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Originally Posted by Qilin
I'm liking Sumire's character so far. Her personality is clearly a product of the cosmopolitan culture that dominates much of society today, an antithesis to the traditional mindset that karuta is supposed to represent.
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Yes. This is a very perceptive comment. Sumire is hardly shallow. Her motives may be, but such is the vocabulary given to her by her time and place. The anime has always been perfectly clear that personal beauty represents a real currency. In story, think of Chitose's unhappy career trying to make a living from her appearance. Out of story, think of the fact the mangaka did not go forward with her manga without making her main characters exceptionally, impossibly "hot". If Sumire is a satire, she is a satire upon some of the manga's own readers. She can't be faulted for shallowness when she looks for status where status actually is found.
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Originally Posted by Kirarakim
Okay I actually disagree partially in Sumire's comparison to Taichi here. Yes Taichi initially joined the Karuta club because of his feelings for Chihaya just like Sumire joined the karuta club because of her feelings for Taichi but Taichi's motivations for liking Chihaya were certainly not just "because she was the prettiest girl in school"....Taichi seems to love Chihaya more because of "who she is".
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I don't know. Sumire's pursuit of Taichi resembles Taichi's pursuit of Chihaya in another important particular: in both cases, the affection is one-sided, a love from afar. As such, the passion necessarily expresses much more about the lover than it does about the beloved.
Sumire connects to Taichi on so many different levels. She and Taichi understand each other far more immediately and directly than Chihaya ever does Taichi. Their conversation on the train is a masterpiece of subtlety and implicit dialogue. When Sumire tells Taichi she is sure he can have his pick of girlfriends, she is in effect confessing to him without ever saying so. Taichi understands her at once: his glances at her tells her he knows what she is about, without saying anything explicitly. When he tells her she will have her pick of boyfriends, Sumire immediately understands he has just rejected her, and she exclaims to herself how much his rejection stings. The scene, with its double level of conversations, is worthy of something out of Austen or Henry James.
One last point of comparison. When Sumire rejects Taichi's rejection, she does so in order to affirm her own right to a choice: "I won't accept it! / I want to have a choice, too!" Against the passivity Taichi accords to the beloved, who must not choose him, but must wait for him to choose her instead, Sumire insists instead on her right to choose and to act with the same initiative as Taichi claims for himself. In making this parallel, the mangaka takes a point of view that is unabashedly feminist, and I think implicitly critical of Taichi's position. Ordinarily Suetsugu is a cultural conservative, but not as regards women.
Sumire is the latest in Suetsugu's sympathetic portraits of women in her marga, and now, this anime. Sumire is comic, she is both a target of satire and a means of satire, but in the end she is a sympathetic figure.