Conclusion: Chihayafuru

Chihayafuru...what a weird series.

Didn't know karuta could be so intense. I wish there were more explosions though.

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Chihayafuru is a series that knows the various forms of failure quite well. Being rusty after not practicing for a while; making the same mistake over and over again, one that you just can't seem to remove; and just simply not - being - good - enough. By mixing these factors in, especially in situations where the easy road to take would be to have the hero win every time, the show displays a surprising preference for scenes imbued with reality over continual success and carefree enthusiasm.

To be honest, I didn't like the series at first because it focused too much on the shoddily done love triangle between Chihaya, Arata, and Taichi. It gave a sense of "Since this is a shoujo manga Chihaya can totally drag these two boys around in the first three episodes like a 5-year-old in her backyard", which is not exactly the best vibe in the world. And no, before anybody complains, I am not biased against reverse harems. It's just that I don't like badly done harems of any kind - especially when they never seem to have a legitimate scene where they all meet together and talk it out.

You just asked me if you could call to celebrate with the guy I'm competing with, right?

You can find out about the production values and such in my First Impressions post, it's not like anything has changed since then. With the combination of the music, graphics, the context (it's a card game, for chrissakes), and the pacing (since it's not a 12-episode shitfest like every freaking series out there), Chihayafuru has turned into a gentle, solid series that I came back to so I could gain some much-needed sanity after stupid crap like Black Rock Shooter or Senki Zesshou Symphogear.

However...

There are two things I have a slight issue with:

1) The series falls too quickly into the realm of the extreme. I know it's exciting, but could you guys hold off on bitch-slapping the cards to the other side of the room? The problem that Chihayafuru was already struggling with about 2-4 episodes before the story ended was because, in facing stronger and stronger opponents, Chihaya's opponents were forced to become near-psychics. Yes, you can try to hand-wave techniques by saying that they can sense which card it is every freaking time by "listening to the minute differences in sound" or by "getting a sudden recognition of what the cards may be". That's bullshit. "Danger sense" is a natural trait. "Spidey sense" is not. Don't turn the opponents into demigods please. Leave that to shitty series like Bleach.

Don't get me wrong, I really liked it when the main characters could "sense" their favorite cards and go for it almost before the card was read. Stuff like that happens in real life too. Just...not with every card.

I just noticed - their eyes are very pretty. Also, the infinite amount of eye shots remind me of this:

2) The series ends very...vaguely. The feeling I get is that the studio had a celebratory party after the final tournament was over...then just sort of screwed around for the rest of the episodes. There's no real closure to any of the characters. I understand that the members of the karuta club have to be in limbo in order to provide continuity, but what happens to Arata after his 'inspiration'? Shinobu (is she practicing or working out)? Yumi (the former Queen or whatever)? Hisashi (the godly college-dropout-into-Master guy)? Everybody's sort of...ignored afterwards, and it feels like the supporting cast was just a prop to make the karuta tourney seem more exciting than it actually was. In this sense, the deletion of these characters hampers any sort of general conclusion of the series and leaves a blander taste in my mouth than there would have been had everybody's epilogues been shown.

But I digress. Even with my nitpicks 1 and 2, the series still proved to be a very nice, relaxing shoujo series that anybody could enjoy. So if you don't mind the slower pace and you want something that's not all flashing lights, astronauts, magical girls, harems, and fanservice, but rather an inspiring series, watch Chihayafuru.

How did they get me to watch a 25-ep series on karuta?
Jesus Japan, nice one.