Chihayafuru Episode 13--Tears

I was not expecting the majority of the tournament episode to focus on an Arata flashback, but I'm not complaining.




Let's get the important stuff out of the way first: Kanade's mom is awesome. The apple really did not fall far from the tree. In all seriousness, I hope that we'll see more of her in future episodes. Anyway, despite not seeing a lot of karuta action, this episode really brought the emotion. I thought that the transition into the flashback was pretty well done; just when I started wondering where Arata was, we see that he's gone the wrong way and is standing at a train crossing, remembering that his grandfather used to drive him to nationals. Short, sweet, plot-related and symbolic for those who want to read into the train crossing. However, at first I wasn't sure why we were being shown this; up until this point, Chihayafuru has been good about no rehashing information. We already knew about the tragic circumstances surrounding his grandfather's death, what more was there to add? The result is a heart-wrenching segment where we watch Arata not only lose his grandfather, but his mentor and hero. But in a plot twist worthy of a Hollywood movie, his grandfather regains his memory long enough to tell Arata to go to the tournament where we know that he will win his A-rank, as well as the last time that he will see his grandfather. I'm glad that they let the moment stand on its own for the most part rather than rehashing the death, opting for a brief flash of Arata crumpling his certificate in his hand later on (which we saw in an earlier episode). His final realization that he's carrying on his grandfather's legacy towards the end of the episode brought things full circle, and this time I'm sure that the next time we see him, he'll be kicking butt in karuta.




Now as for the rest of the stuff that went on in this episode, mostly concerning Chihaya... I'm not sure what to make of the girl that they showed at the beginning of the episode. Is she a future opponent? A god? What is going on here? I'm sure that we'll get some answers, since so much attention was placed on that scene (slow-mo and blur and everything!) but I'm not sure what impression I was supposed to take away from that. On a different topic, what we did see of the first team match did show that the nationals are just as challenging as one would expect. It's too bad that all that build-up over the last couple of episodes led to nothing, but it would've been crazy for them to take nationals so easily, and I get the feeling this the next time they're there, it'll be for the final story arc of the show, unless my instincts are completely off. Speaking of which, I felt like we'd taken a sudden left turn into daytime soap opera land with Chihaya dramatically fainting and then later crying in Arata's lap. In it's own defense, both of those scenes definitely won over my shoujo fangirl side, but Chihayafuru definitely has to be wary of overplaying scenes in the future if this kind of thing is going to keep happening. But this is mostly just me being nitpicky, and it was offset by the great handling of emotional scenes in the Arata flashback, so it's all good. But I am curious if those of you out there who aren't as attached to Arata as I am had a similar experience. Did it feel too over-the-top to you? Anyway, although the team didn't take home the trophy, it looks like they all had a great experience, especially Tsutomu who won two times in a row! All in all, it looks like we're in for a great second half of Chihayafuru, and I'm excited to see where it will take us next.

Images from Crunchyroll.com.