Anime Review: Chihayafuru: But for Autumn's Coming(1.07)

                              Chihayafuru: But for Autumn's Coming(1.07)Review

This episode starts off with Chihaya and Taichi playing a karuta match in their club and Taichi realizes that he simply can't beat Chihaya especially when it comes to first words so he tries to think of different method with going over which poems had been eliminated already and the longer phrases and while that helped him find the card first it still didn't keep Chihaya from getting the card because of her natural skill. Taichi claims that he doesn't really mind loosing but he worries about whether it would be better for Chihaya to be practicing with Arata rather than himself.

Chihaya continues her search for new karuta club members so she decides that Tsutomu the second smartest person in the school would be a good fit. Tsutomu doesn't really like school because of the judgmental people but he does like studying but he hates that he's second best especially to someone like Taichi. Chihaya ends up dragging Tsutomu to the club room after he refuses her and then she starts to tell him how karuta is a mental game and that the players of to memorize all the cards but when Tsutomu learns that the cards are face up he almost leaves but then Chihaya accepts that as a challenge to play karuta with the cards face down.

While playing karuta with the cards face down Taichi notices that Chihaya doesn't have her normal edge because she still hasn't got the greatest memory skills so Taichi realizes that he actually has a chance of winning against her now. During this round Taichi realizes or rather admits to himself that he does hate to loose and that he does want to win and that during this round he actually feels like he's worthy of playing against Chihaya. In the end Taichi wins the game and it made him very happy but it also made Tsutomu leave the club room.

When Taichi goes after Tsutomu about joining karuta if he as even a bit of interest, Tsutomu goes off about how he hates people like Taichi because he has so much talent and other things in his life. Then Taichi tells him that he doesn't have a talent for karuta and that even though he looses almost every match he plays he keeps playing because of how happy it makes him when he wins this somewhat convinces Tsutomu to give karuta a chance.

I loved this episode I think it gave a pretty good look at both how Taichi sees himself and how other people see him and how those two things are pretty different. Please tell me your thoughts on this episode.