Chihayafuru Episode 19: Luck of the Draw

Summary

The Saitama finals continue, with Taichi vs Nishida for a promotion to Rank A, and Kana-chan vs Desktomu to move up to Rank C. As the matches progress, Desktomu realizes that he’s behind by 8 cards, and chooses to group all his remaining cards together so that he can sweep all of them, while risking that the card read out won’t be one of Kana-chan’s remaining two cards. Despite that, he still loses, but both advance to Rank C anyways. When Chihaya looks back to Taichi and Nishida’s match, both have only one card left, and a series of dead cards reveals Taichi’s strategy to aggressively attack Nishida’s card, however Nishida defends well enough and ends up winning it, promoting him to Rank A.

Impression

SOBS THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL. IT’S OKAY TAICHI, THERE’S ALWAYS NEXT TIME! AT LEAST YOU GOT TO SLEEP ON CHIHAYA’S SHOULDER.

Both matches were stunning, and I’m kinda glad that they chose to spend the episode finishing off the Saitama tournament properly, instead of half-assing it then moving on to something else. Kana-chan’s hakama support last episode probably contributed to giving her that 8-card lead over Desktomu, which was a serious confidence block. It should be really, since if it’s near the end of a match, having 8 cards over your opponent is a pretty good advantage.

Trust him to pull out some serious rule-bending though, and sweep all the cards at the same time. LMAO, is that even allowed? I remember Chihaya did that once, it might have been her first match when she jumped to reach the “Chihaya” card against Arata. Kana-chan still won though, which was good on her! It’s one of those matches where you actually have no idea who will win, but I’m glad that both of them got promoted. It’s morally depressing if only one person advances rank each time a qualifier is held. Here have a crying Kana-chan pic.

Now for the other match-

Woah. Scary Taichi. backs off Chihaya you should have been paying more attention! I don’t know what Taichi was thinking, but he was pessimistic enough to abandon all defence and go for attacking Nishida’s “The tail” card completely, meaning he must have thought it’d be his card. Technically, he could then sweep back and take his card if it did turn out to be “Swift”, but it’d be risky either way. That string of dead cards was cruel, they seem to have a habit of pulling those off in qualifier tournaments. Also, was it just me, or does “The tail” conjure up a rather…Porky image of Nishida? xD

It’s clear Taichi thought he should have taken more cards in the first half that he had the ability to take, since he’s beating himself up over getting into a luck situation in the first place. It’s a bit of a shame the entire thing ended like that though, since at that point, either one of them really could have become Rank A, and I’m more in support of Taichi’s reason more than Nishida’s – anything to have the old Team Chihaya Furu back together again.

Once again, the tension was really addicting, which adds to the whole show’s charm despite how epic it already is. And Arata fans, despite only a brief cameo of him at the very end, I’m sure you were more than satisfied xDD