No Taichi, No Arata, no problem?  I wouldn’t go that far. Change is definitely the theme in Chihayafuru these days.  There’s still no sign of Taichi, Chihaya isn’t playing, and the Empress is thinking about the future as much as the present.  Maybe it’s a test of how big a […] Read more

That was quite the unexpected turn of events. What a strange chapter of Chihayafuru this was.  I found it quite unsatisfying, and there was something that just felt “off” to me – though there was certainly a good deal of tension inside the Mizusawa ranks as they prepared for the […] Read more

Dammit Suetsugu-sensei – you got me again. Chapter 143 Once again Chihayafuru clocks in with a deceptive chapter – one which seems like a relatively low-key change of pace, only to amp up the stakes exponentially in the final few panels and leave you feeling a bit breathless and on-edge.  […] Read more

There are no uneventful Chihayafuru chapters any more – only varying magnitudes of earthquakes. I should know better than to be lulled into suspecting Suetsugu-sensei is going to give us a breather chapter. Until you’ve read the last panel you’d damn well better keep looking up, because sooner or later […] Read more

Suetsugu-sensei, just what in the world do you have planned for our put-upon male lead? There’s never a dull moment in Chhayafuru these days, as pretty much every chapter is packed with drama fit to bursting.  The only thing that seems certain is that things can never be the same […] Read more

Fittingly for a series about a card game, the deck seems to have been thoroughly shuffled. By the standards of the highly dramatic series Chihayafuru has become, this has to count as something of a breather chapter.  But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a lot of angst here – only […] Read more

There’s just no such thing as an uneventful chapter anymore. I was feeling pretty low after Chapter 138 of Chihyafuru, for reasons that I don’t think require a lot of explanation.  I’m certainly no less invested in the story than I ever was, but this series has become so heavy […] Read more

Be careful what you wish for, indeed. Well, I wanted “progress” – and I guess I got it.  And in pretty much exactly the form I speculated on in my post on Chapter 136, too – a disastrous confession with disastrous results.  It was definitely “movement”, anyway, and at this […] Read more

Chihayafuru thought for the day: there’s a big difference between “movement” and “progress”… When you consider that there are plenty of long-running manga that are 300-400 chapters or even many more, Chihayafuru really hasn’t been around all that long (though of course its 130+ chapters are closer to monthly than […] Read more

Even glaciers move, though too slowly to be discerned by the human eye… It’s taken us 135 chapters, but it appears that Suetsugu-sensei may finally be taking the tiniest steps forward in putting Taichi out of his misery advancing the relationship between Chihaya and Taichi.  She’s faked me out before […] Read more