Chihayafuru – A Choke or Panic?

It should have been an easy victory.

New Team Chihayafuru is up against a team that, in all rights, should give them an easy victory. They have three players — Chihaya, Taichi and Nishida — who are damn good at karuta, which should be enough to give them an edge and propel them to the finals. But they had a tiff earlier with the frustrated Tsutomu, and their minds are elsewhere, particularly Chihaya’s. The team they face, Shuryukan, almost seems to sense their collective unease and yelps and bellows as a unit; it’s made clear that, as a whole, they’re not as talented as Chihaya’s group, but they make up for it using whatever tactics they can.

Shuryukan gets off to a fast start and takes several cards. Chihaya has trouble focusing. The words of encouragement and the accusations during the fight coalesce in her mind, and Chihaya’s mind wanders. Everything comes to a head when the chihayafuru card — Chihaya’s card — is read, and everyone on the team takes it but her, and cold panic grips her heart. Her mind is a blank: She suddenly forgets how to play the game. Every instinct is gone.

Random Mashup Shit #3

Future Diary episode 3

I wonder how far the series will ratchet up everything before it ends. We’re just at episode 3, and already the psycho stalker girlfriend has a pile of bodies she’s hiding in a closet. Just an unfortunate happening (wink wink) that Yukiteru stumbled upon the corpse room while hanging out at Yuno’s house after their oh so charming date. It sort of reminds me of Infinite Ryvius, which spent the whole series slowly ratcheting  up the tension, and then when things got to the breaking point, the story whipped out a shit ton of crazy plot twists. They should have been unbelievable, but they worked because the tension is manipulated so well that the audience almost has no choice but to be invested in the characters.

Random Mashup Shit #2

Chihayafuru episode 3

I d’awwwed at Team Chihayafuru and lol’d at Dr. Karuta. I wonder if he’s ever scared kids away from karuta due to being so overbearing at the sight of young blood playing his beloved game. Anyway, the developments in this episode went by a bit quickly for me, but that is probably part of the point — the three young’uns got precious little time to play karuta together, but it was pretty awesome while it lasted. I thought the over-the-top emotion worked pretty well, too: When you find something you’re passionate about, especially when you’re so young, it’s this big, massive thing. It occupies your entire world. Chihaya’s reaction to Taichi and Arata moving away is silly and selfish from the perspective of an adult; however, from her perspective, it’s at least understandable, because this big part of herself that Chihaya has recently discovered has been ripped away from her. At least the doc gets her to understand, though.

The only part of the episode that really struck me as ridiculous is the bit with Chihaya’s sister where she’s like, “Chihaya should just keep gushing about how great I am.” That’s a bit too absurdly egotistical for me to swallow, haha. Most things with Chihaya’s family tend to take me out of the show, actually . . . they’re by far the least subtle element of a show that isn’t particularly subtle in the first place.

Random Mashup Shit #1

So I’ve been waiting to see if another series would scratch that blogging itch this season, but although a couple have come close, I haven’t totally bought into anything (or maybe I’m just lazy and want more time to play Mass Effect 2). That’s not to say what I’ve been watching is bad, of course. There’s been some decent stuff released so far, and I would like to write a bit about them all. So I figured I would do something totally creative and innovative utterly unoriginal and write quick thoughts about whatever the hell interests me each week. Hopefully I won’t be writing about the same series each post, because that wouldn’t be fun at all.