Go team, go! Mizusawa fight!
I've talked a lot about how this show packs an emotional punch regardless of what the plot is doing and this episode is no exception. We've gotten quick glimpses before of what the people outside of the club think of karuta (see Chihaya's sister's callous comment in episode 2), but not to the extent that it was shown in this episode. First off, Chihaya's sister re-appears and it looks like not much has changed. Her biggest fans continue to be her parents, but it definitely is affecting Chihaya more negatively than it did in the past, when she was also on the "big sister is great" bandwagon. It's bad enough that Chihaya doesn't feel comfortable asking her parents for money for the trip, let alone telling them that her team won. This seems to be another aspect of her fear of being alone (I'm still running with this theory) and that it may have started at home. After all, the show seems to be making a point in portraying her sister's vanity in pursuit of her "dream," so much so that when she throws out that she wants to pay the mortgage on the house, it seems like a fake reason that she tacked on halfway through to justify it to herself. Meanwhile, Chihaya's reasoning behind her dream has to do with her friends as well as wanting to become the best at the spor, reasons that organically came out of her personality, not so that she would be praised. However, there's nothing wrong with wanting recognition from your parents, and the moment when she discovered the newspaper clipping was great. Hopefully she'll feel more comfortable about talking to her parents from now on, and maybe they, in turn, won't lavish so much attention on the sibling who doesn't need or deserve it.
A similar problem running through this episode was with the Empress, the scary teacher who is the club advisor for whatever reason. Again, this show does a great job of pulling your emotions into the scene, since I was really mad at her when she downplayed the nationals as "probably just some ceremony at a shrine." Thankfully, she came around once she saw the club practice, which solidified a point that has been running through this series that I haven't noticed until now; everything that this team accomplishes will be done through the strength of their determination and the love of the game, since the people around them don't quite understand, since it's not a "real" sport. Speaking of determination, Kanade has a great scene in this episode, revisiting her love of the poetry itself. I liked her idea for card setup, and am a little disappointed in Nishida for not even attempting to incorporate her creativity into one of the more conventional layouts. I think that using that layout would be a great strategy; it would confuse her opponent, since they would've never seen anything like that before while Kanade would know where all the cards are. Then again, what do I know, I've never played karuta in my life and probably never will, since my Japanese reading comprehension skills are horrible. In any case, I've missed the little background lessons that were in her introduction episode, and hope that they'll continue to pop up. It looks like the mid-season finale is going to be a good one, and right now I only have one thing to say... Arata had better be there.
Images from Crunchyroll.com.
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