Chihayafuru Episode 15: Dreams and Rivalry

Summary

Although Chihaya tries her best, Shinobu easily beats her and goes on to beat Sudo in the championships, with Chihaya only having won five cards. Even so, she seems to see something in Chihaya and vows to never let her take a card from her again. In the Class B championship match, Taichi is worn out from playing six matches straight and ends up losing by three cards, coming second. Back at Mizusawa, the karuta club takes up a new training regimen to surpass their rivals, a certain one of which has just joined his Fukui karuta society…

Impression

I only cried once this episode, and that was when Taichi lost sobs This is becoming too much of a habit. IT’S OKAY TAICHI, CHIHAYA LOST BY 20 CARDS though to be fair, she was playing against the Queen. It just goes to show how much of a nice person he is – after Chihaya lost, he was more worried than she was. Stress seems to get to him a lot as well, you could really tell he was struggling when he started reciting all the card positions in that unbelievably long break between card readings.

I remember something from the Anime Laws of Physics: when a character is having an internal monologue, TIME SLOWS DOWNNNNN xD Porky might have been referring to Arata and how no-one would ever catch up to him when he mentioned how being second always hurts the most. Wait why is everyone crying so much? Just for the hell of it, I want to see Arata vs Shinobu sometime before this anime ends. Though that’s unlikely, if Chihaya rides her exponential growth curve again to become hella strong xD

The finale of the Chihaya vs Shinobu (-chan apparently, for some unknown reason) match was pretty much as expected – making that much of a comeback against the top female karuta player in Japan (and therefore the world) would have been overkill. I’m not even sure how to describe Shinobu’s personality – we’ve got that scary as hell yandere side, then the closet Snowmaru fangirl which would ruin her Queen image completely. It would have been awesome if she’d become friends with Chihaya that way, but I guess there was too much leftover tension xD Oh, and when did Sudo get good enough to take 12 cards off her? He lost to Chihaya o.O

The fact that none of the Mizusawa team won anything at Omi Jingu and just returned to school as normal was the right route to go down. I APPROVE xD In the end, that’s what a realistic show should do – be realistic. If everyone had won at Omi Jingu and Chihaya had beaten Shinobu, somehow I feel it wouldn’t be as epic anymore. The real love of Chihayafuru is watching all the characters grow and develop, and when they finally achieve something, there’s this sense of achievement and pride that you don’t get if you stick in a deus ex machina to make everything alright again. Also, this isn’t a shounen anime.

You’ve got to wonder which direction this will head towards now – a year’s development until the next Omi Jingu through gradual timeskipping would be what I’d do, though I’m sure nothing it ever does will disappoint as it continually battles Shana for the title of Best Fall 2011 Anime. An Arata is fine, too – now that he’s restarting karuta that is.

NEXT TUESDAY SEEMS SO FAR AWAY DIES