Chihayafuru Episode 22--Conduct Befitting a Queen

I get why Harada-sensei doesn't like the other karuta society now. This is how their star player and former champion acts in a match?




For most of this episode I felt bad for this character. She spends ten years playing karuta, finally becomes the Queen, but loses her title in the very next year. That's rough. I didn't blame her at all for feeling jaded and for wondering why she was even participating in the tournament. The way that the episode set things up, with the flashbacks and Chihaya's determination to not let someone who has given up beat her, I assumed that the problem was mainly with the leader of the other karuta society since it was shown that he continued to push her to compete despite the fact that she did worse every time. Like Chihaya, I was put into a false sense of security. I was convinced that Chihaya would win; how could she lose? Her opponent had been beaten down by the current Queen, and by her own admission, even if she did make it to the finals she still couldn't beat her. So when she started contesting who had gotten to the cards first, I was as shocked as Chihaya. If her pinky touched that card, then I'm the Queen of England. She wasn't playing with her eyes on a long-term goal, like Chihaya. She just got mad at the opponent in front of her, projecting her problems with the current Queen onto her (although she wasn't off in her comparison between the two) and decided that she was going to do anything to win, even if it meant outright lying. If that is her go-to method for winning karuta matches, no wonder the current Queen beat her. I'm with Taichi on this one; karuta is scary.




As agonizing as it was to watch this former champion get away with what can easily be considered cheating, I'm glad that the show has established that there are ways to bend the rules in karuta, just like in any other sport. It wasn't until this episode that I realized that up until this point, every match has been played fair and square, a meeting of skill, strategy and endurance. What made this match so frustrating was because Chihaya didn't lose because of a lack of skill, she lost to someone who knows how to make a scene when it will benefit her the most. Thankfully, not everything in this episode was as exasperating. I highly approve of Kanade becoming a reader. I have wondered a little bit about the readers throughout the series, but since this show focuses on the competitive side, I didn't think that it would be addressed. I hope that we get to see what kind of tests a reader has to pass in order to gain their ranking, but given the number of episodes that we have left, I'm not sure that we will. Also concerning (given the episode count) is once again I don't know where this show will go for its final few episodes. The implication was that Chihaya would meet the Queen again but with the loss in this episode, I just don't know. ...Second season please?

Images from Crunchyroll.com.