Quote:
Originally Posted by hyperborealis
The entire narrative is written in retrospect. According to Wikipedia, the author of the original manga "Yuki Suetsugu belonged to a karuta club in senior high school, and feels that the school years are a period of a person's life where "you can dedicate the most genuine part of yourself to something"." If the manga seeks to recapture this lost time, then it knows that what it describes is something intrinsically transitory, something that is already lost. The anime brings this point out by showing us that Chihaya's deepest motive is her wish to return to the time in elementary school where she, Arata, and Taichi played together. And if you are familiar with the very first panel of the manga, then you will understand that everything we are watching, the entire narrative, has already passed onwards to its future.
So, you see, Sol, I do think that the concept of mono no aware is central to this anime.
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This is something really important, I agree, that we may have been missing in our earlier interpretations of this story. For Arata, we can understand this highschool period as a time of rebirth, for his former passions. For Chihaya and Taichi meanwhile, we can see it as a period of growth and realization. If the author, however, as we can indeed understand, is writing with an awareness of the transience of those brilliant passions which can bring high school days to life, then we are forced to wonder about the temporality of all the dreams that they carry.
Perhaps this moment, of Taichi's, when he has cast away his hesitations and dedicated himself fully and fairly to the long pursuit of his love, is the most beautiful moment of the growth and purity of his character of all. And that is why, at this moment the 33rd card expressing
mono no aware is brought to our attention, to bring to mind an aching awareness that all things must pass, through time, as the scattering of a cherry blossom.
Your description of Taichi's reasoning as he declines to sneak the interconnection of his and Chihaya's hands as he realizes that what he has now, after all, is enough, and that what he will come to treasure in the future will not be the realization of their dreams, but the time of gentle yearning of it, is quite powerful.
I don't know yet that Chihaya, Arata, Shinobu, and even Taichi will not be able to share and express their passion through/for karuta long into their futures, within this fictional universe, not encapsulating away these "true selves" of themselves as the author identifies, at the end of highschool. However, the use and allusion to
mono no aware as this episode evinces certainly brings up the possibility. Whichever the case, it has added depth to my experience of the story.