Impression: GIANT PICS OF ARATA BECAUSE HE FINALLY HAD AN EPISODE!
NOOOOOOOOO!!!
COME ON, LET ARATA PLAY MAN. IT’S NOT LIKE THEY WON OR ANYTHING. COME ON, PRETEND YOU DIDN’T NOTICE. IF YOU HADN’T BEEN WATCHING EVERYTHING WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE. COME ON MAN, DO THIS FOR ARATA. IF THEY HAD WON, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT STORY. /GROSS SOBBING
Oh my gosh, despite the horrible turn of events that just happened- I am so happy it was an Arata focused episode, even more so by taking a deeper look at Team Matches. There’s a lot of people (strong ones at that) such as Shinobu and Murao who disregard Team Matches as a more casual match and claim that those who play as teams don’t love Karuta as they do. Actually, it is straight out blatantly discriminating the players who compete in that. So when Arata ended up being dragged into the Team Match he was able to remember why he loved it so much. Until last week when he had mentioned that he didn’t create a club because he is focusing on his goal of claiming the Master title, he too was in a way discriminating team matches. So bless Shoki (a classmate from middle school whom he punched) from Fujioka West for dragging him into this- however I will be extremely upset if he ends up being unable to compete because he had broken the rule.
Throughout the episode, Arata found himself reminiscing a lot of his matches with Taichi and Chihaya. He certainly miss those days. When our favorite track came on for the cue to an epic comeback, I was so pumped up to see him turn the game around. He wanted to at the very least show respect to his opponent, and play to his full potential- completely ignoring the risk of being discovered.
Shinobu and Arata turn out to not be childhood friends, but former rivals. Arata had defeated Shinobu four years ago, but here’s no telling how much stronger Shinobu has become since then. Speaking her dear Queen, she was absolutely adorable today. Her epic creepy encounter, to her sobbing face of, “NOOOO HE DOESN’T RECOGNIZE ME!”, I love this girl. I will say that I was surprised to see that Shinobu had disregarded Team Matches, I wonder what she would think if she knew that Chihaya was competing in that too.
Finally Team Fujisaki is a real problem. They have not only caught Komano taking notes, but also that 5/8 of their registered players are Class A- which pose to be a major problem for our dear team. However on the brighter note, if they do end up competing against them, this will be a very good experience for Taichi because this will help him gain experience for his future individual matches in order level up to Class A himself.
PS (because I had no idea where to put this): It was really cute to see that Arata was the one who ended up hiding, he got all anxious because he planned to surprise them. Murao had almost given him away right then and there since Chihaya had heard him.
