The Saki characters poll has ended. The final results are not out yet but halfway through the voting, Toki (not Saki) was leading. The halfway results were like this: 1st Toki, 2nd Saki, 3rd Nodoka, 4th Hisa, 5th Teru, 6th Hiroe, 7th Ako, 8th Koromo, 9th Shino, 10th Kasumi.
There was also a blog post by Ritz saying she's not too fond of popularity rankings but could not refuse a request from SquareEnix. And if it helps with sales and publicity and such then one can only be grateful. Ritz asked that ALL characters be included, which is why there were as many as 300 different characters to vote for. Ritz apologizes to the staff for the trouble it must have been to set this up with so many characters. Still, Ritz notes that about 50 characters or so were left out including, most notably, the mysterious Hikari-chan. Ritz will also strive to make special illustrations, not just for the top 9, but for any character in the top 50, to be distributed for free with the volume releases.
P.S.: Mekimeki refrained from voting for any Toki-related characters and voted for Yoshiko Kainou and the MaiHime combo (Mairu & Himeko).
Shinohayu. The chapter's title is an expression used when talking about something or someone that experienced a significant change. It comes from an ancient believe that said when the cold arrives and sparrows are less numerous is because they jump into the sea and become clams.
