Chihayafuru – 17

Something very interesting happened here. Remember how the first volume of Chihayafuru completely bombed in terms of DVD sales? Well, when I checked back on the latest figures, it turns out that the second volume actually sold much better. While it’s still near the bottom of the season, the second volume sold in the order of five times as much here. That’s something you don’t see often. Still, these numbers are still far too low for a second season here. This show will end in two months.

It was up to this episode to promise that these final two months will be worth watching. And indeed, I made one really big miss-assumption with this series. The characters said that the past tournament was like the “koushien” of karuta, which lead me to believe that there is just one major tournament like this every year. Yes, I’ve probably seen too many baseball series. In any case, there still are plenty of smaller tournaments, including the tournament to decide the next queen. That’ll be a nice place to end things, and with a bit of luck this will also give a bigger role to Arata.

In the meantime, this was the expected intermezzo episode, and with that it really delivered. There was some very good banter, and we got some interesting insight into the way that Chihaya plays Karuta. The big danger for this show is to descend into a training arc at this point. I can very much identify with Chihaya’s dilemma here: having to stop focusing on what you’re best at, in order to become even better. This is something that is incredibly difficult to do, and not everyone actually manages to do it.

And yet again, this episode placed emphasis on every single character. Everyone is trying hard in his or her own way. Also bloody hell. Taichi still had contact with his girlfriend. Yes, “had”.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

9 thoughts on “Chihayafuru – 17

    1. Chalk it up to the fact that its a josei series, and it doesn’t have the appeal across multiple demographics as other series have. Thus it means less BD/DVD sales. Quite a shame, a lovely series it is. Although the manga did win a few awards.

  1. “Taichi still had contact with his girlfriend”

    I can kind of imagine the conversation… Something along the lines of “Ever since you started… You never pick my calls (Or you never call me)!… We don’t go out anymore… All that is in your head is karuta! (And probably someone else…) It’s time for you to choose. Me or that stupid game!!!”

    And we all know the reply from Taichi 😀

    Still, I feel like that was a little off… And kind of rude… If you don’t like someone, don’t go out with her/him.

    1. You have to remember Taichi is still a teenager. Of course he won’t deal with relationship perfectly. He probably went out with her to kill time.

    2. Yeah I do agree that Taichi was very diskish but you can see how this would pan out. They don’t go to the same school and don’t seem to share interests and he only went out with her because she was cute and asked him.

      She gives me a bit of a Ryou from Clannad vibe.

  2. i know this is a little off topic, but since you were talking about sales and second seasons is this likely what happened to kuragehime as well ? Not enough sales to support 2nd seasons of anime? boooo

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