Muse: I’m going to start off with a bit of an apology to Porky. After the way the episode ended last week, I thought that he had somehow turned against Tsutomu. As it turned out, Porky only said that because he was concerned that Tsutomu didn’t want to be a regular member anymore, so he tried to provoke him into fighting for his spot. That idea backfires pretty quickly, and Porky is left dealing with the possibility that one of the original members of the karuta club won’t play with them anymore. Of course, it’s all a big misunderstanding and Porky realizes this during his match. In the meantime, it does create some interesting drama centered around the new players eventually taking the place of the old players, and how friendships and teammates have to adjust.
The only problem with this is that Porky is given no reason to feel this way in the first place. All of the drama in the first half of this episode is started by Porky making the comment that they shouldn’t change the lineup, i.e., Tsutomu shouldn’t be swapped in. His internal monologue in the cafeteria afterwards makes it clear that he thinks Tsutomu doesn’t care anymore, and that the comment was a test for him to see if he still wanted to play. But why even make a comment like that in the first place? Tsutomu has always been the data collector of the group, and, as I brought up last week, it’s possible that he has some lingering guilt from when he bailed on the team in the tournament last year. What made Porky think that he needed to “test” him?
While I can’t deny that I love the discussion and result that follows, the lack of reasoning makes the whole thing seem like it was set up just to pad for time. The strength of Chihayafuru is in its character interactions, and leaving out a key point like this is the first misstep with its main characters that the show has taken. This is a bit different than what I’ve been talking about for the last two weeks about the lack of discussion about Arata’s motivations; the show has dropped a lot of hints that it will talk about his reasoning later. Here, it feels more like they pre-engineered the drama and then forgot to put the reason in.
And that’s the last I’ll talk about that, since I love this show too much to get hung up on a mistake.
Justin: Chihayafuru is a great anime. But sometimes even great anime can have their moments where it just doesn’t work out. I said last week it was weird for Porky to suggest to keep the same lineup when Tsutomu was considering a change. To me, that felt like a dead end -- I couldn’t figure out where it was supposed to go from there. Did he think Tsutomu wasn’t good to compete or did he feel like he should be doing something else? Either of those reasonings for me didn’t quite make sense to me, so I was curious to find out why Porky did ask that in the first place. But the 22 minutes went by...and the question was not answered.
So sure, we might have seen something remotely close to questioning Tsutomu’s motives in the last episode. But the only person who could have noticed that was Sumire. Otherwise, there is literally no reason Porky should have asked what he did...and not provide why he asked it. There wasn’t a single build up leading to suggest it. Did I miss a part where this was mentioned? I don’t believe it was shown, so instead of me enjoying the first two or so minutes of the episode, I actually instead wanted to bang my head against a wall, since I knew for sure no explanation could be given to salvage this drama. And there wasn’t. Maybe the staff was trying to buzz up something within the core of the original five members since it seems our two first years are pushing them. I said some weeks back with new members there are benefits, but I wondered what would be the negatives of having extra members. This was apparently the negative, and for me, it did a poor job in executing that.
I can only give Chihayafuru credit though. The choice to have a number of different events can offset something major, and despite the mistake, it solidified Tsutomu’s importance to the team. Chihaya ended up making a comment later in the episode about she didn’t think data was important, and maybe for some, you would think that -- after all, it’s karuta. How much data do you really need on an opponent? However, since I’ve been watching sports for basically all my life, scouting and having data is crucial. You can have all the talent in the world, but even the most talented players has a weakness or two, or at least something that’s not their strong suit, and teams will do their best to come up with measures to exploit that weakness. Of course, it also requires you to have the right players to exploit said weakness, but scouting and game planning is a major factor when it comes to winning competitively. Tsutomu’s impact when not playing karuta is a major factor. He is able to find out what each player is good at, their habits, and their strengths. They were able to win their match against Shoyo thanks to Tsutomu, and his desire to help his team win. Sure, he may not be playing in a match, but winning the battle before the match can help, and he certainly proved that in this episode.
Muse: Like I said above, Tsutomu has always been the scout, so there’s not necessarily anything new going on here. However, with the goal of “Number One in Japan” now the main focus, understanding their opponents is more important than ever, and Tsutomu’s data gathering skills get their fair due in this episode. Mizusawa wouldn’t have made it past the match in this episode if it wasn’t for him.
Since Porky was the one who made a big deal about Tsutomu not playing, his match gets most of the focus. Since he’s disappointed in Tsutomu, his opponent easily starts getting the better of him, making Porky believe that he’s as fast as Shinobu. It’s not until Porky remembers Tsutomu’s last minute bit of advice (“He’s just guessing”) that he’s able to turn the match around. The same goes for the other members of the Mizusawa team. They each remember what Tsutomu told them about their opponent’s playing style, and adjust to it with varying degrees of success (it’s adorable that Kana thinks her pouting face would stop that guy from trying the same tactics).
This episode also makes a good point about data collecting that I hadn’t thought of before but now seems obvious in retrospect; paying close attention to every single player and being able to figure out their quirks and style of play is more exhausting than actually playing a match. We’ve seen in most of Chihayafuru’s episodes that the players usually need a few rounds before they can read an opponent's strategy. Tsutomu does this without actually playing against them, and uses that same level of concentration on multiple matches at once. This is nothing short of amazing. We even get a scene where he tries to interview the losers of a match, and when they try to brush him off, he says a great line:
“I want to do whatever I can to support my teammates!”
As Porky realizes during his match, Tsutomu has true dedication. He has the ability to pull off this difficult job so that his teammates--his friends--can get the benefits. If he still has that guilt from last year, I think he’s more than made up for it.
Justin: So ok, it’s time. Unlike the last time Mizusawa made it to Nationals, this time they’ve made it to the semi-finals, and this time, they have to deal with First Akashi Girls, and their ace, Megumu. Needless to say I can only expect the match to be great, but the question for now is what can we make of Megumu? It’s established that she’s kind of a weirdo, and she’s gonna be facing off against Chihaya. But we haven’t explored her reasons for playing karuta. I expect a primer on that soon. And what about the rest of the team? Are they so good that it makes Mizusawa look tiny and not respect them, as Tsutomu believed? I personally wonder though what will Mizusawa gain from the match against them...and will they get their rematch against Hokou? Guess we shall have to see.
Muse: I knew that Megumu was going to be important! I hadn’t guessed that she was a contender for Queen though. Another rival for Chihaya! Hopefully she’ll be better than the player who went up against Shinobu for the title at the end of the last season. I didn’t like her; I still think that she’s not much more than a cheater.
On a different note, Arata has been pushed back to only appearing once in the episode. As it turns out, his punishment is to write an essay and he’s also forbidden from cheering on his friends. So we’ll have to wait a little longer for the reunion and all the drama that it will bring. Boo. Also, Shinobu is pretty shameless, stealing Arata’s clothes. She’d better not let Chihaya catch her like that.
Images from Crunchyroll.com.
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