Chihayafuru 2 Episode 15--We're Not Alone

Muse: I thought that this episode would get us started on the finals, but it looks like we have to wait a bit longer! This episode was focused on the set-up, establishing the members of the Fujisaki team a bit more before the matches get underway. And before I start talking about that, I do have to say something... While I’ve really liked this tournament arc, I feel like it’s gone on for long enough. I’m itching to see the individual tournament despite the fact that I also want to see how the team finals play out. I don’t know how the pacing was in the manga, but here it feels like they’re padding for time a bit.

Anyway, Fujisaki is presented as a team very different from Mizusawa from the outset. In some ways, they’re polar opposites. Mizusawa is a new team with only two alternates; Fujisaki is well established with more members than it knows what to do with. Mizusawa has a great team chemistry based on friendship and a shared dream; Fujisaki employs a cut-throat “only the best play” policy. This last example is enacted by their coach, who differs from Miyauchi-sensei in that she has a clear sense for karuta despite being cold to her students while Miyauchi, despite being awesome, doesn’t know much about karuta to be more than an adult supervisor at this point. The show seems to be setting this up as a real clash of styles, fitting for the finals.

The coach for Fujisaki was particularly interesting to me, since this arc has spent a lot of time establishing how the relationship of the team is important. Sakurazawa’s “style” is to sub out one of the third-years (the best players) and give their spot to a first-year for the finals, so that they can get experience. This says two things. One, she’s really confident that they’re going to win. Two, she doesn’t care much for the feelings of the upperclassmen who worked hard to get to the finals. She denies them that moment of glory. We have a parallel moment for this with Kana, who jammed her finger and can’t play. With the Mizusawa team, it takes an injury to stop someone from playing, or they all agree on the team change (like what we saw in the episode where Porky accused Tsutomu of not caring enough). Kana isn’t playing because she’ll only hurt herself further. The third-year from Fujisaki isn’t playing because of his coach’s decision. I wonder which hurts more...


Justin: I wouldn’t necessarily say the anime is padding time or that the team tournament has run its course -- it probably didn’t help that after the High School Championship we had a one episode breather before jumping right into Nationals and their team matches, so that might be where the fatigue comes in -- but as I mentioned last week, while it would be cool for Mizusawa to win the championship, their four matches to reach the finals pretty much established and helped develop their personalities that ended up resonating with me. I don’t think they’ll gain anything too earth shattering by facing Fujisaki, win or lose. But apparently there must be something else, since this whole episode was to establish their opponents!

It only made sense that Fujisaki would feature some pretty...eclectic characters. For starters, you don’t beat Hokuo without having some strange personalities on your team (btw, I feel sorry for Hokuo. Sado’s just gonna do something once they lose to First Akashi!!!). It actually starts with their coach, Sakurazawa. With her cold attitude yet foresight when it comes to karuta, she sets the tone for how her students are going to play their team matches. We then get down to the actual members on the team, and it’s a revolving door of weirdness, ranging from creepy (Mitsuki and his love for anime girls) to super creepy (The Arata Reje-- I mean Eromu-- I mean Ryoga and his desire for certain sized chests for girls). But there is no doubt that they are a pretty good team. You don’t make it to the finals with just sheer luck. These guys are gonna be a tough test for Misuzawa’s crew.


But no one will have it tougher than Chihaya, who has a lot to overcome if she plans on beating Rion Yamashiro. At first glance, Chihaya should do well against Rion if you go by rankings alone (Class B < Class A). But maybe if she didn’t have to play in 4 matches prior to this one, it would be manageable. It probably also doesn’t help that Rion had been paying close attention to Chihaya’s match against Megumu, and this is her first match (though maybe that’s not too big an advantage). Tsutomu getting Makoto’s comment about the girls on Fujisaki being scarier than the boys -- and that face that Rion showed -- doesn’t help either. And then we have the x-factor in Kyoko Yamashiro doing the reading. You should get to know Kyoko, she happens to be a Grade 7 reader, someone who’s just ultra pro at her job, and someone Kana admires a lot (hence why the pain of her not playing in the finals stings her more). Oh did I forget to mention that she’s Rion’s grandmother? Well, just when Chihaya thinks she’s already had a challenge with Megumu, this will be her toughest test it seems. What will be key is how does Chihaya manage to overcome these challenges -- at the very least, she has more motivation to do well since she lost to Megumu.

Muse: Rion is an interesting wildcard... She first showed up in the previous episodes about Mizusawa’s match against Akashi Girls with no fanfare. Unlike Megumu, who was hyped up pretty steadily, Rion has come out of nowhere. Judging by her comments on the match and her attitude during this episode, Sakurazawa didn’t put her in the match just because of the first-year tradition. Despite the fact that she’s going up against a Class A player, she’s calm enough to put an interesting smile of her face. And who knows what influence her grandmother’s readings will have on her. This is definitely the match to watch just to see how Rion plays.


The other match I’m pulling hard for is Taichi’s. I already didn’t like his opponent because of his boob/butt comments (Hate to break it to you buddy, but those aren’t H-cups or whatever the hell you’re going on about) but when he made a backhand comment about Taichi still being in Class B, all bets were off. I really, really want Taichi to beat him and show him that he’s more than Class A material already. There’s also a psychological reason on Taichi’s side as well; leading up to the match, he was comparing his opponent to Arata. I’m not exactly sure what he meant there (Looks? Aura?) but I guess we have to wait until the match to see if that comparison is true. Either way, if Taichi can beat him, it’ll give him a little more confidence for his impending showdown with the real Arata.


Justin: At least we know that they’ll have someone pressuring them to actually do well in their matches -- and that would be Shinobu. I think it’s pretty clear we know of Shinobu’s disdain for team matches. And considering what Retro said about team matches:

“Working hard to win team matches won’t get you anywhere.”

This backs up why Shinobu thinks it’s just pointless to care about it. However, Arata, who knows how it feels to be on a team, and of course has made some pretty good friends, encourages her to watch the final matches. The question is what can she gain from watching these matches after it’s all over? At this point, we aren’t all that sure what makes her tick. She already seemed to dismiss Fujisaki (though that might change once she actually sees them play), so if she doesn’t actually gain any value from watching the match, then Arata’s insistence was useless. Needless to say, it’ll be up to the players that are chasing after her to prove that she didn’t waste her time and that she learned something by watching the team matches. It’ll be interesting to see how that turns out.

Images from Crunchyroll.com.