It is absolutely time for more Chihayafuru! We return to the show on the heels of one of its most thrilling episodes of all time, a team tournament finale that saw Chihaya, Taichi, and Nishida all pushing themselves to the absolute breaking point. Quite literally, in Chihaya’s case – her determination to succeed alongside her friends meant she kept playing with either a sprained or genuinely broken finger, compounding her injury and ultimately passing out the moment she won. Granted, Chihaya always passes out when she wins, but an injury is an injury. If this is anything more than a sprain, she likely won’t be able to compete in tomorrow’s singles tournament.

That said, it seems unlikely to me that the show will actually go in that direction. Not only would it be dramatically unsatisfying, as well as a repeat of Arata’s conflict from a few episodes ago, but it feels like the show has been building Shinobu’s situation up with the intent of paying off her character growth during the singles tournament. In order to follow through on the evolving perspective she demonstrated during the team finals, I’m guessing her eventual match against Chihaya will be something of a breakthrough, and possibly even the moment she realizes karuta doesn’t have to be a lonely activity.

Then again, Chihayafuru is nothing if not methodical, so that character turn might have to wait for a future tournament. But as I’ve said before, the nature of professional karuta tournaments means these characters only have so many opportunities to interact, and last episode left Shinobu dangling in a kind of personal arc limbo. I hope you’re okay Chihaya, and I promise that’s not entirely because I just want to see more Shinobu material. Let’s get to the karuta!

Episode 20

And we open with our intrepid heroes receiving their congratulations. Great work team, you worked impossibly hard to win this tournament. All of you gave it your all except for Hanano, who was still thoughtful enough to give it her most

And now, as is tradition, here is your victory spear, with which you may disembowel one (1) vanquished opponent of your choice

“My goal is to become the best team in Japan.” Right, that was where we started this tournament. So… we’ve done it? It’s odd to think that Chihaya and her teammates have already climbed the highest possible competitive summit as a group, given that was so directly established as the “end goal” for her journey altogether. Then again, while Chihayafuru is consistently emphatic about the value of playing karuta as a team, it doesn’t really tether that desire to anything competitive. Chihaya wants to beat the queen, but she generally just wants to play with her friends, and so even if there are no more competitive mountains to climb, Chihayafuru on the whole still has to resolve both Arata and Shinobu’s lingering feelings regarding playing karuta as a group

Pff, what a cruel transition. Chihaya tearing up over her team’s success directly leads into a reminder of her injury, with the act of brushing her tears away literally prompting a jab of pain. Enough happy tears, it’s time for suffering!

I like that the empress, at least, isn’t overreacting to this situation. In an actual match, it makes sense that a sprained finger would feel like the end of the world, particularly from Chihaya’s perspective. But the empress is an adult, so a student’s swollen finger is given the immediate attention but general lack of panic it deserves

And then we get a long shot on Taichi, which speaks plenty without any words. We know Taichi more than well enough to know he’s already probably spinning in unproductive mental circles, and maybe even finding a way to blame himself for Chihaya’s injury

Surprisingly, Megumu’s team was beaten by Retro’s in the fight for third place

Ahaha, Hanano blowing her top over learning about the Fated Childhood Friends circle. Of course she would be the first person in this entire cast to recognize they’ve got the most cliche love triangle setup imaginable. This is why they desperately needed a person like her

Hanano’s presence actually makes me much less apprehensive about future non-karuta drama, since she’s such a strong counterpoint to the heightened and often unearned melodrama of the love triangle stuff

Some extremely good small Hanano faces here

“In my mind, the only team for me is the one I had with you and Chihaya.” Dang, I guess we’re really getting into it

The show understands this is a charged moment. The music fades to crickets and the tempo slows, while the compositions shift to a mix of close face shots and mid-distance environmental ones. The overall effect of all these choices is to enhance the immediacy of this moment by matching our experience to the characters’ experience, by portraying this moment in the way they feel it – only naturalistic noise, long pauses between sentences, and a simultaneous sense of imposing night and almost uncomfortable intimacy

Arata breaks the mood with the announcement that he’s coming to Tokyo, represented visually by a harsh break from the naturalistic mood lighting to a gag panel with no background at all

“Chihaya wants to be on a team with you… but I don’t. You’re my enemy.” Damn. This seems like a genuinely important realization for Taichi, but I’m not sure how much I can trust it. I feel like Chihayafuru wavers pretty consistently on whether Taichi is genuinely jealous of Arata or just wants to play together with him again, and thus I can’t immediately trust a confession like this as genuinely meaningful. That’s one of the major costs of inconsistent characterization – future emotional turns don’t land with impact, because your audience hasn’t seen enough consistency in some character’s prior behavior to see this as a genuine change

