[hyperborealis]

Sudou understands Wakamiya's smiles as a kind of malice: she pretends a fear of his strength as a karuta player to underline ironically her contempt. You see this interplay after the end of their match, capped with Sudou's resentment.

I'm not sure if Sudou is quite fair in this. Arata can say he would not show mercy to a five year old, but then he is a boy, for whom such aggressiveness is acceptable. Shinobu has to deal with expectations for girls instead, and one can see how her false modesty is a necessary compromise.

In any case Shinobu is perfectly capable of wearing a public mask, such as the false smile she puts on when Chihaya approaches her. She is unlike Chihaya in this regard, if you recall all the times Taichi has to remind her that she's in public.

Chihaya's comment on Shinobu's Snowmaru T-shirt continues the conversation Shinobu had begun during the match when she remarked on Chihaya's Daddy Bear shirt. Shinobu finds herself disarmed, and flustered by Chihaya's response. She had expected presumably some sort of sparring, the war between them carried on in conversation, and got instead something much more personal, a connection to the self behind her public facade. Chihaya's words connect the two of them together, and bring home to Shinobu just how they are alike, young girls with a penchant for cute things.

The anime is not explicit, but my sense is that Shinobu experiences her connection with Chihaya favorably: where during the match she had been illustrated by winter motifs, the animation now frames her with spring flowers, as if to signify a rebirth of her heart. Then, at the close of the episode, where we see Shinobu practicing, she is looking forward to playing Chihaya again, thinking to herself, "until we meet again." Even the cards she takes in practice make this point: one, the 57th, expresses a woman's longing for an absent lover, hidden like the moon behind the clouds; another, the 73rd, expresses the wish there should be no barrier of mist between the poet and distant cherry trees. Both poems suggest fairly clearly Shinobu's longing for Chihaya.

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The episode title, "As Though Pearls Have Been Strung Across the Autumn Plains," is taken from the 37th of the Hyakunin Isshu. Here's the University of Virginia translation:

In the autumn fields
When the heedless wind blows by
Over the pure-white dew,
How the myriad unstrung gems
Are scattered everywhere around.

The obvious interpretation is to think of the gems as the various members of the Mizusawa karuta team, scattered in defeat by the stronger winds of their opponents during the tournament.

What makes things more interesting is that the third card Chihaya takes from Shinobu happens to be none other than this very poem. Consequently, I think the title is referring not to Mizusawa's defeat, but contrarily to the cards Chihaya has taken, and the insights she has gained into what it means to be a world-class karuta player. These are the gems or pearls the poem refers to. Here I am thinking of her interior monologue after taking the card about moving freely, about becoming faster and freer, about playing freely despite fear--all of which she connects with being "a strong player."

It is interesting to compare Taichi's insights in this respect with Chihaya's. Taichi envisages a perfect accord between mind and body, a body strong enough to react with the same speed as the mind. For Taichi the body is the vehicle of the mind, the instrument that realizes his remarkable capacity to identify which cards are in play at a given syllable.

Although Chihaya also seeks a stronger body, one that can move faster, her conception is nothing like this. She seems to imagine instead a radical freedom from restraints, a kind of instinctual being, the wildness of a natural force. Like Taichi, she envisages a possibility akin to her individual nature; but their respective characters are nothing alike.

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"This is the day," Taichi thinks, looking from the stairwell at Chihaya after her match, "the day Chihaya's dream became real." Curious, isn't it, that he is standing on the numeral "2'? Probably just coincidence...

Then there is that odd scene at the end where Chihaya mentions she doesn't dream of Arata. The camera focuses briefly on the back of Taichi's head, as if to gauge his reaction. Chihaya continues, "I want to meet him, and not in my dreams." Meanwhile the animation follows a butterfly outside, as it moves about and then flutters around a semi-transparent image of Arata. Why the butterfly? What is that all about?