Summary
Chihaya, Taichi and Arata join a karuta practice club to improve their skills, as well as signing up for the next karuta tournament as a team – Team Chihaya Furu. But when Taichi goes to a prestigious middle school and Arata returns to Fukui to care for his sick grandfather, all of a sudden Team Chihaya Furu is forced apart.
Impression
As usual, Chihayafuru does not disappoint. With this episode marking the end of the prequel of why Chihaya, Arata and Taichi were separated in the first place, next week we’ll have the current storyline and grown up characters back, all in their teenage glory (:
Team Chihaya Furu – a namesake with obvious reference to this show’s title, and boy is it awesome xD It was understandable why Chihaya would get mad at both Arata and Taichi suddenly leaving her, and there was SO MUCH CRYING cries along with Chihaya DON’T WORRY, YOU’LL MEET AGAIN. You just don’t know it yet.
Wow, this show made me teary-eyed in the THIRD episode? How weird xD
The three have definitely bonded with karuta as a medium for them to get along, and it’s so much nicer to see them this way! Taichi especially, he’s become a much better guy than the kiddy bully he was a few episodes ago. Well at least we have the hindsight of knowing he meets up with Chihaya again during high school. Chihaya grew up a lot herself – she’s really motivated to becoming a pro karuta player just like Arata, and is now no longer just fangirling over her model sister. Though wasn’t that a bit selfish of the onee-chan to think Chihaya should just pine over her all the time?
In a sense I suppose karuta is a sport, which is why it was labelled as one in the fall preview. Just from that one karuta practice club shows the insane number of people that have gotten to such a level, though Arata easily pwned them all – wait no, the TEAM pwned them all xD He knew that Chihaya and Taichi weren’t as good as he was, but he still insisted on playing in a team, for both their sakes. Chihaya actually beat Arata to the one-syllable cards, as well as the chihaya card of course, since it was actually named after her.
I feel we’re in for a rollercoaster of emotions and intense karuta-playing over the next half a year, coupled in with complex friendship bonding and rediscovering their past love for karuta. Like Eva, I’ve read what’s available of the manga online, and though I’ll lay off the major spoilers, I can tell you that DRAMA WILL BE ABOUND. makes enthusiastic Chihaya face
//Wow, this show made me teary-eyed in the THIRD episode?//
You aren’t the only one! ;w;
Dude, it’s so amazing, I can’t resist spoilers I’m up to vol 10 in raws. XDVOL 10 ALREADY? O_O
must…resist…spoiling myself… Well based on the manga chapters I’ve read, I’m SO looking forward to that twist near the end of the scanlated stuff xDD Gotta resist spoilers even more since that’s where the translations end ¬¬
LMAO, exactly. But it helps not understanding a word and only spoiling myself with speculation with the images. SHOT
Right now this series is up to 14 volumes, but I’m not sure about whether it’s complete or not, but either way there’s LOTS of room for the anime to expand into.
I think the series might extend to a few more volumes – after all the mangaka is trying to restore her reputation after that…blip with the admitted plagiarism of material and stuff.
O_____o Wait what… plagiarism? Checks Mangaka Oh snap. What a stupid thing to do. =_=;|||
Up to vol 14 now, it’s still on-going.
um eva? what website did you go to to read the raw manga of this series? or did u buy the comics?
P.S. i love this show chihaya and arata are my favorite characters (i also ship them together X3)
You can get the RAWS here.
I’d love to own this series, so if any English License company decides to pick this series up, I’m totally going to start collecting it. \w//