Anime Review: Chihayafuru 2: To Tell the People in the Capitals That I Make for the Islands(2.04)

  Chihayafuru 2: To Tell the People in the Capitals That I Make for the Islands(2.04)Review

In this episode the karuta club are playing against a group that was coached by a player that made it to the master's match the year before and since the club wasn't really established until a few months ago they were totally off the team's radar. Dr. Harada ends up coming to the tournament at this point to cheer on the club along with some other members from his society before arriving at the match Harada notices with the way that Taichi is playing he should be a class A player by now and the other members who have seen him compete in tournaments mention that Taichi just has really bad luck and never catches a break when he needs one.

Before the match starts the person playing Chihaya flirts with her which freaks her out and Taichi gets anger about this because he knows that this is a tactic to get in her head but what he doesn't realize is that part of the reason their coach told him to use that tactic is because while it will initially freak Chihaya out he knows that she'll be fine once she starts playing but it will be something that would hurt Taichi's focus. During the tournament the reader that they have is taking longer pauses then he should which messes up the rhythm and it's something that really bothers Kana but Taichi tells her to listen to her own rhythm which does help her concentration improve but this and several other instances shows how Taichi divided attention with him paying so close attention to his teammates is causing him to do poorly in his own match.

It's focused on in this episode how Taichi does have actually really good skills when it comes to karuta but when he does badly in a match he doesn't think that what he lacks in is luck but rather skill which causes him to doubt himself and then he ends up doing badly in the match. The air conditioning vent above the karuta club is broken which causes the room to be very hot and effects their concentration especially Taichi but after Taichi asks up a towel and receives many including one from Chihaya he realizes that he has to focus all his attention on his match which causes him to make a come back. In the end he wins his match due in large part to his amazing memorization skills that allowed him to take the card on the first syllable.

This episode did a great job on focusing on how Taichi seems to always manage to psych himself out during his matches and how most of the time he's his own worse enemy. I loved this episode, please tell me your thoughts about this episode.