Nodoka Haramura

Nodoka Haramura is one of the main characters from the Saki anime and manga.

Nodoka is a first-year at Kiyosumi High School. She was the previous year's National Middle School Individual Champion. Nodoka always carries her penguin doll due to Hisa's recommendation in their first training camp, affectionately named Etopen, to give her a sense of calmness when playing mahjong. Her nickname is "Nodocchi" (which is the same as her screen name in online mahjong). Her play style is quickly and efficiently racking up points as fast as possible. She is very close to Saki Miyanaga to the point where they hold hands and blush towards each other.

In the AWA fics, Nodoka is a student at the AWA Academy.

Appearance
She has long pink hair and blue eyes. She has two pigtails tied with red ribbons on her hair, which she later switches to having one ribbon on her left side and her hair down. She wears the standard Kiyosumi uniform and thigh-high socks. Her most defining and talked about feature is her very large breasts and great figure. Ritz recently drew her like she had grown from J-cups to K-cups.

Personality
Nodoka's personality is that of a "proper lady" as noted by Mako Someya. She is very logical but can be a bit childish as she cannot sleep without her penguin doll. She is distant with Saki at first but over time becomes extremely close to her. Nodoka is also very stubborn and despite being logical rushes into things without thinking. She is sensitive when talking about her breasts with others.

Play Style/Abilities
Nodoka plays a strictly digital style game. On her first turn, she will hesitate for a bit, considering the tiles in her hand and the tiles previously discarded (if available), then between her first discard and second draw she evaluates her opponent's discards and calculates the pattern of tiles that she will draw and what she should discard. Not only does she think about winning percentages, she factors in expected values for her winning hands.

According to Ako Atarashi, Nodoka plays differently when in a team tournament, playing online, or in first place. In the East-wind games of the individual tournament, Nodoka faced her opponents head-on, sometimes ignoring their riichi to continue pursuing tenpai and a win. During the individual tournament, she portrayed close to what Ako calls her ideal play-style: the fastest, most efficient way to gather up as many points as possible, disallowing your opponents to win.

However, during the team tournament, when playing online, or if Nodoka was safely in first place, she would utilise the style we normally see: safe but efficient. As soon as someone else declares riichi, she will bail.

When holding Etopen, her stuffed penguin, and playing mahjong, Nodoka can go into her "Nodocchi mode" after a set period of time; at the time of the Nagano team tournament, it was a few hands, during the National quarter-finals she went into her Nodocchi mode almost instantly. In her Nodocchi mode she views the current game as a digital game, regardless of whether or not it actually is; this allows her to completely ignore the presence of her opponents, for better or worse. She begins making decisions very quickly and can confuse players who sense their opponent's tenpai, as she seems to play like a robot, not a person.

Nodoka does not believe in the occult abilities that many characters in Saki have. When playing against these players, she can very easily play into their hands, or help them along, as she doesn't recognise that they have specific playing styles that can be defended against. When these characters win, she calls it a coincidence. However, when facing against Hatsumi Uzusumi, she recognised that maybe it was just too much of a coincidence for Hisa to point out to be weary of a shosuushii and Uzusumi being in tenpai for a shosuushi several times, and changed her play accordingly.

Trivia

 * In the AWA fics, Nodoka sees Takeru Ooyama as a strong rival despite only playing with him once.


 * Nodoka reached the semi-finals of the Saimoe 2009, 2010, and 2012 moe popularity tournaments.
 * Nodoka learned to play mahjong in fourth grade, while she was hospitalized.
 * She is left-handed, although she was taught to play mahjong with her right hand.