Thread: Licensed + Crunchyroll Chihayafuru Season 2
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Old 2013-01-26, 02:24   Link #322
Sol Falling
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Age: 35
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirarakim View Post
Though I think my favorite moment was when Chihaya got the brothers to join the society. Harada Sensei will be very happy he he.
Indeed, that was a great Chihaya moment. Kana's comment about the club finally getting its second female member also rang true for me as early as the previous episode, where Sumire's feminine perspective brought in something which has been quite surprisingly but notably missing from this series.

I wonder about that "Tsutomu-senpai is so cool!" moment, portrayed from an external perspective. He said: "You have the passion and the talent". From Tsukaba's view, that might have seemed like confident encouragement from someone stronger than him. But I wonder about what Tsutomu himself was thinking; implicit to the early conflict in this episode was that, as the weakest regular player, Tsutomu might get replaced by Tsukaba-kun. For Tsutomu himself to admit "you'll become strong soon; you've got the passion and talent for it" might seem like an unspoken resignition that he will be overtaken some day.

If Tsutomu really is thinking that, then was it really "cool" for him to tell Tsukaba "you'll become strong" with a straight face and serious expression? How "strong" will Tsukaba really become--comparable to Mizusawa's "Ace" players: Chihaya, Nishida, and Taichi? If Tsukaba does not reach that level, then was he really "strong", or was he just stronger than Tsutomu? The interesting question to me now as far as he and Tsukaba are concerned is whether Tsutomu will find the "talent" and "passion" within himself to not lose to Tsukaba, his junior a year younger than him.

I guess one of the things these two new characters have brought to the story are new contexts of development for Tsutomu and Kanade especially. As the weakest players in terms of skill in Mizusawa, they might have been in danger of getting lost in the story in the midst of the rest of the club's passionate determination to go pro, to play the Meijin/Queen, to reach A class (or to meet Arata). By throwing in a couple new protagonists who are closer to their "level", this gives them a more immediate background to stay relevant to the story.


Meanwhile, with regards to the ending scene: I want to believe in Shinobu as a sympathetically portrayed character. I want to believe in her as a strong and respectable character who is loved by this manga, in turn for her love of karuta. Unfortunately, her potential setup as a romantic rival to Chihaya for the love of Arata, on top of the already precarious position of being Chihaya's rival for the highest title in karuta, might get in the way of that. Shinobu already displayed a terrible reaction to her loss of a few cards to Chihaya in karuta--how much uglier might her portrayal become if the Chihaya-Arata romance plot gets pushed ever farther?

I bring this up because the effect of her (indeed, sensual) 'playing with the phone cord' scene was not friendly, or sympathetic, but unsettling. I bring it up because, unlike Sumire, Shinobu's portrayal does not fill me with an immediate confidence in her sympathetic role in the story. I am forced to wonder whether my sympathy for Shinobu (like my sympathy for Chitose) goes against the ultimate ends of this story. While it is a bit early to be saying so much, in the end I might be very much glad if those worries were unfounded.
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