Saki - Unknown Episode
Hey, has anybody else heard of the anime Saki?
For those of you uninformed, it was a sports anime that ran from around Spring 2009 to Autumn, 2009. It centered around the topic of high school girls and a few males playing riichi mahjong, an Asian boardgame. The original manga was written and illustrated by Ritz Koboyashi in February, 2006 before it was adapted into a television show. The show didn't market very well, especially in the United States for obvious reasons, that being the fact that mahjong is a rather overlooked game.
The reason I'm curious any of you know about this show is because a couple years ago, around September or October 2010, viewers reported to watching a very unsettling new episode premier, airing around 3:00 or 3:30 in the morning. Viewers of the episode reported that things in the premier seemed very off and uncanny for the show's nature - characters, whom in the show usually are very zany and bubbly, were reported to act incredibly clinically depressed, suicidal and inexplicably wrathful.
The soundtrack either consisted of pure dead silence or very unsettling patterns of badly played piano or guitar notes. Another common report was that the quality was unexplainably poor and unkempt, and parts of it were so bad some viewers even claimed to have a headache after watching it. The intro plays normally. The episode begins from a bird's eye view of the club building of Kiyosumi, the main protagonists of the series. It was normal, however a static line running from top to bottom of the screen was evident. Besides this, nothing else seemed off.
For a few seconds of the bird's eye view of the club, you can very clearly see two figures on the grass besides it. The quality at this point is terrible and I couldn't make out anything but a yellow and white blob.
The quality snaps back. It is now the same normal animation style as the show. It reveals Touka and Koromo, the two zany and fun loving blonde cousins, sitting under the tree Saki herself sat under at the beginning of the very first episode. Rain poured on the treetops and the grass. However, this was when things began to seem...truly off.
Touka's right eye was replaced with a pitch dark blotch of grey, as if she was missing it. Koromo looked completely miserable, clear tears in her eyes as she held down her bunny ear headband, as if ashamed. Her tears mixed in with the pouring rain. Touka held a look of absolute look of depression on her face and nearly just sobbed on every breath.
The screen then cuts off, static brimming the screen for a few seconds. It cuts to a front-view of the Ryuumonbuchi mansion, the one Koromo and Touka live in. The screen pans abruptly to the inside of the house, where we see Hajime, Touka's maid, with her hands in her face sitting at a mahjong table. She says something, but it's absolutely inaudible as the only audio at this point is static. The scene suddenly zooms out to reveal a birds-eye view of the mansion, for a painfully long time - it just sat there in dead silence for at least three minutes.
The scene ever so slowly ebbs away, to reveal Hisa, the student congress president of Kiyosumi, walking down a sidewalk. The sky is blue, and Hisa carries a mildly happy look on her face, however a very badly played piano is buzzing in the background. Hisa reaches a door (presumably the door to the Kiyosumi mahjong club) and outstretches her hand. Right as she reaches for the knob, the scene cuts out.
The scene pans to an abrupt view of the Kiyosumi club, for a few seconds, before it cuts off immediately again, replaced entirely by static. It scared the hell out of me for it's abruptness alone, but I kept on watching.
After the static ebbs away, the scene is replaced with Saki, the heroine, smiling while walking down the middle of a street, the sky blue above her and the quality now perfect. However, much like the Hisa scene, the dead silence has been replaced by poorly played guitar strumming.
The "music" abruptly stops, dead silence lingering in the air. Saki herself pauses, sitting still in the midair, her entire body frozen as if someone stopped time. This went on for a couple of maddeningly long minutes - just Saki standing there in midair for at least two minutes.
The scene cuts back to the tree in the beginning. Touka is still there, but Koromo is missing for whatever reason. The quality is awful, and everything is bleak and dreary, only black and white as the background as if it was an old fifties movie.
Touka stood up, the quality making random abrupt changes from horrible to excellent. Touka begins to walk, and walk, and walk for a long time, about two minutes. Suddenly a growling noise from seemingly out of nowhere appears, and the growls increase, getting louder and louder until the scene abruptly stops.
Commercials come on. After they end, static buzzes followed by a short scene of an oddly misshapen Teru, Saki's sister, lying on the floor of a broken down shack. The next scene cuts back to Saki who, unlike last time, looked miserable and unkempt. Her hair was in a mess, her clothes were wet with water, and she appeared to be sitting in a waiting room of some sort.
The door opened, revealing...nothing, because the screen unexpectedly falls short just as the door opens, cutting to static.
Suddenly a loud crash is heard, and the scene cuts to a more unkempt, broken down version of the waiting room. The scene sits there for the remainder of the episode, a completely still frame like a few other scenes...and then the episode just ended and the next premier just begins, as if nothing had happened.
Credited to Cheese Lord
Originally uploaded on September 8, 2012
| Comments • 0 |
Loading comments...
|
