Anime Review: Chihayafuru: Moonlight, Clear and Bright(1.25)

                                 Chihayafuru: Moonlight, Clear and Bright(1.25)Review

This episode starts off with everyone watching the Master's match and everyone is shocked to find out that for Master Suo there are 28 one syllable cards rather than 7 which means that he can tell the difference right away between similarly sounding cards especially when the reader as such a great appreciation for the poetry because they see the poem rather than just the words. Most everyone feels extremely intimidated after watching the matches.

Tsutomu wrote down a bunch of data about the masters match and after going over all the data on the walk home he tells Chihaya that she has 20 one syllable cards which surprises her and helps her to feel more motivate to improve her karuta game. Chihaya is extremely thankful and impressed by Tsutomu being able to tell her which cards are her one syllable cards and she really wants to be able to give him something like that one day.

Arata who while watching the match took his grandfather's advice to visualize being at the master's match because his grandfather told him that first advantage that the master has on the challenger is that they have played on that stage before so their use to it. After watching the master's match and feeling discourage Taichi decides to call up Arata for advice and I really enjoyed how Arata was so nervous and excited when he answered the phone, I really enjoy the relationship between these two. Arata gives Taichi the advice that one doesn't need to have a good game sense and that there are many ways to be able to take the card first.

Kana tells Chihaya that she now has the dream of becoming a certified reader which Chihaya thinks is great but Kana is somewhat discouraged when she finds out that in order to be a reader you have to make Class A. Taichi ends up actually doing practice swings in practice which is something that he never does because he finds it embarrassing but this encourages Kana to keep trying for her dream even though it will take a lot of work since everyone else is doing all they can to reach their's. It's also revealed in this episode that in order to keep the club room there's going to have to be five new members in karuta club.

I overall loved this episode, I loved how everything kind of came full circle and that everyone is still working hard towards achieving their goals and I loved seeing how much a lot of the characters have changed over the course of the season and how some haven't. I overall loved this anime and I'm so glad that there's a second season of it since I really want to see more of these characters. Please tell me your thoughts on this episode or series as a whole.