Captain’s Log: I am currently five days into preview week, and team morale is approaching dangerously low levels. If the crew have to struggle through one more awful isekai or rote otome adaptation, I’m not sure what might happen. In light of this, I’m requisitioning one (1) episode of Chihayafuru to raise team spirits, reminding everyone that anime can also be good and fun and not an exhausting, spirit-breaking experience. Give my regards to the folks back home, and pray for our safe return.

Folks, it’s time for Chihayafuru. Our last episode turned out to be an unexpectedly important digression from Chihaya’s team tournament, as Arata arrived and found himself roped into secretly helping an entirely different team. In base narrative terms, the only major takeaway from that digression was “Arata is now in danger of being disqualified from the singles tournament” – a dash of fairly arbitrary drama, and a threat that I’m really hoping is just there to be an empty cliffhanger. On the other hand, in connecting-with-the-cast terms, Arata’s match was an absolutely essential bit of relationship building for Arata and the audience. Arata doesn’t need to connect with the other characters – he needs to connect with us, and join his costars as an approachable human being. Last episode did an excellent job of furthering that goal, and I’m very ready to see the show follow through on his newfound relatability. Let’s get to the karuta!

Episode 10

Chihaya tells Taichi, “stay focused. If Arata comes to see us, I want to show off my team, and how strong we are.” For any other pair of speakers and subjects, this would seem like an extremely insulting line – “you need to succeed so I can show you off to this other uninvolved friend.” But Chihayafuru has pretty much reached the point where I buy that Taichi is just as invested in Arata’s approval as Chihaya is, even in spite of his romantic rivalry

Of course, the fact that this does feel natural also reflects just how much time Chihayafuru has spent working to make it feel natural. Chihayafuru has worked very, very hard to make us believe in the mythic nature of the bond between these three, and I only hope it has some plans for paying off that audience trust. If this is also simply to justify the base combination of a sports drama and a shoujo melodrama, I will not be pleased – this fated trio nonsense has not been in its own reward, it’s been an indulgence I accept as the cost of the show’s other, better material

And as expected, this is framed as an effective rallying cry, pulling the team’s focus together. But tricks like this are just never as effective as writers often seem to think they are – simply having characters express their belief in something unbelievable rarely bolsters the audience’s faith in that unbelievable thing, it instead undercuts their belief in those characters. In this show’s case, it’s a minor issue: “alright author, you can say all of Chihaya’s teammates are encouraged by hearing they’re actually fighting for Arata’s sake, but that won’t make me believe it.” In more themey-wemey shows, this can lead to more entertaining disconnects – like Mahouka, for example, which is largely dedicated to an Übermensch kicking insane amounts of ass and then saying “objectivism is good,” followed by everyone else saying “yes, objectivism. Yes.” A compelling argument indeed

Their opponents now are Yamaguchi Mioka High School

Apparently this school is a bunch of nerds who all get accepted into Tokyo U

Mioka simply shuffle their cards and deal them as they flip over, using no patterns for their card placements at all. And then Taichi realizes three of their opponents won an all-Japan quiz show, meaning this team’s talent is “perfect memorization.” But can that alone really compare to Chihaya’s team of two A class players and one more-or-less A class player?

This sounds like a new song? Some menacing pan flute here, which interacts a little gracelessly with the strings

Seems like this might end up being a relatively light match, given the somewhat goofy and emotionally ungrounded setup for their opponents

Oh, now this is interesting. So while Arata only knows he “may” be banned from the individual tournament, we viewers actually get to see the committee discuss whether or not he gets to play. That takes care of my worry from last week, that this would be an arbitrary source of peril until it suddenly disappeared – instead, it’s being used to further illustrate Arata’s unique position. And I also appreciate this insight into the ramshackle nature of this tournament’s council, who are themselves basically making up official rulings as they go along

Hah, they make a case for letting Arata compete on the grounds that he’d make for a better Master role model than Suo. Well, I can’t deny that

And of course, Arata himself is far more invested in receiving a fitting punishment than any of these adults. They’d be happy to let him play, he’s just made it into an awkward situation – meanwhile, Arata can’t rest unless he’s suffered for being such a nice guy. Oh, Arata

