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If we look at Sanke, I think the first notion would be that Sanke should be shaped like Kohaku. They are, after all, "just" Kohaku with Bekko's sumi. However, it is not that simple, in my opinion. It may have been an appropriate way to consider Sanke in decades past, but today the best Sanke are the Magoi-influenced Matsunosuke bloodline Sanke. Sakai revolutionized Sanke and altered the body shape in not very subtle ways.
The Magoi blood contributed greater size, greater length. But the width of the body is proportionately different, being deeper bodied with greater height, tighter muscled flanks and an overall shape referred to as "cigar-shaped". The difference between a "torpedo" and a "cigar" is simply that in Matsunosuke Sanke there is less of a tapering streamlined body, and more a straight, firm outline. There is a hardness to the Matsunosuke body. It is not a supple form. And the fish swim differently. It is not that Matsunosuke lacks grace, but that the total impression is one of strength, not gracefulness.
Both the Kohaku shape and the Matsunosuke shape can be found in Sanke, and the crossing of Matsunosuke into all the best loved lines leads to intermediate shapes among the Sanke of different breeders.
So, is one shape preferable over the other for the ideal Sanke? If we consider the best shape to be the one in which the variety originated, then the Matsunosuke body is a negative. But in both the show tank and popular mind, Matsunosuke is special. So is either shape and all the intermediate variations equally acceptable? In time the success of Matsunosuke in the show tank will decide the question, but is that because the body structure is better, or simply that the body comes with the rest of the package?
I'd suggest that Matsunosuke genetics has recreated Sanke. In effect, there are two different tricolor nishikigoi named Sanke and they have been interbred. There are differences in the Hi, differences in the Sumi and different bodies. Unfortunately for ourselves, by labeling them with the same name, we deny ourselves permission to value each on its own merits. How different it might be if the Matsunosuke Sanshoku had not been called a Taisho Sanshoku. Each of these tricolors may have developed independently, each to be enjoyed on its own merit, like Chardonnay and Chablis.
...which takes us to the third tricolor, Showa. But that's another post for another day.
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