Anime Review: Chihayafuru 2: They All Exchange Hellos and Goodbyes at the Gates of Osaka(2.07)

Chihayafuru 2: They All Exchange Hellos and Goodbyes at the Gates of Osaka(2.07)Review

This episode starts off with Chihaya feeling bad that she lost her match at regionals especially since her loss meant the whole teams loss. Chihaya sister isn't receiving a lot of positive feedback about her work which is upsetting her so she projects those feelings on to Chihaya and tells her that maybe she just doesn't have the talent for karuta luckily this doesn't seem to influence Chihaya's dedication to karuta at all.

In this episode after realizing that band simply doesn't have the space to store their instruments the karuta team decided that it will only be fair that can use the rooms above their club room. Chihaya does this partially because she hopes that supporting other clubs will lead to other clubs supporting the karuta club if they ever need it. Towards the end of the episode the band comes and play a song to thank the karuta club for allowing them to use the space which touches them all since it's so very rare that anyone outside of karuta appreciates karuta.

Also in this episode Chihaya's mom decides that Chihaya should have her own kimono since she usually competes in one and she knows that Chihaya is very dedicated to karuta. Chihaya's mom feels guilty about not paying enough attention to Chihaya's karuta dreams since she's always so focused on her older daughter's career. Chihaya tells her mom that she knows that her mom wasn't ignoring her.

The episode ends with the karuta club going off to nationals and getting ready to compete. On the night before the team tournament Chihaya calls Arata and asking him if she'll be seeing him there this year and he tells her she will by only during the individual matches since his school doesn't have a karuta team. Chihaya tells him that he should make his own but Arata is only interested in achieving his own individual goals.

I overall really enjoyed this episode even though it felt very much like a transition episode it was still really good. Please tell me your thoughts on this episode.

Anime Review: Chihayafuru 2: To Set the Tatsuta River Ablaze(2.06)

                          Chihayafuru 2: To Set the Tatsuta River Ablaze(2.06)Review

This episode starts pretty much where the last one ends with Chihaya making her come back and Harada notes that Chihaya had been focusing on her accuracy for the first half of the match and is now using her speed to take cards. Chihaya's opponent is confused by how Chihaya is able to take cards before he even hears the first syllable which is something that confuses even Sudo is how she's able to hear the sound before the card is read.

After awhile Chihaya, Taichi, Kana and Tsutomu find themselves all in luck of the draw matches and since Hukou has more experience playing as a team they have strategy for this type of situation called splitting their cards which will allow for at least two of their players to win as long as they protect their card which would mean they would be the winners since they already have one win. Chihaya once she sees the situation decides that she's going to take the card no matter which one is read which leads to Taichi to following her lead and doing the same.

Taichi ends up winning his match against Retro when he makes a fault that was mostly brought on by how nervous he felt by Taichi's determination to win the card no matter what. In the end Chihaya and her opponent end up touching the card at the same time and they both moved so fast that no one could tell who got to the card first but Chihaya knew that they got to the card at the same time but Hokou ends up winning because the card was on the opponents side.The match was the most fun that Chihaya has ever had but it was also her hardest loss. In the end Tsukuba, his brothers and Sumire all decide to join Dr. Harada's karuta society after the tournament has finished.

I overall loved this episode the matches were really intense with how close they all became because of the whole luck of the draw situation and I also liked how Harada mentioned that there was more to win a luck of the draw situation then just luck. Please tell me your thoughts on this episode.

Anime Review: Chihayafuru 2: Be As Dear Now, Those Were the Good Old Days(2.05)

            Chihayafuru 2: Be As Dear Now, Those Were the Good Old Days(2.05)Review

The karuta club is preparing to play their final match of the tournament which will be against Hukuo which is the team that they beat last year to win. Since both teams will be going to nationals this Hukuo's president wants to take things easy and since Retro has always been able to predict the order of the opposing team using this information to unfairly match their players should make a win easy. Sumire reports to the team that she heard Hukuo's president saying that winning matches against Taichi, Kana and Tsutomu should be easy which is something that only causes them to become more determined to win their matches.