The doctor gives Chihaya such a drama-friendly diagnosis I have to laugh: “it’s in pretty bad shape and will hurt if you use it, so I don’t recommend engaging in strenuous activity, buuuuut it’s your call”

Hanano looks a lot more dignified with her hair up. I guess they intentionally gave her a bratty, childish-looking hairstyle to match her usual demeanor

Another wonderfully intimate scene – Chihaya runs into Taichi sleeping, and slowly crawls up next to him to headbutt him. It’s one of those series of actions that feels so weird and specific it immediately parses as true to life, and that sensation is again bolstered by the lack of music here

We get an actual vocal insert song for this solidly earned quasi-recap segment, as Chihaya reflects on the course of the tournament to decide what she does next

Ehh, the pacing’s kinda slowing down a bit too much in recalling the final match, particularly since that match was itself heavy on recap intros. This is a hard thing to balance, though

I guess this is the first moment she’s gotten to decompress, and think about how they really accomplished exactly what she set out to. Possibly a way of “letting go” of the individual tournament too, by reflecting on how much they’ve already done

Oh no, noooooo. Chihaya was all prepared to not play, but then Nishida’s sister presented her greatest weakness: goofy, embarrassing t-shirts. She can’t not play now that she has a really ridiculous t-shirt to wear!

And now Sudo arrives to talk some shit. Goddamnit, they’re giving Chihaya all of the exactly worst reasons to compete

“My goal is to win the individual high school tournaments in each class.” What the hell Chihaya, you can’t just decide that now. Though I’ll admit, it’s a clever way to make more of the team relevant

Oh man, this was such a good idea. Now we get the requisite pan through all the other main teams, revealing all the various contenders our team now has to care about specifically. I figured Taichi would be kinda overpowered for Class B, but he’s actually got both Sudo and Rion in the way

The chairman talks trash about the team tournament in order to hype up the individual tournament as a game of “wit and strategy.” I guess this is our explanation for why Chihaya’s team are somehow still underdogs, but it’s not a very convincing one. Then again, the team tournament was pretty sloppy and uncompetitive up until the last couple rounds

I was concerned the show would just kinda breeze over the individual tournament because of the injury, but we’re actually doing the opposite – this is being framed as the real tournament. Hot damn

Oh god, Chihaya’s first round is against Megumu’s top lieutenant, the woman who beat Nishida. At full strength, this would probably be a fine match and a relatively easy win for Chihaya. With her finger busted, this sucks

I guess injuring Chihaya is yet another way to make all of her matches here highly competitive. She’s basically on par with Megumu and Yumin, who are each a small but meaningful distance short of Shinobu, but now she’ll have to scrabble for every win

Shinobu leans down in front of the pairings table, and we get a great composition where she’s basically leaning on the bottom edge of the frame itself

“I’ll make them admit that the team tournament was nothing serious. I’ll crush them all.” We’re essentially getting a soft reset of Shinobu’s arc. She learned something during that finals match, but she’s still got a long way to go

“Arata and I are standing on the same tatami floor.” I’m also very excited to see Arata play for real for the first time since… jeez, have we not seen him compete seriously since the initial childhood flashback?

Retro’s trying to start some friendly rivalry drama and Taichi’s just being depressed and existential, lol

I love this establishing shot panning in on Chihaya’s play, mostly because the frame is so full of other competitors that we now actually have solid opinions on. There’s Retro’s teammate who lacked passion for victory, there’s the guy who loves Rion, there’s Megumu’s second in command. We really have a strong perspective on the field now

And Done

Aw shit, out of the frying pan and into the fire! With Chihayafuru having just pulled off one of its most exciting episodes ever, I figured Chihaya’s injury would be an opportunity for the show to slow down a little. Instead, she’s basically just gritting her teeth and bearing with the pain, competing in a tournament that seems to be cashing in on all the character development this show has distributed across its impressively vast cast. This tournament is being framed as an ensemble drama, and I couldn’t be happier about it – a great deal of the fun of tournament arcs is “how will this power match up against this power,” and all the groundwork Chihayafuru has laid means there’s plenty to dig into across these matches. HOW ARE THINGS STILL HEATING UP I’M SO EXCITED AHHHH.

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