Not exactly a breather episode right there…

It would be no exaggeration to say that I’ve been pointing towards this moment as soon as the third season of Chihayafuru was announced.  Hell, since I first read these chapters back in 2016 or whenever it was.  I definitely had a box of tissues handy, because I knew I was going to need it, even if I wasn’t sure exactly which moment was going to break me (it ended up not being one I expected).  It would also be no exaggeration to say that for me, this was the peak – Chihayafuru at its absolute most riveting and brilliant (which is God-tier to be sure), a plateau it would never reach again.  But that’s just an opinion, and there’s no point in belaboring it at this stage.

Goodness me, so much happened here that I hardly no where to begin.  Maybe too much in fact – the adaptation handled the big moments in this episode brilliantly (it had a lot to live up to, and it did) but if I’d fault it for anything it’s that I might have left off the Shinobu stuff for next week, because it gave us a bit of “Return of the King” syndrome there at the end and robbed from the true emotional ending of the episode a bit.  The thing is, even though the main trio weren’t really the focus of this episode – certainly not Taichi and Chihaya anyway – their story was enlightened by the glow coming off the Harada-Arata match in a way it rarely is when Suetsugu actually focuses on it.

Among the many things I take away from this ep is that this was really the first time I totally bought into Miyake Kenta as Harada, to the point where I wasn’t thinking about it and was just feeling it.  Yet at the same time it breaks my heart that we never got to hear the peerless Ishizuka Unshou deliver these lines.  I felt much the same way about never hearing Nagai Ichiro finish the “Chimera Ant” arc as Netero, even as Ginga Banjou was stepping in so admirably.  Ishizuka is Harada to me and always will be, yet Miyake nailed the intense emotional elements of this episode (much as he always does as All Might).

Truthfully, Harada owns this storyline to the point where it’s hard to imagine he isn’t the main character.  His journey is so profound, and it’s quite illuminating to be privy to his internal monologues as contrasted to the fresh-faced and innocent Arata – the “fresh apple and the dried persimmon” as Suou-meijin so memorably puts it (there are major advances in his story here too, but so much else is happening that it’s easy to miss them).  Harada has a lifetime of memory and regrets to draw on for inspiration or weigh him down, but that also gives him perspective.  He understands karuta – there’s no clock here, and as much as anything the challenge of dealing with his physical limitations is an internal one.  It’s his own belief that he needs to fight to protect.

Important things are happening everywhere.  Suou puts his muffler on Chihaya, as she barely notices (then sneaks inside to watch).  Kitano-sensei muses back on the man Harada was, the can’t miss future king of karuta who followed his career to Okinawa and Hokkaido (wooden cards!) and returned to the sport with his game sense already in its inevitable decline.  Kitano’s feelings here are as complicated as anyone’s, because in spite of the grudge he’s nursed for 30 years he can understand Harada-sensei better than anyone.  He knows the true depth of the challenge facing his old rival, just how impossible a task this is – and he knows it’s something he could never do himself.

That’s the crux of this, really.  Everything – the episode, the series, the match, the hall, Arata – is dominated by the sheer force of Harada’s will.  Only by wanting this so desperately that he’s willing to push himself past 100% can he possibly win.  Arata’s gambit of cosplaying his grandfather may have drawn Harada into an exuberant patch where he played like his younger self, but he realized in time that he couldn’t win as a 26 year-old – he had to win as the man he is now, just as Arata will have to win as himself and not his grandfather.  And as he kept dipping into the well of years and finding gear after gear after gear, Arata simply ran out of gears.  There was no way he could have wanted this as much as Harada-sensei, and in the end that made a big difference.

It’s a testament to how epic Harada’s performance was that probably the most meaningful developments the Groundhog Day love triangle has ever gotten took a back seat to it.  Yes, I wanted Harada to win – was desperate for him to win – but losing this match was the best thing that could ever happen to Arata as a character, and probably as a person too.  He’s never seemed more human than in those moments after the match, reflecting on what happened.  “Experience…  Passion…  And love.  Love, love, love.” is what he tells Murase-san he was missing.  And he’s right.  It’s no surprise that in this moment of rare introspection and humility he blurts out a confession to Chihaya – who finally picked the right moment to be on Arata’s side, after he’d lost and needed consoling.

Taichi is unaware of all this (not Kana and Sumire, though), though one could hardly say blissfully.  He’s chasing after Suou to return his scarf, and he too finds inspiration in Harada’s commitment to throw everything he has into his passion by telling Suou he’s Chihaya’s boyfriend (and what a passel of brownie points Inokuma-san earns for her reaction).  Taichi, perhaps more than anyone, had cause to look inward even as he was watching Harada-sensei lay everything on the line.  How can he hesitate about his own passions, when he sees a man who’s devoted his entire life to something he loves?  Be it karuta or Chihaya, Taichi – like Arata – is still a mere boy.  But Taichi is introspective in a way Arata almost never is – too much so for his own good, where Arata is too little.  These events have profound but different impacts on each of them.

In the end, though, this episode is really about Harada-sensei – that titanic effort trumps even two confessions given out of earshot of a rival.  I mentioned the moment that finally broke me, and ironically it was one I didn’t even remember from the manga – when Makino-san gently teased Harada and then took his hand as he smiled a smile of pure happiness.  Even now I crack just a bit thinking about it, because of all the significance of that moment.  Life is a sack of regrets we carry with us on our back, which grows heavier and heavier with each passing year.  And for a man of Harada’s age to be able to lighten that burden in the manner he did is a moment of true poetry – the kind that ends up on karuta cards centuries after it happens.