Chihayafuru Ep 9: Sweet Sixteen

I end up feeling very fulfilled every Tuesday, especially today since this episode was BEYOND AWESOME!!!!! Scuse me I want to go watch it all over again xD

Summary

The karuta club gets officially approved, and Chihaya sets a goal for the club to end up participating in the national tournament, which would require intense training for Desktomu and Kanade. They plan a training camp at Taichi’s house, but this gets cut short when Taichi’s mum and sister return, and everyone ends up celebrating Chihaya’s 16th birthday outside.

Impression

So I’m actually pretty busy right now, it’s late at night and I was planning to write this week’s post up tomorrow, but you know what? This ep deserves immediate attention. And as for coursework…well, we’ll burn that bridge when we get there xD

So Chihaya’s target is the Omi Jingu national tournament – where high school karuta clubs compete to be the best. And to get there, while Chihaya, Taichi and Nishida are all fine, Kanade and Tsutomu need proper teaching, and apparently the best way to do that is the same way Arata taught Chihaya – just drill it into her by continuously losing. While harsh, that’s actually an efficient method, and both of the rookies ended up taking a few cards off Class A and B players. But most importantly, why do I have a feeling that Arata will be involved with the national tournament somehow…through his high school maybe? He has to start up karuta again first though.

I remember Taichi’s mum! That lady that got all pissed with her son when he lost in a karuta match, very aptly named “Mrs Pressure” by Chihaya. Seriously, its no wonder Taichi’s good at pretty much everything when his parents pressure him to win at every single extra-curricular thing, at such a young age too. But anyway TAICHI’S HOUSE IS HUGE O_O I thought it was a museum or something from the outside. I should have guessed that his parents/sister are all the snobby type, that’s one of the things you get with having a museum for a house.

Of course, there’s also the growing obviousness of the Chihaya x Taichi route, he was raising so many flags this episode from casually holding her hand to keep her from finding out about his porn mags entering his room, to feeding her and stealing the last bit of cake, which is quite a lot of PDA from a pair that aren’t even a couple (yet). Oh and I’ll assume that it was Chihaya’s spoon, so that makes it an indirect kiss too! I wonder how Arata would have taken it if he was there, as he most likely has a crush on Chihaya as well. No one beats Taichi in the bishounen expression department though.

I actually thought that message was some tragic incident when Taichi’s eyes widened, but I guess it was the shock from having Arata randomly mail him to say happy birthday to Chihaya. Now amidst all the karuta, there’s a potential love triangle between the three main protagonists, and Chihaya isn’t even aware of it! She doesn’t seem too stereotypical though, so here’s to hoping that she realizes what’s going on and gives some kind of response xD I’m leaning towards Chihaya x Taichi myself, since there hasn’t been much Arata screentime lately.