Justin: Hey, remember when I said the Mizusawa-Fujisaki match would only take one episode? ...Yeah, unless there’s actually going to be more than 25 episodes, it looks like that won’t happen, and it’s kind of unfortunate. The reasoning is simple: this recap half implies that the next episode might just carry on for another episode. That would leave only 7 episodes left for the individual tournament. What this sounds like is even with the fast pacing in the series, someone will get shafted out of the spotlight -- and it won’t include the main 4 elephants in the room (Chihaya, Arata, Taichi, Shinobu). That would be disappointing. Chances are the episodes will still be good, but based on the team tournament, it looks like there are some players to check out, but we might not have enough time to really get into their struggles. But who knows, I might be underestimating the Chihayafuru anime staff in terms of adapting the manga. They will get their chance to prove it down the stretch of the spring season. Otherwise, aside from the Madhouse staff rightfully taking to task Arata and his lack of screentime -- should have known even the anime staff was going to make fun of him -- this wasn’t exactly an episode to remember. Now, had they implied how much Arata has sway over Chihaya despite his lack of screentime-- whoops, better not get into detail with that since I do know someone who has Taichi fan-goggles on! Muse: You’d better not be talking about me, because I’ve made it clear time and again that I’m an Arata supporter. Anyway, when I realized that this was a recap episode, two thoughts immediately came to mind: “Crap, it’s a recap” and “Awesome! More skits!” Those of us who did watch the recap episode from last season will remember that the recap portions were spaced out with a good number of shorts containing new material, from jokes about the team shirts to expanding on characters like Chihaya’s sister. Porky’s sister was also officially introduced during these segments, and there’s a particularly memorable one about the boys of the club discussing who is more dateable: Kana or Chihaya. I really enjoyed these skits, so I was excited to see more of them this season. Unfortunately, this time around they dialed the recap content up while the skits barely amounted to a handful. What little we had was still amusing (Porky’s sister thinking that Retro looks like Johnny Depp, Kana’s adventures in false eyelashes), but since it didn’t add up to the amount that we had last time, it felt lacking. I was expecting a lot more with the new characters, but instead that meant the recap needed more time. I feel like an opportunity was missed here. Justin: So now with this recap episode, it doesn’t exactly leave us with much to talk about, though I would say this: if you had not watched S2 of Chihayafuru before, I think you could get up to speed by watching this. But that is just me thinking it could work. Otherwise, it rehashes moments I’m pretty sure most of us remember. So with that train of thought, since Madhouse decided it was the time to recap the season so far, I think it’s time we share our favorite moments from S2 so far. So feel free to share below what you guys managed to have as your favorite! My favorite moment, among some of the many, was the First Akashi Girls/Mizusawa match. Granted, it ended up coming at a perfect time -- or imperfect time, since my March Madness bracket got destroyed -- because I was in a mode where the parallels between karuta and other sports got me going. We had the seemingly heavy favorites in First Akashi while Mizusawa had no cache, no history, and not a lot of people gave them credit for winning in their half of the bracket. In short, they were disrespected. But not surprisingly, the match turned out to be great. It had some pretty intense twists and turns, and ended in the best way possible: with Tsutomu winning a match to send his team to the Finals. Leading up to that game, they had learned a lot about themselves and how to play, and while some still have some issues (Oh Porky!), I think the culmination of their growth came with this match, and they have definitely come a long way to get to where they are now. ...I should probably end this by saying my favorite funny moment was all the times Arata did show up in his limited screentime, he managed to change everything. Who knew you only needed two minutes to do anything? Muse: If we gave Arata more than two minutes, he would probably take over the world. Anyway, I have a really hard time picking my favorite moment at this point (and I’m still highly anticipating Arata’s reunion with Chihaya and Taichi if this match ever actually ends), so I’m letting myself off easy and kicking that can down the road until this season is wrapped up. It’s much easier for me to pick out what moments I liked the best once I have the whole picture to look back at. For example, my favorite moment from the first season was Chihaya’s match with Shinobu, but I didn’t fully realize that until the aftermath kicked in and we continued to see Shinobu as an awesome character. What was your favorite moment from the last fifteen episodes? Images from Crunchyroll.com.
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