It's the hip new thing! All the cool kids are doing it! You don't want to be left out, do you? In all seriousness though, the fear of being "left out" appears to be central to the new character, Tsutomu. Still continuing the "get more people for the club" arc (which will likely only be one more episode, since they need a minimum of five), Chihaya scouts out Tsutomu since he's got the second highest-grades in their year. Unfortunately, he turns out to be a jerk who doesn't think that professional karuta even exits, so Chihaya drags him to the club to show him what she means. The result is an episode that on the surface is not as entertaining as last week's, but provides an interesting character introduction as well as touching on some themes that I talked about last week. The key to getting Tsutomu to join is by showing him that karuta is a memory game, so he challenges Chihaya and Tachi to play with the cards face down. This highlights Chihaya's one big weakness in the game; she's not very good at the memorization portion, so she relies on her talent of quick reflexes to get her through the game. Talent can only get you so far though, and if Chihaya is going to be the Queen of karuta, she needs to concentrate on reducing her weaknesses. It also makes me wonder what kind of challenges the show will present her with in the future. Just wait--at some point they're going to play karuta blindfolded. Or with one hand tied behind their back. But back to Tsutomu. This episode had an interesting fascination with wide shots juxtaposed with close-ups, and this decision really helped to establish Tsutomu's character. In the first shot he's in, we don't actually see him, just his hand moving across the page while working on his (badly worded) English homework. The next shot is from a little distance away, showing him at an angle, but still not showing his face. Then you hear his classmates whisper about him. Those series of shots establish what we're going to learn about his character in this episode. In his internal monologue, he makes it sound as if he could care less what the "stupid" people say about him, but then he follows it up with saying how he's happy that he can raise the class average. He never leaves his desk; he's so attached to it that he holds on to it all the way to the club room while Chihaya drags him over there. It's initially a funny scene, but at the end of the episode when you realize how far they must have gone, you realize that he wouldn't let that desk go for anything. The short (and sad) flashback shows that his studying is not even really for himself; it's an attempt to get others to accept him, to be part of a crowd, even though he knows that it won't happen that way. His desk suddenly becomes more like the stereotypical ball and chain that prisoners used to wear, preventing him from doing anything. When taken that way, Taichi throwing the desk away from him and basically challenging him to attempt the unfamiliar is the best thing that could've happened to Tsutomu. That said, I'm a bit surprised that Taichi is already over not being able to win every time, something that I assumed that he would still be struggling with a lot. I wish we could've seen where that development had come from, since it got a bit lost in the noise surrounding the challenge of the karuta game, Chihaya's weakness, and Tsutomu's introduction. That said, Taichi's realization that he could win against Chihaya and that Arata wasn't the only person who could give her a challenge was pretty thrilling. Also, apparently Arata has a monopoly on cherry blossom backgrounds in this series. Even in Taichi's mind, it's gotta be cherry blossoms. Additional Screencaps             Images from Crunchyroll.com.
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