They say that if you want to improve at a competitive sport or game, you have to play someone better than yourself.
So after resolving to become a better player after last week's episode, Chihaya goes up against her first A-rank opponent that's not a high-school student like her. Last week, Tsutomu brought up strategy and the concept of analyzing an opponent's playing style, both of which were foreign to Chihaya since all she focused on was her speed. It finally sinks in to Chihaya that while speed and stamina are definitely important, they're not the only tools that she needs to develop if she wants to become the queen. She's not just racing against the other player to get the right card, she's also playing a game of the mind, and whoever is better at reading their opponents strategy and adjusting in turn will have the edge in the match. Chihaya's opponent didn't have her speed, but as she pointed out, at the moment Chihaya only has speed. The discovery of "three-syllable-timing" was amazing to her. In a way, it speaks to Chihaya's talent for the game that she's able to come this far without realizing that she could learn a lot from her opponents, but pure talent alone isn't enough to become Queen. It should be interesting to see how her play style evolves after this tournament.
On the other side of things, we've got quite the finals showdown with Tsutomu vs. Kanade and Tachi vs. Nishida. As the episode pointed out, this is never going to happen again since these matches are for an advancement in rank. The end of the episode focused on the Tsutomu vs. Kanade match which put a lot of what Chihaya had just realized into play. Tsutomu knows Kanade's playing style well and that she mentally connected the cards together based on their historical context, which can be a weak point when it comes down to the wire. However, she might be able to make up for that due to her improved posture from wearing the hakama. From the way the episode ended their match could go either way, but it looks like next time we're going to focus on the Tachi vs. Nishida match, which is apparently heated enough to get it's own rock guitar background music. All of my knowledge of karuta is based off of what this show has told me so I may be wrong on this, but from what I've seen so far Tachi and Nishida are pretty even in terms of skill. It should be a really interesting match. While the character driven segments of the show have been nice to watch (Chihaya gradually learning how to become a better player, Tachi putting aside his feelings to just play the game, etc.) it's really nice to get back to the nail-biting tournament matches. Chihaya's showdown against the Queen feels like it was forever ago, even though it's only been a couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to an intense showdown next week!
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Images from Crunchyroll.com.
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