30's, she/her. Current interests include Solo Leveling, Critical Role, Genshin Impact, and Wuthering Waves. My art is mostly colorful fantasy but I'm trying to branch out, I post once in a blue moon. Check out my About Me page for other stuff
I am so utterly fascinated by “Saki”, the 18-year-running mahjong manga in which you, the reader, become gradually, frog-boilingly aware (over the course of nearly two decades’ worth of mahjong tournaments) that none of these girls are wearing underwear and most of their boobs are slowly expanding.
I need you to understand that I have, like, an anthropological level fascination with this comic. From the perspective of someone who is also a comic artist and writer, two things delight me about it:
the fact that I understand completely how an artist gets from “the fans can have a little hint of skirted asscheek” to “the pussy is completely out on center page” over the course of 18 years; and
the way in which the pussy being out is treated by the characters and diegesis as being utterly unremarkable.
Okay. Point 1. The frog-boiling.
Let me put this in perspective for you. There was already a meme about how the characters in “Saki” don’t wear underwear when I was in middle school. I am thirty now. Okay? And it’s still going.
In the time since, this has stopped being a joke. It is now indisputable canon. This is not because anyone outright says it at any point. It’s because the underwear ran out of places to hide. I’m obsessed with this thought: somewhere in the over 20 volumes of “Saki”, there is a panel in which underwear was objectively deconfirmed. And it would be so hard to figure out where that panel actually is. Maybe the artist didn’t even realize it when she drew it! The frog? Boiling!!
And of course there is also the breast expansion. I don’t know how to put a spin on this. They are just expanding. Like, this happens a lot with artists: you define a character as being, in your mind, “the one with the big boobs”, and over the years you emphasize that trait further and further so that the signal doesn’t get lost in the noise. It’s just that normally—in like a wildly popular manga series about mahjong published by literally Square Enix, for example—normally there would be a point at which the boobs stopped getting bigger. Like, an editor would step in or something. Or you would get to the point where you cannot draw the character in the same panel as her mahjong tiles without her breasts spilling over the tiles, and you’d go, “Well, this is now untenable.”
That did not happen. There is no ceiling. The frog is soup.
Point 2. The complete and utter mundanity of all of this.
It’s like this, okay: there’s no shortage of trashy ecchi manga out there. There’s a million other comics doing wildly bawdier things with wildly more improbable bishoujos.
The vibe with “Saki” is different.
It’s hard to explain this, but it feels like the world of the comic is fundamentally uninterested in the fanservice happening on the page. I cannot describe it as “leering”, because I cannot conceive of a person in the story from whose point of view one would leer. I think the artist is probably into it—I can’t imagine anyone is making her do this—but “Saki” the comic has no opinion on the matter.
There are essentially no male characters in “Saki”. Like, there was one guy? Kind of? At the very beginning? But he is gone now. They put him back in the toybox. He does not exist. It appears to be some level of canonical that in the world of “Saki”, almost all humans are women. Those women are sometimes romantically into each other. According to comments the artist has made on Twitter (which I cannot source), they have lesbian baby technology, so it’s no problem. It’s so much not a problem that the story is about mahjong, instead of any of that.
So, like, the fiction here appears to be this: this is the, like, meta-narrative of the fanservice of “Saki”, right: it’s just normal that they don’t wear underwear and their boobs are arbitrarily big. It’s been normal. It was normal before the story of the manga began. It’s just how things are. Nobody bats an eye about it, and if they do, it’s in sort of a lesbian kind of way so like what’s the problem, we love lesbians here. This is literally normal for girls.
The fanservice simply diffuses into this all-encompassing aura of disembodied, ambient sluttiness. The framing of the panels demands you acknowledge it, and the story demands you already be over it, because it’s mahjong time now, and we’re playing mahjong.
Do you get??? why I’m so fascinated??? Are you not a little enraptured???
Anyway, I have no idea how to end this weird post. I guess the conclusion is that women stay winning????
I have so many questions... How does one SUSPECT a manga character isn't wearing underwear? Like, sure, boobs are front and center amd you can see them get bigger panel by panel but how does this work for panties? Are there just that many upskirt shots?
Also how do you keep a manga about Mahjong going for 18 years, what??
THISSSSSSS!!!!!!! curate your own internet experience. block them because they’re allergic to peanut butter, block them because they have what you don’t, block them because they dislike your favorite food, block them because you don’t like their layout, block them because you can.
blocking is NOT a personal attack against someone. it’s you curating your own internet experience and catering for your comfort, and you have every right to do that.
you, yes, you!!! you CANNOT tell other people to censor themselves for your own comfort and personal likings. you CANNOT tell them what they can or can’t post. you CANNOT tell them what they can or can’t write. you CANNOT tell them what they can or can’t draw. BUT you CAN block them for whatever reason.
that block button is offered to you for free. use. it.
Hey, so, I know I have a lot of non-horsey followers who may not know about horse biomechanics. Which means I have an opportunity to teach.
If you ever see a horse wearing these padded 'shoes' (called stacks) on its feet, you are looking at an abused horse
Stacks are used in a riding discipline called padded performance, or more commonly known as big lick. In this discipline, the goal is to create as big and flashy of a walk as possible.
To get a big flashy walk, big lick trainers put weights on the horse's front feet (to make it lift the legs higher) and use action chains, which smack against the ankles every time the horse moves (making it lift the legs faster to try and escape from the painful chains). Though it's technically illegal, many trainers also use soring, where they rub mustard oil or kerosene onto the horse's ankles (to cause pain so it has a stronger reaction to the action chains). Soring is widely accepted in padded performance, and trainers will apply chemical irritants to their horses at shows, out in the open for everyone to see.
Horses naturally carry 60% of their body weight on the front legs. When the front legs are sore, they'll carry more weight on their hind legs, which causes rapid joint degeneration. It's not unheard of for retired big lick horses to have completely deformed hind legs
There is no ethical way to do padded performance. Big lick riders will talk about how stacks don't cause issues (often citing one study that looked at padded horses slowly walking on a treadmill without rider), how soring is illegal, how hard-working their farriers are, how closely they work with veterinarians, how their horses live like kings, how beloved their horses are, etc., but it's all talk.
If you see a horse with stacks, you are looking at an abused horse.
I'll add a few relevant videos under the cut (from least to most graphic)
Adding on that stacks are used not just in big lick with Tennessee Walkers but also in a less extreme but still damaging form in other disciplines and breeds. There are stacked/padded Saddlebreds, Arabians, Morgans, Hackney, etc. You'll see people within those disciplines arguing that it's less extreme than big lick and therefore, not detrimental to the horse but still causes changes to the gait and natural structure of the legs.
occasionally, you will discover an artist who drew roughly 300 beautiful pictures of your favorite characters over the course of a month and then never touched them again. you must accept this as a gift.
"Mind your business, excuse me...Mind your business! I don't want weird (or senseless) animals talking to me. Do you understand me? Ill-mannered person, he has no manners. He doesn't know how to talk to a woman! We're both talking it out, who are you to speak in between? WHAT IS IT? WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO ME? WHO ARE YOU? EXCUSE ME!"
:)