It's the moment we've been waiting for! ..Sort of. I'm not saying that the episode wasn't good though; it was great, the best one so far in my opinion. But right when I saw that Arata had come to the next tournament, my only thought was REMATCH. I knew that they couldn't face each other in the tournament since Taichi still doesn't have his A-rank, but I figured that they could have at it after the tournament was over, since I was sure that Taichi would win it all this time. I was wrong. While Arata's reappearance definitely surprises Taichi, it's not until Arata gives him his contact information to pass on to Chihaya that it starts to really affect him. We know that Taichi was doing well through the second round, before he spoke to Arata. After the fact, Taichi loses offscreen in the third round. I find it interesting that it's not Arata himself that intimidates Taichi, but the possibility that he still can't compete with him when it comes to getting Chihaya's respect in the game and maybe her heart as well. This reaction was foreshadowed in an earlier episode and now that we're getting closer to the Master/Queen competitions, I think that it's fair to say that we'll see Arata a lot more. How is Taichi going to deal with that? My favorite scene in this episode was one that partially dealt with Taichi's feelings after he lost the third round with underwater imagery. Chihaya compares Arata's playing style to water, and we visually get to see what she means (compare to the Queen, who has affiliated herself with ice through her cold, calculated playing style and the Snowmaru T-shirt). At the beginning and the end of this scene, we see Tachi, who is surrounded by darker water and you get the immediate impression that he feels like he's sinking or trapped. It was beautiful and heartbreaking. But despite all of this, they're still friends and they're still looking out for each other. Despite his feelings about Chihaya, Taichi is genuinely glad to see Arata plying karuta again. And Arata asks Taichi if it's even okay for him to contact Chihaya, since he's not sure if she and Tachi are an item (a completely valid concern). Chihaya also makes an interesting note of the poem that she associates with Arata: "It sounds like a love poem, but it's really about a childhood friend." I'm not sure if this means that she does like Arata but doesn't think that he likes her back, but one thing is for sure; the relationship that these three have to karuta is much simpler than the one with the romantic underpinnings. Taichi was right to tell Arata to give the information to Chihaya himself. Wherever their relationship goes Tachi has the right to refuse to be the intermediary. Towards the end of the episode, when Taichi was offered A-rank anyway because of his two-second place wins, I thought at first that it was a good idea. He's worked hard; he deserves it. But when he turned it down and said that what he really wanted was to "become a person who doesn't run away," I was reminded of that first tournament when he went up against Arata and cheated. He's still trying to become better than that kid who had to resort to stealing someone's glasses to get a leg up. If his intent is to make A-rank the same way that Chihaya and Arata did, by winning a tournament, then I applaud him. At the very least within the game that they all love, they should stand on equal ground. Images from Crunchyroll.com.
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