Anime Review: Chihayafurru 2: To See The Beautiful Cherry Blossoms(2.23)

                   Chihayafurru 2: To See The Beautiful Cherry Blossoms(2.23)Review

This episode starts with the semifinal matches which we don't see much of we see Arata and Shinobu beat their opponents by a lot once again and the coach of the Fujisaki remarks that the two of them are in an entirely different level than everyone else. Shinobu acts threateningly towards Arata to which he gives a friendly smile and Chihaya seems confused by their relationship because I doubt she knows they know each other. Taichi and Tsutomu have also made it to the finals for Class B and C so Chihaya feels conflicted about which match to watch Nishida decides to watch Class A's final in hopes of learning something and while Taichi was so sure that Chihaya would watch Class A's match she actually came to support him.

The match between Shinobu and Arata was the one that most everyone was excited to see at first it appeared that Shinobu was dominating once again to some people but since they both touched the first two cards at the same time that was a bit of a jump. After the first two cards Arata could see that Shinobu's strengths were still speed and accuracy so he used a strategy that he learned from his grandfather in order to attack her strength and take cards from her.

Taichi through out the day had been unusually calm before this point and this was most likely one of the reasons he was doing so well before starts to become more focus on winning the match quickly in order to allow Chihaya to be able to watch Class A's match rather than just winning his own match. Taichi is playing the match against Rion who has speed and game sense as good as Chihaya although at first neither of them are doing very well since the reader was going through certification final exam but Rion was able to find her rhythm faster than Taichi was.

Taichi begins to compare Rion to Master Suo which he realizes is just something that keeps psyching him out so he starts to think of her by comparing her to Chihaya instead. Taichi begins to do much better in his match by simply focusing on taking the cards with as much accuracy as possible and just caring about winning the match at all not by winning by a lot. In the end Taichi was able to win his match and make it into Class A final although he didn't seem to realize how big a deal it was until Chihaya told him what he accomplished.

I really loved this episode the final matches are always exciting and I especially loved seeing Taichi finally win a tournament and making it into Class A at last it was a very emotional moment that he almost skipped over if it wasn't for Chihaya. Please tell me your thoughts on this episode.