Chihayafuru Episode 18 Posted on: February 8, 2012 | 199 views Recap: Team Mizusawa prepares for the Saitama Karuta championships with their full-fledged hakama. Chihaya was as determined as ever as she enters the A class division as part of her journey in becoming ‘Queen’. She faces off against a somewhat peculiar opponent, a lady who’s many years her senior, but otherwise did not seem much of a threat in terms of skill level after easily capturing the first card. Chihaya aimed to implement Dr Harada’s advice of not relying too much on speed in taking the cards. However, it was easier said than done. She soon discovers that relying on speed yielded mistakes after taking cards that were not on the field. By then, her opponent had already exploited Chihaya’s weakness, which, was what Tsutomu had mentioned to her about the positioning of specific cards beginning with certain number of syllables. She later made the conclusion that her opponent possesses the skills that she lacked. Chihaya refocuses and made attempts to read her opponent. But she ultimately lost the match by 6 cards. It turned out that her opponent was a married women with children of her own. Despite her situation, she continued to aspire to become ‘Queen’. Chihaya expresses her gratitude for their match and proceeded to watch the progress of her other team mates, which, turned out to be friendly fire between them with Taichi facing off against Yusei and Kanade with Tsutomu. As a result, Chihaya becomes sidetracked on which side to root for. Despite having to face off against team mates, neither side allowed their guard to falter. Kanade had a great start to the match, but Tsutomu was quickly able to take advantage of Kanade’s weakness of not being able to rely on syllables. Chihaya observes the intensity of the matches and resolved to learn everything she could in order to development her skills to become stronger. Impression So the Mizusawa club members begin their journey by competing in the regional tournaments in order to upgrade their statuses. This means that we’ll be seeing more card swiping karuta action in the coming episodes. I’m not sure how many viewers have noticed, but I feel that the proceeding episodes covering the next few mini tournament will probably be used to focus on Chihaya’s growing abilities in karuta and less on anything else. What this means is that there may be less drama in the splice-of-life aspect. But the karuta action is really the primary appeal of the series so I’m okay with that. I do think it’s rather odd to end this episode as the match between Taichi and Yusei was about to heat up. I dearly hope there’s a good reason for it. Although, I’m rather shocked that Chihaya lost in her first match, it’s a good thing that in karuta people don’t fall to a lower class for losing. Furthermore, having such a standard would probably be a threat to motivation and a potential to wipe out interest for the sport altogether. Filed under: Anime Series, Chihayafuru by Jack Leave a Reply Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website
