Early in Chihayafuru’s first season, a young Arata told his new friend, “If you become the best in Japan, you become the best in the world!” He was speaking, of course, about karuta – the obsession of nearly every character in the series. There’s no money or fame to be gained from playing it, but an obscure sort of glory awaits two winners at Omi Jingu each year. Their victory places them atop a list of seven billion people, most of whom will never hear of karuta, much less sit down to play a game. Nevertheless, the allure of being the world’s best is sufficient to attract a small but devoted crowd of competitors. These two episodes are dedicated to four of them, each of whom play the game for different reasons, but all of whom fiercely desire to stand at the summit of the karuta world. Let’s go through them one by one, shall we?

Continue reading “Chihayafuru S3 – 18/19 [The Storm Will Soon Carry Me/Bring a Life of Everlasting Love]” →

Chihayafuru kind of lost me a couple weeks ago, but I had a (very) minor epiphany while watching episode 17 that changed the way I think about this season. The lack of sustained focus on karuta matches is still disappointing to me, but here’s the realization that offset some of that feeling. As the series has progressed and the cast has gotten larger, the amount of time that the main characters spend observing games (rather than participating in them) has increased. The narrower the field gets at the top, the less likely it is that your main players will be a part of it. This has led not only to an increased amount of time spent in the audience during matches, but also a shift in the show’s direction. It’s more concerned about the big picture than it is about card differentials or tracking a competitor’s psychology across a ten minute span. This is clearly illustrated in the first game of the Queen match, where Shinobu fails to take the Impassionate Gods card, sees Chihaya in the crowd and smiles, and suddenly we’re down to a luck-of-the-draw finale. How we got there isn’t as important as Chihaya’s personal link to the match.

Continue reading “Chihayafuru S3 – 16/17 [Takes Me Away in Haste/As My Sleeves Are Wet With Dew]” →

When this week’s episode opened with Chihaya staring dazedly into space, Arata’s voice looping in her brain, I thought we might be in for a slightly more romantic affair than the one we ultimately received. Chihayafuru has never dwelled for too long on that part of its story, but having crossed a major threshold just recently, there was no way to know for certain whether the formula might change. Now we’ve seen the karuta-heavy aftermath that had been in store all along, and any hopes or fears that the show might undergo some metamorphosis have been put to rest. Chihaya is still a lovable nerd, Arata is back in Fukui, and the secondary members of the karuta club are nearly irrelevant, as they have been practically all season.

Continue reading “Chihayafuru S3 – 15 [Helpless Autumn Leaves]” →

I’ve spent the last few months keeping the Chihayafuru shipping talk to a minimum, as I feel the show has a lot more to offer than a high school love triangle. For one thing, it has a cast that spans generations, which has been emphasized more than ever this season. For another, the series trades heavily in themes like self-improvement and finding purpose – personal quests which can easily get lost in the haze of adolescent romance. That goes for critics of the show as well as the characters within it. I’ve read reviews of Chihayafuru that are obviously colored by the writer’s preferred pairing. They view Boy A as the hero, and Boy B as the villain. They evaluate plot developments based on how favorably they seem to affect their favorite guy. Ironically, there wasn’t a strong basis for their bias, as the show only busted out the love triangle teasing in small doses… until this week.

Continue reading “Chihayafuru S3 – 14 [The Emotions Experienced]” →