Team matches certainly present an interesting litany of choices for a sports mangaka, don’t they? I can’t say I felt entirely confident about which way things would go this week on Chihayafuru, though I was certainly hoping the match with Akashi Girls Academy would be settled one way or the […] Read more
It’s hard to do a sports episode any better than that one. Whatever your feelings about the direction Chihayafuru has gone this season, in the last two weeks I’ve think we’ve seen the worst and best sides of that change in focus. Coming off that rare stumble that made me […] Read more
OK, I confess I’m starting to get a little worried. A couple of weeks ago someone might have joked about this entire season taking place at Omi Jingu with the national high school championships, and I would have gotten a good laugh about it. But now I’m not so sure. […] Read more
Chihayafuru is definitely proving its versatility this season, but I wonder if it isn’t coming at just a bit of a cost. I’ve been struck more than once that Chihayafuru feels just a bit different this season than it did in its first two-cour run. In much the same way […] Read more
Well, Team Chihayafuru managed to drag out the much-anticipated meeting at least one more week. I’m guessing (though maybe not) that I’ll be in the minority in saying Arata should be suspended for the individual tournament. And I give him full credit for saying so himself – Arata is nothing […] Read more
To say that this episode was a long time coming may be an understatement, but it definitely proved worth the wait. It’s no exaggeration to say that Arata is a highly unusual character in anime, close to unique in the sense that while he’s universally acknowledged as one of the […] Read more
Don’t worry, I’ll get to what happened at the end – just keep your shirts on for a minute… This season of Chihayafuru has already surprised me a few times with its narrative choices, to the net effect that it hasn’t really been better or worse than the first season […] Read more
Every time Taichi gets kicked in the gut, I have to fight the urge to double over myself. Here I was thinking this was going to be an episode that was relatively light on the dramatic side, and “Boom!” – that was one hell of a broadside the ending delivered. […] Read more
Every week is a reminder of just why I love Chihayafuru. This series has delivered the goods with astonishing consistency over the last 31 episodes, but the last two might just be as good a stretch of Karuta-themed eps as it’s ever had. I guess you could say the series’ […] Read more
“Every poem read sends you back a thousand years. How many sports are capable of such a feat?” There have been 30 episodes of Chihayafuru in total now, and since the vast majority of them have been excellent (or better) the series has obviously done a lot of fantastic things. […] Read more