Anime Review: Chihayafuru: Now the Flower Blooms(1.01)

                                Chihayafuru: Now the Flower Blooms(1.01) Review

This episode is about how a high school girl named Chihaya Ayase is trying to start a club in which people play a game called Karuta which is this type of game that involves memorizing poetry and matching up the poems. Unfortunately for Chihaya pretty much all of the high school students are uninterested in Karuta and think of it as a childish game that Chihaya should give up on now that she's in high school. Chihaya is excited when she finds out that her childhood friend Taichi who she used to play Karuta goes to the same high school as she does, the two of them catch up with each other and tease each other a bit, also it's implied that Taichi does a lot better in school than Chihaya does. During their time together Chihaya learns that Taichi doesn't have any interest in playing Karuta which causes Chihaya to think about her other childhood friend Wataya.

Then Chihaya starts thinking about her childhood in which she use to have short hair and boys teased her by saying that she looks like a boy and she was interested in helping her sister to achieve her dream of becoming a top model. It's also mentioned that Chihaya has a tendency to blurt out what she's thinking without putting much thought into her words. During this time period Chihaya first meets Wataya who is a new transfer student that the other kids tease because he has a strange accent and he's poor. Chihaya decides to befriend Wataya despite his unpopularity and he ends up showing her how wonderful competitive Karuta is and he tells her his dream is to become the best Karuta player in Japan.

I overall I really enjoyed this episode, the animation was great and I thought that there was quite a bit of character background given considering it's only the first episode. Please tell me your thoughts on this episode.