Hiroe Atago

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Hiroe Atago (愛宕 洋榎 Atago Hiroe) is a third year at Himematsu High, the captain of the mahjong club and the lieutenant (the renowned spot of amazing players from Himematsu) who has amazing self-confidence and the skill to back it up.

Appearance
Hiroe has maroon hair that is tied into a ponytail and brown eyes.

She wears the standard Himematsu uniform and knee-high socks.

Personality
Hiroe is a loud, confident and rather rude girl who has very little reservations about gloating, calling out her opponents or calling them names, but she is not mean spirited about it, just tactless, as she genuinely wants to face against strong competition.

However, she is kind to all of her teammates and cheers them on. Despite what she seems on the surface, Hiroe was the one to explain Kyouko's insecurities and carefulness to Kinue, indicating an astuteness and capacity to understand others.

Practice Game Arc (Toki Manga)
Hiroe and her mother show up to pick Sera and Izumi up after their game. She gets excited wanting to know the results and was surprised to learn that Sera had fun. Sera tells her that she believes Hiroe would have fun with them even if they knew she was the daughter of a pro player.

Battling Fujishiro Arc
We have a flashback to the previous year. Sera and Hiroe are together walking and decide to take a break. Hiroe asks how long they will be touring mahjong parlors trying to find someone like Ryuuka. Sera says they need to find stronger players but she gets it. A few days later, Izumi thinks she's found someone interesting her name is Nanami Fujishiro. They show up at the parlor where Nanami is and ask for a game. Nanami agrees but only if they are prepared for her rule which is the winner takes from the loser. Hiroe tries to get Sera to back down but cannot so they play a match. At the start Hiroe tries to warn Sera about her shortcomings but Sera says she's aware of it. Sera wins a hand and starts to brag a little. Hiroe says there are many things she can't do even in a match like this. Nanami then focuses on her causing Hiroe to drop her tile and asks if she ever stops worrying. One by one the girls started making many mistakes until Nanami was the clear winner of the match. Nanami makes Izumi cut her hair, takes Sera's jacket, and whispers something into Hiroe's ear. After the game Sera tries to talk to Hiroe. The girls have a fight and Hiroe walks away.

National Tournament Arc(Saki Manga)
We first see Hiroe during the draft as the representative for Himematsu, drawing the same block as Kiyosumi as well as Eisui. In the first round the national tournament some of her match was shown and in it deceived her opponent into thinking she had a cheap hand which turned out to be a yakuman (her first in the tournament) for a comeback victory in the round. Afterward she stormed her team's waiting room wanting to know why no one was there after the match to pick her up. While watching Hisa Takei finish her match with her teammates she uttered that they should "inflict some pain on them".

During the second round of the tournament we see Hiroe commenting throughout the first match. After it ended she tried to comfort a defeated Suzu. During Yuuko Mase's match, she doubts Aislinn and her skills but is corrected by Kyouko Suehara which leaves her impressed.

At the start of Hiroe's match she tells Hisa Takei that she can see her tile. She then wonders to herself if the girl is nervous or just clumsy, either way she was disappointed because she was suppose to be strong. Hiroe then declares riichi and starts talking during her match. She then bluffs her way to winning with a ron and again begins to talk throughout until Kurumi Kakura tells her to shut up. Later in the round she notes that she's feeling good and thought that Kiyosumi was going to be trouble but she turned out to be an idiot. She then wins off of Hisa again before telling her that she's beginning to bore her. After Hisa returns to her old self, Hiroe gets interested and then braces herself for Kiyosumi's bad waits. After Kiyosumi wins a round, Hiroe says that she's almost as good as she is. At intermission she runs back to the Himematsu waiting room wanting and recieving praise. She then converses with Suehara about her match and Suehara's upcoming match. She is then seen with the rest of her opponents beginning the second half. We next see Hiroe anticipating other opponents wins and stopping Haru Takimi with a ''ron. ''She tells her that her strategy might work on Kiyosumi but it won't on her because she's on a different level, but is then chided by Kurumi again. At the end of her match Hiroe lead Himematsu to a commanding lead. She along with most of the lieutenant players, stayed sitting in her seat a while after their match had ended.

We next see Hiroe in the Himematsu waiting room during the vice-captain match revealing that Kinue Atago use to be a goal keeper in middle school. After her match, Kinue apologizes for not extending the lead but Hiroe thinks nothing of it. When Kyouko leaves for her match, Kinue asks why was Kyouko not feeling confident. Hiroe informs her that thats just how she is and it gives her strength.After Kyouko managed to place second, Hiroe and the rest are shown welcoming her back. And when Kyouko apologizes for losing the lead, she tells her that there was no problem though she was starting to worry. Kyouko then asks if they should look at their opponents losses and Hiroe says yes because their losses can give them a reference on how to win. Kyouko then goes on to explain about what she was talking about. After Yoshiko Kainou is introduced, she thanks Hiroe for taking care of her cousin Haru during their match, and recalls thats she's like Hiroko Funakubo for her.

