Anime Review: Chihayafuru: The Sky is Road Home(1.11)

                                Chihayafuru: The Sky is Road Home(1.11)Review

In this episode the karuta team plays the final match of their first tournament and they start off trying to figure out who should play who but Chihaya comes up with an order that will benefit the team no matter who their up against which is what's really important. Dr. Harada ends up coming to the match and is happy to see that Taichi is now playing karuta again and notes how much his attitude has changed since the last time he's seen him and he tells one of the other coaches that he truly believes that Chihaya has what it takes to be a queen.

Chihaya's team ends up playing the finals against Retro's team who has this cards to are strangely accurate at predicting the order of the other team and Retro chooses to go up against Taichi because he never lost to Taichi when he played Taichi when Taichi was in elementary school and Sudo wanted to play Chihaya he was in last episode and was called a sadist and it's said that he enjoys messing with people. Chihaya doesn't start off the match to well because Sudo messed with her by putting the chihaya card in the middle and he has the same offensive style that she has.

Chihaya is able be feel encourage when Tsutomu gets his first card and tells Chihaya he got a card and she should get a card next time and then both Taichi and Nishida say they got their cards and Kana said she'll get a card next time Chihaya realizes that when playing karuta as a team one card means more than it does when your playing just for yourself. Chihaya starts to hold her own in her match against Sudo. Nishida ends up not doing so well in his match against a boy he remembers starting playing karuta later to him and he remembers how he gave up on karuta in the past but he's determined not to do that again.

After Kana and Tsutomu had lost their matches Taichi started going over which cards have yet to be call and keep track of which ones he can go for right away and which one he needs to wait longer to go for. Taichi realizes that he doesn't have Chihaya's talent and he can't feel the game like Nishida can but he has his memory and since he has to be the backbone to the team he has to win his match which he does end up doing and shortly after Nishida wins his match as well.

Chihaya and Sudo's match is extremely close but she ends up winning but she falls asleep as soon as she finishes her match and her teammates all gather around her and hug her to celebrate their victory. Also in this episode it's revealed that Chihaya's been sending text to Arata's email which he doesn't check often and he was very surprised by all Chihaya's text and the last one he gets is Chihaya tell him that their going to nationals.

I overall loved this episode it felt like a pretty intense match and I was really invested in it and it also did character work as well which just made me love it more. Please tell me your thoughts on this episode.