Huoko's president is very upset to learn that Retro lied to them about the order he predicted because he wanted them to beat the team fairly because that will prove that they are the best. Hukuo team has extra pressure put on them in their match because their former president Sudo is the one that will be the reader for the final match. Chihaya ends up not doing to well in her match because she is focusing so much on trying to make her method of taking cards similar to Shinobu which is something that her opponent notices and since he isn't one that seems to think himself capable of defeating someone like Shinobu he doesn't get why Chihaya would be so focus on the distant goal of beating her but he does use her concentration on copying a technique to his advantage to be the one winning their current match.

Kana ends up doing very well in her match in large part due to how good of a reader that Sudo is because he has nearly perfect rhythm which is something that helps Kana out a lot because of how much she focuses on the poetry part of karuta. Kana's opponent is very surprised by Kana's skill and that she can move so well despite the size of her boobs which her opponent is far to focus on but Kana in her thoughts reveal that a kimono is something that allows her to move so well. Nishida ends up loosing his match which adds a lot of pressure to the rest of the team since they thought they could count on his win. Chihaya add the end of the episode starts trying to emulate the current master's style rather than Shinobu's which leads to her starting to make a come back.

I really loved this episode and how it dealt with the idea that even if winning may not be something that needs to be done to advance it doesn't mean that won shouldn't try their best to win. Please tell me your thoughts on this episode.

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.

Anime Review: Chihayafuru 2: Feel Love Deepen(2.03)

                                        Chihayafuru 2: Feel Love Deepen(2.03)Review

In this episode karuta club compete in the regional team high school championship for the second time. At first the karuta club were just going to use the five original members to compete but after Tsukuba tries to change the order on the sheet and Tsutomu realizes how much Tsukuba wants to play and he relates to Tsukuba's feelings because last year he also didn't feel like he was needed there so Tsutomu decides to add Sumire to the match against an all male team that seems to go easy on females and Tsukuba to another match against a vocally aggressive school.

Sumire is very frightened by having to compete in a match because she had assumed that she would just be watching the matches that day but it turns out that after her opponent lets her get a few cards solely because he thinks she's pretty she starts to get serious about taking cards especially after seeing that Chihaya had won her match by not letting her opponent take a single card from her. During this match while watching Chihaya play Tsukuba and his brothers who came to watch him, all decide that Chihaya is really cool and after Tsukuba has a conversation with Tsutomu about why he allowed the new members to play and tells him he's sure that Tsukuba since he has the talent and the passion will start winning matches and Tsukuba decides that Tsutomu is also cool.

During his match Tsukuba ends up not doing very well and he starts to feel like a fool because he was so confident about karuta which is the only thing that he is confident about and he's embarrassed that he can't even take one card  it is especially bad for him because he's making a fool out of himself in front of his little brothers who worship him. Tsukuba eventually starts to worry more about just getting a card rather than winning the game although he still does win in the end and his brothers still thinks he's great and hope that playing traditional karuta would help improve Tsukuba's skills.

It was also noted by Kana in this episode that Chihaya, Taichi and Nishida playing so solidly in their matches were in part because of their new club members. This episode is one in which we really got to learn more about who Tsukuba is and what he's like as a player and Sumire also is continuing to show herself caring more about karuta. I overall really enjoyed the episode, please tell me your thoughts on it.

Fangirl Friday 40

Fangirl five Friday is a weekly meme host Nancy Drew is my Homegirl and what it's meme that has you list the top five things you've been fangirling about this week.

1. Revenge: Season 3 of Revenge premiered this week and the episode was really great. This episode took things back to when the show was at it's best with Emily succeeding in her takedowns and lots of Emily and Nolan scenes in which they scheme together and also just generally care about each other which were sadly lacking for a large part of season 2. I also really enjoyed seeing Charolette's new attitude the one in which she is being more proactive and seems to be willing to destroy people if her threat to Patrick was any indication. I just really loved the episode and I'm really looking forward to seeing how the rest of the season unfolds.

2. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D: I watched the first two episodes of the show this week and so far I'm enjoying this show. I really loved the second episode because it focused on the characters coming together as a team for the first time. I'm really enjoying all the science speak on the show so far and I'm also enjoying the action parts of the show as well. So far I like all the characters and I'm interested in learning more about them which is always a good sign.

3. Elementary: This week's episode focused on a case that involved solving an extremely complicated math problem that could be worth millions and I really enjoyed this case because there were so many twist and turns to it. There was also a plot about how the son of the man that Joan accidently killed trying to hit her up for money and I really enjoyed this plot because it shows how much Joan continues to be affected by her mistake and I really loved all the friendship moments Joan and Sherlock shared with him not wanting her to pay the guy because he fears he's taking advantage of her but giving her the money because he doesn't want her to be overwhelmed by guilt. I overall loved this episode.

Top 5 Thursday: Top 5 Whedonverse Episode

Top 5 Thursday is a meme that I create to make lists of things involving TV and movies. I would love for anyone that sees this post to make list of their own whether it's in the comment section or on their own blog.
Since I started watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. this week and I'm a huge fan of Joss Whedon shows I thought that now was a good of time as any to make a list of my favorite episodes which there are a lot more than five but I'll only be mentioning five of them.

1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Becoming(2.21-2.22): The season two finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one that just got me I felt like there were high stakes both for the world in general and Buffy's emotional stakes as well. I just really loved this episode that was the conclusion to the Angelus storyline which was both action packed and emotionally draining which I think of as a good thing in this situation. My heart broke for Buffy more than once in this episode when her mom found out she was the slayer and when she had send Angel to hell once he got his soul back. I'm not sure that I'm explaining my love for this episode properly but it's pretty much my favorite episode of all time.

2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Passion(2.17): This is another great Buffy season 2 episode this one is the one that shows just how cruel Angelus is it shows how Angelus saw murder as his art and how he just loved hurting people with how he elaborately laid out Jenny's body and watched through the window as Buffy and Willow received the news this cruelty and psychological torture he inflicts on everyone through out the episode is what makes him one of my favorite villains. This episode is also very sad with how it raises the stakes with Jenny's death and how it's the first episode where a character that the audience deeply cared about died, I also enjoy the fantastic monologue about passion.

3. Dollhouse: Belonging(2.04): This is probably the most disturbing episode of tv that I have ever watched and I love it for that because the concepts of this show where always somewhat disturbing but the show was never more honest about how disturbing it was then they were in this episode. The backstory of how Serria ended up in the dollhouse is both saddening and terrifying she literally just said no to a guy and he had her drugged declared insane and was taken to a place that stripped her of her identity and he could use her whenever he wanted. This episode that ended up showing not only Serria history but also her taking revenge which only led to damaging her more but on a somewhat happy note she realized that she was in love with Victor despite that not making a whole lot of sense to her since she couldn't even really remember spending time with him. This is also a great episode for Topher's development as a character with him wanting to help Serria and realizing that all this time he wasn't helping her but instead helping her get hurt and I liked how this was one the earliest episodes in which Topher starts to develop a conscious and I kind of love how it's in such a painful way and it really does start to change the way he thinks about the dolls.

4. Angel: Over the Rainbow(2.20): I honestly loved all of the episodes that were set in Lorne's world but this is the first one so I decided to put this one on the list. I really just enjoyed watching this episode and I loved meeting Fred for the first time and I loved that Cordelia was made ruler. I also loved how excited Angel was when the sun didn't set him on fire.

5. Angel: Five By Five(1.18): I overall just really loved Faith's arc in generally but this episode was probably my favorite part of it with Faith becoming increasingly violent and reckless as the episode goes on until the end when she just kind of breaks and begs Angel to kill her.