Chihayafuru – 23

“Chihaya, it’s time for you to come out of the closet.”

Tag teaming with Kara and Kyo? Yay! • ◡• Chihayafuru has been one of the shows I can’t go without since last season and I’m glad I get the chance to talk about it in more detail this week alongside two really awesome people.

Yaay! Hawt and Kyo are here! …Well Kyo is usually here, but still. Yaaay! Chihaya fans, unite! Last episode was infuriating to say the least, but this episode can’t be like that… right? RIGHT?! I don’t know if my table can take much more of my abuse. Your turn, Kyo.

Ohohohooo~ Triple the fun this time around? Readers, you can’t get better hawt and sizzling than this… Lol, jokes aside, I was having an awesome day today until things went over the head and now I’m burning the midnight oil in preparing some special posts. Anyways, let’s get this review started~

So, now that Chihaya is scarred for life, she also has to shave her head thanks to that bet with Sudo. However, Harada makes a bet that if he wins against Sudo, the bet is off. While those two go off to play (lol that sounds weird), Chihaya shuts herself in a closet and everyone except Taichi leaves the room. He informs her that Arata won his third round and reflects on how he felt the same way when he lost to Nishida, but he thinks Arata is the only one who can cheer her up. Kana comes back to inform them that Harada and Sudo are going against each other in the next round and Taichi admits in his head that he likes Chihaya.

True teammates. Right here.

Harada wins (thank god) and Chihaya realises why she lost to Yumi. He then loses in the semi finals though and Yumi and …some other guy  move on to the final matches happening the next month.

Sometime later, some guy randomly confesses to Chihaya and apparently this is the first time she’s been confessed to… Taichi is pretty good at hiding his jealousy, but Kana notices it and secretly cheers him on. Meanwhile, Chihaya still hasn’t mailed Arata yet and we learn that he lost in the 4^th round. Arata knows where he went wrong though and is determined to become better.

Jealous Taichi is jealous （´ω｀*）

Later, at the last match before the players challenge the Master and Queen, Chihaya and the rest of the club go to watch. Yumi and …the guy from Chihaya’s society move on and Chihaya is frustrated about losing, but she wants to look back someday and know that it was all worth it.

The rest of the episode, all of the members go off and do their own thing Christmas Eve, but find themselves wishing that the other members were there with them. Desk-kun says that it’s because they think of each other as family. With that, Chihaya finally calls Arata, tells him that cellphones are amazing and then hangs up. …Well it was more emotional than that, but that’s the gist.

What was that Chihaya? Did you say snowmen are cute?!

ChihayaADORABLEfuru:

Chihaya is so moe, the background just couldn’t keep up. Also, she started glowing for some reason. We’re not sure why.

NOBODY CAN FIGHT THE KUMA-YO~

Fight Taichi, fighto!

End Thoughts:

TAICHI WHAT ARE YOU DOING. (ノ ゜Д゜)ノ ︵ ┻━┻ Sorry, I need to calm myself down after watching this week’s episode! One of the reasons I’ve been so addicted to Chihayafuru since all the way back in episode one is the is the love triangle between Taichi, Chihaya, and Arata. I’ve switched between supporting ChiRata and ChiChi many times, but in the end Taichi was the one I decided to throw my full support behind … but I’m a bit irritated at his lack of ambition lately! All this time he spends sitting around thinking about how in love he is without actually saying it, Megane-kun is bettering his chances! Chihaya seems totally oblivious to anything that doesn’t involve karuta, which probably means whichever of the guys speaks up first will probably get their feelings reciprocated. Every time I THINK something might happen I silently scream “Go for it!”, but then nothing ends up happening … like this week when Taichi had the perfect opportunity to spend Christmas eve with her! Besides, wasn’t his hint of jealousy even the least bit revealing to Chihaya when that guy asked her on a date earlier in the episode? Ergh, they’re both so hopeless! (;-_-)

Okay okay, I’ll stop ranting about relationships now! With all the major characters being pretty much out of the running for King/Queen I wasn’t really expecting another srs bsns karuta episode, but it turns out Madhouse can even make matches between side-characters pretty engrossing. I love how each character has their own recognizable play style, it makes what could have been a pretty boring game into something very strategic and unpredictable. That being said, Harada’s and Sudo’s match was very exciting, even though it was super short. Harada was able to beat his own weakness as an older, less strong person and defeat the fast moving, younger Sudo thanks to his confidence … and also maybe a little because of the hair deal. I’m a bit disappointed we didn’t get to see more of the matches with nose-kun and and the girl who challenges everything. Oh well! I guess they might be saving time for the King/Queen matches.