Final Eight Arc


In a flashback where Mairu Shirouzu talks about why Kirame Hanada got picked for the vanguard position, she talks about how Himematsu put their ace, Hiroe, in the lieutenant position, but notes that it's an exception to how most schools put their ace as the vanguard. Hiroe is shown along with the rest of Himematsu entering the tournament hall. She is later present to send of Suzu Ueshige before her match. When Suzu's dealership first came, she wonders out loud if Suzu can explode this time. When the South round came around, Hiroe was one of the few people to feel that Suzu was about to get an explosion. During a Suzu flashback, Hiroe and Kyouko are giving the girl advice. When Suzu tries to protest Kyouko telling her to play fast, Hiroe informs her that it'd be a big waste to not win at all. After the vanguard match, Suzu was getting praised until Ikuno Akasaka reminded everyone that she failed at her given task. Hiroe agrees and notes that she was 900 pts shy.

As she is leaving to her match, she tells her teammates that she's going to try and match Yuuko's pace and knock her opponents out. However she then bumps into a wall and tries to pass it off as a joke. She then meets Hisa and asks her if she is going to play like a coward again. They are then interrupted by the appearance of Choe Myeonghwa.

At the start of the match, Choe rons Yuan Iwadate and Hiroe notices that she gave up a good hand to improve her wait and calls her a boring girl. Hiroe then quickly wins the next hand. She then notices that Yuan is banking on Hisa to give her the win but Hiroe quickly wins. Afterwards she says that Kiyosumi is in high spirits today and seems happy. Later Hiroe is aware that Choe has started making a high scoring hand and chii's to speed her up and have a chance to win before she does. However, Hisa wins this hand with a tsumo. Hiroe quickly estimates that Kiyosumi should fear Usuzan going bust this round but that her highest priority would be to take second place from her. After Yuan loses another hand, the first half of the match is over. When all the girls arrive back at the table, Hiroe is eating but quickly puts it away and then has a few words for Choe. She then notes that if her opponents were weaker, she would declare riichi but quickly wins a hand off of Hisa. She tells Hisa that if she tries to be too fancy, she'll end up hurting herself. When Hisa wins off of Yuan, Hiroe wonders if she is okay with tightening the noose around her neck and says that aside from her there is anothe dangerous person at the table (refering to Choe).

Later Hisa wins off of Choe during Hiroe's dealership. Hiroe notices she had dropped the value of her hand to win against Choe and also that she used Hiroe's hand as bait. She later loses a hand to Yuan to end the match and says that she had a feeling she would lose a lot more if she didn't do anything here.

At halftime of Kinue's match, she appears with the excuse of buying juice but being short on cash. She then tells Kinue to watch out for Usuzan like Kyouko said and that Rinkai still had something up their sleeve. Hiroe appears in Kyouko's flashback. Two years ago, she approaches Kyouko and tells her that she can tell she is strong and likes that. Kyouko was turned off by this and thinks that she just wants to hang around good players. Hiroe then tells her that they can just be normal friends.

Back in the waiting room, Kyouko apologizes for the loss and explains her regrets. Hiroe tells her if she is going to say that then asks what if she hadn't purposely dealt into Yuan's hand and tried to win. After Ikuno says that they need to prepare for tomorrows 5th place match, Hiroe remembers that she has to face Sera Eguchi.

National Championship Arc
Hiroe arrives with the rest of the team to give a report to Kazumi Zenno. After giving the report, Kazumi gives the girls words of encouragement.

Playing Style / Abilities
Hiroe is regarded as the best defensive player amongst Japanese high schoolers. She says herself that she has never once started a mahjong game with a thought of losing and she is confident in her abilities. Hiroe can gauge her opponent's skill levels very accurately, and changes her playing style (notably keeping damaten or not) accordingly. She can anticipate her opponents hands and is shown to do so very precisely: in the lieutenant match, she often kept Hisa Takei's winning tiles to avoid playing into her high valued hands, and in the anime she even made a quick comment about Kurumi Kakura's win, saying "I thought it was around here." Satoha Tsujigaito considers Hiroe as possibly the only high schooler reliably capable of dodging Huiyu Hao's unorthodox attacks.

Hiroe has an uncanny sense for exactly what tiles her opponents need to win and has been seen lowering her hand's value in order to keep her opponent's winning tile, and has even done this against multiple opponents in tenpai and still won the hand. Despite what her personality suggests, she is not so prideful as to prevent herself from playing into a much weaker hand to avoid giving more points to other players.

Etymology

 * The name Hiroe means "western" (洋) (hiro) and "enoki" (榎) (e).
 * Hiroe's surname Atago means "love, affection" (愛) (a) and "dawn" (宕) (tago).