Chihayafuru 2 Episode 7: A Wave of Support

Impression:
I expected them to sweep immediately to the Omi Jingu tournament, so I was surprised to see this being a calm episode.  It looks like they are taking a breather before the intensity of the Omi Jingu tournament starting next week since without a doubt there will be drama and flooded with emotions.
While Chihaya had a good outlook from the loss last week, it surely didn’t last for long since she blames herself for her ‘selfish action’ of trying testing her accuracy and precision with a strong opponent during a team match. I feel sad that Chihaya feels this way because we know it wasn’t her fault. There’s no telling whether she would have still won if she had shifted gears or hadn’t tested out her progress.
It was extremely touching to see Chihaya’s mother stepping into the spotlight today. It always bothered me that we never seemed to have heard/seen much support from her family besides her father cutting out articles of her victories and putting them into a scrap book. So it was very reassuring to know that Chihaya’s mother has in fact been to a couple of her matches, even earlier on while she was in middle school and knows that Chihaya is passionate about Karuta and respects her for that. She doesn’t mock it like Chihaya’s sister does, who was going to give up acting but after having seen Chihaya fiercely resume practicing while watching Shinobu during last year’s Queen’s Match she was inspired to not give up on her dream either.
Speaking of recognition. It was so meaningful to see the Karuta Club receiving support from the Band club, who thanked them for letting them use the room above theirs to store their instrument cases in.
Another special thing we learned this episode was the true meaning behind Chihayaburu (Chihayafuru??? I’m sorry I can’t tell which it is because I can’t hear the sound/ I don’t know whether they are one and the same). Lets be honest here folks, a handful of us (including myself) who can’t read/speak Japanese had NO IDEA WHY this show/their club is called Chihayafuru. Kanade explained to us that is meant to compare Impassionate” and “Frenzied”, Impassionate for “power used for right” and Frenzied” for “power used for wrong”. The two balance each other as they are used to describe intensity- much like a spinning top.
Sumire makes be go back and forth with her character sometimes because I don’t particularly like her initial reason for joining and sticking around with Karuta. She says that she loves it only when Taichi is around to trying to ‘appeal’ to Taichi. Yet depsite that, we all know that she is getting more and more hooked to the sport. Hopefully sooner (rather than later) she was become genuinely passionate about the sport and pay less attention on trying to score points with Taichi.
Speaking of which, Sumire brought up one of the most sensitive topic of the show… THE TOPIC OF LOVE.
Admist all of the action, the intensity of the matches and the humor there’s this. Shipping in this show is very difficult because it’s safe to say from what I’ve seen in this fandom, a majority of us are torn between Arata x Chihaya or Taichi x Chihaya and some of us like myself resort to OT3 Arata x Chihaya x Taichi.
While I do ship OT3 because these three are my babies, my OTP for this show is Arata x Chihaya as for Vantage is it Taichi x Chihaya.
Yet it still ripped my heart out that Taichi is becoming more and more aware that Chihaya is leaning towards Arata. Much like last season, it’s hard to say whether she in fact unconsciously harbours feelings towards Arata or sees him as an inspiration. But like back in Episode 20 during the first season, this episode made Chihaya once more ask herself this question.
It did hurt my heart a bit since Chihaya wishes so badly to compete with Arata and dreams of playing together as a team, with Taichi of course like they had when they were kids. That is also one of my wishes in this series, to see three of them to play together as a team once more.
Arata understandably never bothered forming  a Karuta club at his school because he is focusing on the individual matches. However the Karuta Gods may have something else in store for him ohohoho….