiling things that belong in the main series.
Painful? I want to see the Scarecrow go all-out next time and lose her damn mind, so much so that she would get an urge to kill Shizu.
Ah, so you see Shiraitodai as the Aces and 8’s. Basically a faction that starts off as a joke faction that barely wins matches and are not taken seriously, yet suddenly get pushed as monster heels when the plot calls for it.
If I remember correctly, the only member who had some trouble in the Million Dollar Team was Tomoki. Everyone else gave Team Angle (Saki’s Team), Mihoko’s Love Nest and Neo Evolution (Yumi’s Team) a run for their money.
Awai tried going all out against Shizu here, and got utterly owned towards the end. Doing her best in the true sense would actually require Awai to stop trying so hard – take a deep breath, acknowledge that there are people out there able to surpass her ability under certain circumstances, and reconsider how to adapt to this. I know this is beyond her maturity level, but that’s just another strike against whoever is behind composing the Shiraitodai teams. Koromo at least had the excuse that the whole team was made for her in the first place, so her screwing up for selfish reasons wouldn’t get anyone irked that much..
That begs the question, who is Shiraitodai’s coach or manager?
I think we know relatively few managers because characters like Awai would clash with them and the club president characters would lose some of their appeal. Managers generally appear with teams without extreme individualistic tendencies in them.
An acceptable loop hole, I suppose.
I agree with you on this one completely.
Awai’s hype and image just got totally shattered and obliterated to oblivion. Although, Awai does have the capability of a monster player. 5-6 shanten for all of your opponents and a starting hand that is always tenpai is one hell of an advantage. Hell, she can spam these abilities as much as she like, even.
Still, all the advantage in the world can’t make you win if you at least don’t play semi-intelligently. And Awai’s plays on this match could only be described as those of a cocky moron. Seriously, who the hell calls a riichi when facing a sure dealer yakuman?
Sigh…
And worse of all, there are contextual evidence that Awai’s skill is really that low. Seiko managed to beat her by arranging the walls into a circle rendering Awai’s kan in a corner and ron someone useless. It maybe a dirty trick to some and will certainly not be allowed in the tournament but this seemingly silly weakness revealed a deeper issue with Awai.
IT MEANT SEIKO HAS BETTER MAHJONG SKILLS THAN AWAI WITHOUT HER ABILITIES. FREAKING SEIKO!!!
Ahem… who knew capslocking everyhing can be a bit liberating.
Oh wait, let me restate… Awai shouldn’t have lost her some of her abilities like her 5-6 shanten even if you make the walls round so that should be “Seiko has the better mahjong skills than Awai.” Which is a lot worse…
Anyway, I better end this rant.
In conclusion, I agree completely. Shiraitodai just lost their luster in my eyes. I hope they at least manage to get some dignity in the finals, but for now they are not final boss material. On the other hand, Achiga despite winning against Shiraitodai isn’t exactly doing a good job of filling the hole left by Shiraitodai as the story’s antagonist.
Looks at the past episodes of Achiga…
Not exactly filling me with confidence here.
….
…
…
At least, this makes things easier for me to find someone to root for.
All. I can say is :
Go Side-B! Go Side-B! Go Side-B! ^^
Edit: I meant to say Seiko has better mahjong skills than Awai when she can’t use her full power namely the kan trick.
But Seiko herself is a powerful offensive player equal to the aces of other-
No wait, she isn’t -_-.
Seiko’s been stated to beat Awai’s double riichi by that method, nothing more. You can’t say much about their respective actual skill from just that.
…is what I wanted to respond as well, but the smug look on Seiko’s face as she brings it up would be weird if she got her ass kicked after that regardless.
I think the most vexatious thing about all this is that, if you look at the results of each semi-final match, they are almost all Shindouji and Senryama battling as hard as they can to claw back a horrendous lead from the champions, with Achiga standing off to one side picking thir teeth. Achiga’s score barely moves over the 5 games because they basically sit each game out. Kuro loses the least points because Kirame and Toki arrange it so. Yuu gains most of them back because of Harue. (Doubly annoying since you don’t even need to know about Sumire’s tell to counter her playstyle).
And then Shizu sits most of her match out too, finally stirring to pull some new power out of her ass, take the win, and graciously allow Awai to have second place. Fortunately for her, everyone else at the table suddenly started playing like idiots at the same time.
Yeah. Good job they’re the protagonists, eh?
With Shiratodai getting consistently hammered by the two teams that didn’t go through, and Achiga contributing almost nothing to all 5 matches but still winning anyway, I can’t help but feel unstoked for the finals.
Yes, I mad, if it wasn’t apparent.
Kuro was off in her own world during the match, wasn’t she xD? I liked how Harue was useful throughout the match, it made it feel more like a team effort. As for the final match, Ryuuka and Himeko got some super powers, so the portrayal of their basic mahjong ability had to suffer to keep the point balance.
I find it sad the team battle was an exchange of people dominating each other in turns, which made many characters look pretty bad. Battles between equals just barely edging each other out can be much more fun. And it was the semi-finals, too. You would expect the teams to be pretty well balanced.