Arata is finally prominent again! I missed his voice! Two episodes is enough time for Taichi and him to have a match … right? I’ve actually been looking forward to a match between them more than anything, I’m not sure if they’ll get to it with only two episodes left though. This show seriously needs a second season! I heard the sales weren’t so great though, so I don’t know, I’ll have to keep my fingers crossed. There’s so much more I’d like to see from this great series. Anyway, thanks again Kara and Kyo, it was lots of fun getting to tag team with both of you this week for one of my favorite shows! ˆ▿ˆ

You mean that there was Karuta going on and Chihaya, Arata AND Taichi weren’t part of it?! Amazing. I didn’t even think that it was possible. On that note, I’m glad that Chihaya had her emotional outburst and then was done with it. There was no moping about for 2 episodes, thank god.  While she’s still sore about her loss, Chihaya has an idea as to where she went wrong and wants to overcome this point in her life. That line about her wanting to move forward so she can look back and say that it was all worth it really struck me as thoughtful and mature. Man, Chihaya is such an awesome character. I love her inner strength. Anyways, back to my main point here, Harada finally got some screentime. The ossan totally deserved it too. Sudo was in here too, which is great, but as much as I like him, I’m kind of glad he lost. The thought of a bald Chihaya is simply terrifying.

….You know, all of my rage towards Yumi has miraculously vanished somewhere between the ending of this episode and the last one. Maybe it’s because of how maturely Chihaya took her loss, or maybe it was the pure HNNNNG of this episode, but it’s definitely gone now. I still want to see Shinobu win of course, since she’s Chihaya’s ultimate rival, but the sight of Yumi’s face no longer makes me want to murder small children. I just hope that this anime bothers to actually show the finals. Maybe not as in depth as Chihaya’s matches are shown, but I’d like the see at least part of them as opposed to the “oh yeah, Yumi has moved on to the Queen match.” and stillscreens that they had. I want to see how that guy who’s name I can never remember (but he’s part of Chihaya’s society), does as well. That whole emotional thing they had with him and Harada this episode did a great job of making me actually care how the Master match goes. It’s a shame that Arata didn’t make it, but seeing how nobody else made it that far, it’s to be expected.

Okay now that part that I really want to talk about… Yes, WTF ARE YOU DOING, TAICHI?! I get that you’re being bro for Arata, but come on… That jealousy thing was just too cute. Then again, so was Chihaya’s reaction after being confessed to for the first time. It does not look like the whole childhood friend thing stands a chance of being solved this season, but at least Arata is making a conscious effort to join the other two again. I too support Taichi over Arata, but I still like him a lot as a character. I just hope that Taichi overcomes his issues eventually… Though I think that will most likely come from a match with Arata. … And that probably isn’t going to happen for a looong time. Come on, season 2!

Some of my predictions actually came true. And then again we learn the fact that competitive karuta is too hard to master in just one go or show of awesome training like a typical shounen. It’s a hard game and the competition gets tougher with each match. Even with the main characters out of the game, this episode was pretty good in reminding us why we ended up liking this series. It’s not all about the game but characters who are well connected with each other. They miss each other, get jealous over each other but in the end, learn a lot from each other as well. Of course, Chihaya has to play the airhead but girl, you just don’t say YES to any Tom, Dick or Harry who asks you out. Get into the program and at least observe your surrounding for nice guys like Taichi and Arata! Oh yes, if you have forgotten, I’m for tripping in this series rather than shipping and I like BOTH the guys. Please just let Chihaya make her own decision.

From the current progress, Taichi and Arata are once again back on the 50/50 spot. You ask, why? Because Chihaya pulled on Taichi’s hand and reminded him that he should concentrating on the matches to become a better player than babying her just because she felt depressed. I’m just glad she got up soon enough, her moping around would have been painful. In case of Arata, he got a very special call from her after all and even when she wasn’t very coherent about it, it was right after she realized the ones you always miss are very special. I was almost feeling like Hawt a few episodes back but I have come to cope the fact that no resolution would happen… well, at least not this season. I’ve heard about the dropped Sales too but damn it, people! Support your fandom and increase DVD sales so that we get ANOTHER SEASON. Pretty please!

Now time for confession… I have gone through the RAWS… because I just couldn’t wait to see wtf was going ONNNN. I was that desperate!!! So, the things I can actually tell you is the fact that anime is following manga almost like Kimi ni Todoke. I don’t see anything amiss except for the introduction of the current master, which happened in volume seven when we are currently at the eighth volume progress wise. In total fifteen volumes are already out and there’s no stopping the plot because it is one of those long running, successful manga (anime needs more love!). So, we are right to think that we will see the main characters powering up and leveling up to get to contest the King/Queen titles. Currently, with everyone out of the running, we are pretty much spot on for seeing the King/Queen match in the next episode, which will be very interesting on many levels; mark my words.

Preview: Kyo’s in the mood of spoil, you will see the final matches of Meijin and Queen. Stay tuned!

About Tag Team

We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.