Okay so I might be 4 years late to the bandwagon, but I swear even though this is a 4 year old anime IT'S GOLDEN. It's pretty much everything I've ever wanted and more. I truly don't know if my words can even begin to convey the mix of emotions I'm feeling as I write this. Seldom does anime move me as this series has done. It's absolutely breath-taking. I savored every episode and actually controlled myself so I didn't binge it in one day and then feel sad later for doing so. It's was so incredibly enrapturing that I almost spammed every single person I knew with screenshots of awesome scenes and 2 AM emotional rants. Not a lot of anime get me this excited.
{Spoilers}
Many times I saw this anime on people's lists of recommendations. You know the ones; they're the ones with all the anime that everyone knows like Skip Beat and Clannad. I never really gave more than a passing thought to watching Chihayafuru until I saw a GIF of it on, surprise, Tumblr. After that I was really intrigued so I thought I'd give the anime a go. I mean I do have time to explore during summer vacation after all. This is one of those moments where you made a great life decision, but don't even know it until after the fact.
The story opens on Chihaya putting up posters to recruit people to her karuta club (if you don't know what this is then google it or watch the series (probably better to just watch the series)). Wearing track pants and a skirt, she definitely is a beauty in vain. However that's only on the surface. She's actually a super passionate karuta player always striving to be better in order to become a Queen. How she got introduced to karuta is actually a super endearing backstory about Chihaya, Arata, and Taichi. Arata introduced her to the excitement and challenge of karuta which gave Chihaya her own dream. Taichi was introduced as an immature little boy who bullies the girl he likes, which at the time wasn't cute but his intentions were just so pure that I couldn't help but love him a little bit. Their childhood friendship is really endearing. Just their comradery reminded me of sports anime and how they always say 'let's always play together' and the like. It just makes my heart so warm thinking about how they were so close-knit.
When Arata left I was kind of close to crying, but I didn't because I'm a strong (not really) person that won't be swayed by such things. Once he left I was interested to see how the storyline would pan out. I wasn't too sure if I should expect to see all of them or if the plot would focus on one person only. I think the way they only focused on one location with Chihaya as the main focus made it a lot easier to follow what was going on as well as give a sufficient emotional connection to all three characters as well as to Nishida, Kana, and Tsutomu.
Seeing Nishida come back to karuta, as well as seeing Kana and Tsutomu's introduction and growth to loving karuta made me really happy. Because it made the plot more diverse when they showed everyone's interpretation of what was going on and everyone's growth as players.
Since this series is very similar to the setup of a sports anime where they have training, practice, games, and you see the characters' progression, it has the same passion that is conveyed to the viewers. During all the matches I was tense along with the players because the creators of this series made the scenes so tense that you could almost physically feel the tension as a layer of atmosphere surrounding the matches. Another thing I enjoyed beyond the tension and plausiblity of the games was the fact that everyone had their flaws and were actively striving to become better players. Actually seeing everyone's struggles made the series that much more engaging to watch. For example, seeing Taichi's evolution from a coward into someone trying his best not to run away anymore was super inspiring. Anyone watching that scene would see just how passionate he was and how committed he was to really changing himself for the better. If you look at any of the characters you'll see a similar pattern of growth stemming from a need to improve.
Beyond that deep and intense stuff, this series has really high entertainment value. If you're the type to be an OP ED snob, this series is quite nice. Not the best, but I feel that the music gives off a very nostalgic feeling and the animation going along with it, although not entirely in sync with the plot/relevant, are very nice. They have some really entertaining scenes like when Sudo called Dr. Harada an intelligent bear after losing to him in the Masters preliminaries.
What also added to the depth and complexity of the series was that it had side stories of different players like Kanai who had their own personal stories of their motivation to play karuta and enveryone's individual perceptions of karuta. My personal favorite secondary character was Ririka. When she lost her match to Chihaya, she was really sad, but she still wished Chihaya luck and when she drew a four leaf clover for luck on her hand my heart melted. She's so precious.
Truly, I love all the characters. They all have their funny little quirks and their personalities and it just makes me really happy that they're all so different and yet all so likeable. Like Kana with her traditional clothes on makes her look so regal. And the way she looks at the poems differently than any of the other players is fascinating. Desktomu (his nickname is cute) is also super cute, not in a traditional sense, but he's really really hardworking and I'm glad that he found a fun activity that he can do with other people and that he has friends from the karuta club instead of before where his only 'friends' were people that wanted to use him. Also can we just talk for like 3 days just about Taichi? Ugh. When he lost to Nishida and didn't make it to Class A I was shocked. Even though it was luck of the draw he still kept trying to attack and make his chances of winning better even by the slightest bit. And then when Dr. Harada offered him a promotion to Class A that he didn't take? I almost rage quit. I was so shocked, but that made my admiration for him as a good person grow.
Also I'd like to say that episode 20 made me cry like a baby. When Arata didn't want to give his number directly to Chihaya because he wasn't sure if in that time they weren't in contact if Taichi and Chihaya had started dating I actually started tearing up. And then Arata and Chihaya met again (because that time they met in Fukui doesn't really count) for the first time in years and Chihaya was so overjoyed. *sigh* My heart broke a little bit for Taichi because I think he never made a move because he knew that Chihaya liked Arata more and it wasn't right for him to make a move when Arata wasn't around. Something like that. And then when Taichi turned down Class A with his super admirable reason (I know I've mentioned this so many times and I will continue to do so until I want to stop). And then when the episode ended with Arata's coach saying how nervous Arata was to meet his friends again for the first time. I cried. I cried really hard. I stood up at 1 AM and got myself tissues to wipe my rolling tears. When something makes you cry, you know it was a really really good thing.
If I could, I would rant for a really long time. However, I think if I did so this would become an unruly review and would start to lose coherency because I would give up on all the grammatical rules and just say whatever came to mind. But I highly highly recommend this anime because of its high entertainment value, the diversity of its characters, the growth each of the characters have, as well as the inspiration anyone could draw from watching the characters grow and become better people. I love this.
Cool Cool Cool So Cool
DONE I'M DONE I DON'T KNOW WHO I'M ROOTING FOR ANYMORE
Sources: http://www.themarysue.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Chi4.gif, http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m06fjivMWM1qbvpv0.gif, https://66.media.tumblr.com/bfa78ca3e7e42cdd0f531dbae4338c71/tumblr_o1f2l3raC11rmxzmko1_500.gif, https://m.popkey.co/4c69c3/R49Qk.gif
P.S. I started adding the sources for the GIFs because maybe one day more than one person will look at this and find their GIF here and try to sue me so I'm starting now as a preventative measure.
