I somehow remember reading this latest chapter before (like months ago, which is kinda weird), but not the concluding portion referencing Ritz being 'destroyed' by overwork from too many projects. Even though this is supposed to be a fictional biography, that last part strangely sounds all too real. After all, Ritz's notorious tendency to take breaks on the main Saki manga has been around forever, and her tendency to overwork (writing gigantic scripts for Igarashi every month for the spinoff mangas, or plotting her manga storyboards over six months ahead for the anime adaptations) as well.

Incidentally, I notice the first three chapters of Oowada Hideki's Legend of Koizumi are on here. Presumably that's from back when Xamayon/XLG Scans were still active. The series has been scanlated up to ch. 72 by various scanlators, and is a pretty damned good satire/parody/comedy even aside from the mahjong, so it'd be pretty neat to see more recent chapters up.

I still can't get over the fact that Ritz's biographical manga is part of Saki's officially approved spinoffs, and is even being distributed as a special with the BDs. Too fucking awesome/funny, lol.

last edited at Aug 17, 2014 6:46PM

I dunno, this was funny first time, maybe first two times...
But now it's more like, "eh, they tell the same joke again?"

As a pretty hardcore Saki fan, the first chapter was probably the least great/amusing to me, because the actual backstory/premise about "Ritz searching for her father" is something I had never heard about/seen evidence for and I still find unbelievable even now (which, if it's fake, makes the foundation of this spinoff somewhat awkward...It takes the work of Ritz, a normal lesbian mangaka who enjoys making manga about little girls in lewd outfits and big boobs, and imposes some sort of father-centric backstory on it while placing the father as one of the heads of the more traditional mahjong manga (i.e. manly mahjong manga) establishments...). As a standalone piece it's actually kind of awkward, and not something I enjoyed as much as I actually expected to back when I first read it as a Saki fan.

On the other hand, the later chapters in the series (i.e. Ritz getting an injury while visiting Nara for materials-gathering and needing to be hospitalized, recruiting Igarashi Aguri for the Achiga spin-off series, or preparing six-months of storyboards in advance for the first anime) are things that actually happened and pretty familiar to the fanbase due to their effects on the manga's serialization. Once you get the motivation out of the way, it's also pretty amusing to see Ritz being portrayed as such a badass character. So I like the later chapters much better, and it's pretty much for that reason that I hope to see the side-series continue; although the existence of this series itself can sort of be seen as a tribute to what a big splash Saki made in the mahjong manga world.

This was pretty funny

Holy carp, I've been watching the original Saki anime, and the preview at the end of ep. 24 it references this series! "People who search for their fathers and write manga," sounds pretty familiar to me, at least.

Shinra Square Enix HQ lol

Nice to see it completed. Extra nice to see Ueda Kana being super badass.

I'm not sure wtf I just read but it was crazy awesome.

That was something, alright.

It's so dumb

and I love everything about it

This series squares with my image of Kobayahi Ritz completely. It's such an obsessive work, defying all logic. And it has a killer tanuki! Where else can you find a killer tanuki?

AND SAKI'S EDITOR IS THE GUY FROM SHIROBAKO!!! Henna hanashi!!! He literally says that phrase in Hand 2.

last edited at Nov 14, 2022 7:04PM