The empress gets a nice moment with their opponents’ coach, who freely admits he only sees karuta as a tool for improving memorization

“I’ve never seen cards placed in the middle like this!” The fact that Chihaya is so wedded to routine and easily flustered works very well for matches like this. It’d be inconceivable for someone who only plays karuta to improve their memorization to match Chihaya’s A-rank skills heads up, but if Chihaya always receives a 70% skill debuff or whatnot when she’s faced with an unfamiliar situation, the range of possible opponents who can meaningfully challenge her increases tremendously. And it also means the show can fully lean into themed enemy teams like this, as opposed to making sure every team has enough actual ringers to match Chihaya’s team

The opponents smartly lean into their advantage, changing the whole board state between every verse. The rest of the teams must hate these guys

Damn, this is fantastic. Now one of the enemy players is directly discussing the skills that carry over from quiz games to karuta – the idea of pre-hitting the buzzer the moment you’re certain how the question will end, and the lag with which the reader hears that buzzer, and thus stops offering more clues through their final syllables. These are essentially Chihaya’s own specialties, something that’s been more assumed than focused on as a trainable skill, but these quiz game opponents offer the ideal metaphor for explaining how her skills are just as easy to break down as any others

“You can’t buzz once you’ve already got the answer. You have to trust in that moment of inspiration, and attack!” Congrats Chihayafuru, you’ve successfully made another seemingly innocuous form of competition seem utterly terrifying

Oh my god Shinobu why are you just standing out in the rain staring at them

I mean, the answer is “to help Chihaya get out of a self-defeating loop,” but still

And again, Chihaya’s emotional instability also helps this become a real fight. Chihaya is without question better than this guy at the precise skill he’s abusing, but she’s rattled, and we’ve established her as easy to rattle consistently enough that I buy it’s losing her this match

“I don’t know what you did, but stop acting cool and bow your head.” Ahaha, Shinobu gets a terrific moment with Arata. It’s nice to see her with someone she’s actively friends with – we haven’t seen this side of her before

This also results in a non-arbitrary conclusion for Arata’s conflict: it’s not “they decided to let him play after all,” it’s that the Queen throws her weight around and makes it impossible to disqualify him. Nice work on all points, Chihayafuru

Tsutomu impresses Hanano with his exhaustive knowledge of weather updates

Hanano gets some terrific and actually well-animated expression work here, leading me to believe she’s also an animator favorite. Gremlin characters like her do tend to be the most charmingly expressive

Hah, the quiz champion is actually, secretly far more invested in karuta. This is turning into an exemplary episode in a lot of ways, from its management of multiple conflicts and Arata material to its articulation of this match’s unique opponents

Chihaya takes a breath, and the show theme slowly filters in. It’s time

“I don’t mind it when she looks down on me” can’t believe we’re even finding the time to help this boy discover a kink, so proud of this show

And here comes the long reveal: in spite of Chihaya’s troubles, Nishida, Taichi, and Kana are all pretty much acing their matches. Chihaya may be mediocre at memorization and terrible at adjusting to new variables, but that doesn’t mean her teammates are too

Ah, it turns out Nishida actually isn’t very good at memorization either – but unlike Chihaya, he’s accepted that as a weakness of his play, and embraced defensive play to mitigate it. You don’t need remember all the shifting placements of your opponents’ cards if you never give up any of your own

And finally, Chihaya’s opponent can see the true nature of her talent

Chihaya learns Arata and Shinobu have some sort of connection

And Done

Hell yeah, that was a great episode! There was basically no sense of actual danger in Chihaya’s duel, but it still managed to be a standout through the compelling focus on her opponent. His experience in quiz games allowed him to smartly illustrate some of the base mechanics of Chihaya’s talents, all while the show also offered fine Arata material, an array of great expressions, a fair amount of tactical back-and-forth… basically everything you’d hope for from an episode of Chihayafuru. I might still be stuck in hell week (editor’s note: he survived), but at least the karuta is extremely good.

This article was made possible by reader support. Thank you all for all that you do.