Saki 202: Sword of Justice

Saki is back after a long break. I wrote a few chapter's notes which you will find below. The notes are not needed to understand the chapter but provide a bit of additional information and some things that are lost in translation.

Enjoy:

Saki ch202 (Mega)
Saki ch202 (Mediafire)

Whoa! Look at those big mountains... there in the background.

Chapter's notes

- The chapter's original title "kenkyou" means 'a chivalrous person who is good with the sword'. That's too long-winded for a title but I think "Sword of Justice" conveys the meaning pretty well. The title obviously refers to Satoha.

- Awai talks about 'the manager (kantoku) and Kaise and all the staff and Natsuki and Sumire'. Kaise is probably Reika Kaise, who was Shiraitodai's manager two years ago during the flashback. In that case, now 'the manager' must be someone else (a Shinohayu character perhaps?). It makes sense that, after Shiraitodai's rise to top school in the country, they would hire a better manager and more 'staff' to handle the increased number of club members. Then, Natsuki is probably Natsuki Tanahashi, one of the members of Teru's original team, who apparently stayed at Shiraitodai in some sort of assistant's role.

- Awai refers to everyone using only one name and they are always written in katakana, which usually means the character in question doesn't know how to properly write that name in kanji. That's why in the comment above we have to assume Kaise and Natsuki's identities, because their names aren't written properly. However, there is one exception. Awai mentions Shizuno Takakamo with her full name written in kanji. That means Awai took the trouble to find out how to write the name of her nemesis but noone else's, not even Teru's name.

- The Stars and Violets School (seikinha) was a group of Japanese romantic poets from the early 20th century. They commonly mentioned stars and violets in their poems as metaphors for their romantic dreams and ideas. Also, violet (the flower) is sumire, just like Oohoshi means 'big star'.

- Awai uses the English word 'stargazer' (hence Teru's question) and the kanji next to it mean "girl who looks at the stars".

- In the last page, Satoha uses the Kendo term maai which means 'the (right) distance between the opponents' in a Kendo match. More generally, it can also mean 'the best time' or 'the right opportunity' to do something. What exactly does she mean with that, we don't know yet.

End of the notes.