Undertaker, wow, wow, double-wow, and thank you. You are more than amazing. You've convinced me I need to learn Japanese to appreciate what I'm watching.
Please post more often.
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On Chihaya as reckless rather than foolish, I think this is an important distinction. She is consistently quite intelligent, and to think otherwise is to underestimate her. The animation makes this point at least twice in this episode, once when Taichi is surprised to see her thinking about something for longer than ten seconds, and then when Miyauchi-sensei thinks she must be reading manga in the library. But Chihaya is certainly reckless: just her wish to become queen was perfectly reckless, since she committed herself to a dream whose costs and means she knew nothing about. And then Chihaya is a person of passion, who acts in spite of reasons. Her recklessness shows her in an elevated light, as a force of nature, as a kami even. So, while Taichi may intend a slight, as implied by the Crunchyroll translation, his words have their own deeper meaning, that indicate Chiahaya's elevated character.
The retranslation of Arata as dedicated to a single purpose is crucial. It brings out an important point of similarity between himself and Chihaya, and equally a contrast with Taichi. Taichi is double-minded: his goal is Chihaya and karuta, or Chihaya through karuta. Thus we get his self-reproaches in this episode, where he berates himself for being underhanded and devious. Whatever the truth of that, the real issue for him is that his focus is divided. You wonder if he would be able to keep up his dedication to karuta if he did ever get to go out with Chihaya. But all of his self-consciousness puts him in fundamental opposition to Arata and Chihaya, who have a single-minded dedication to excelling in karuta. Taichi is a more complex character, and a more human one; Arata and Chihaya pursue and reflect a perfection that is alluring, but finally strange, alien, and remote. The "heavenly cloth" is beautiful and desirable, but not, perhaps, well-suited for ordinary people.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sol Falling
Anyway, on the rest of episode 17: very interesting stuff, but unusually this episode did feel like it somehow ended without a resolution. Usually the episodes are a bit more tightly constructed in terms of the overarching storyline or thematic point it is developing.
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I felt this a little too. I appreciate when the athletic or technical aspects of karuta are paired with cultural themes and values, but in this episode the development seemed directed mostly on the former side, and that is less interesting. Harada-sensei's cryptic advice to Chihaya does seem to tell her not to seek a solution that is purely technical or athletic, but so far she hasn't figured out what such a solution would concretely mean. Thus we end up with your sense the episode had no resolution.
Learning from Kana and Tsutomu is certainly a good step. I loved Tsutomu's Bill James approach to karuta. The episode used this to prove to Chihaya she has weaknesses in her game--I don't know that we can expect her to use the analysis strategically (ie putting single-syllable cards in her weakest area, etc.). We see her pursuing Kana's advice to learn the cards more intimately at the library, and following Kana's critique of her unforced errors might allow her to reduce her mistakes. But neither of these approaches seem to be enough by themselves to get her to a higher level.
Odd that she doesn't conceive of learning from Taichi or Nishida. Perhaps that's next episode? Or maybe those guys are off in their own duel to level up to A-level first, and have made themselves irrelevant? There's definitely stuff she could learn from Taichi about memorization and decision-trees, and from Nishida perhaps about strategy and card placement.
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Originally Posted by Sol Falling
Taichi's (as well as Nishida's) complete loss at the B-class tournaments was surprising to me. I won't insist too much on my previous comments about focusing too hard on trying to win (cause that doesn't really seem like to purpose behind that scene), but I wonder if there might be some general explanation for their weaknesses and potential areas for growth too. lol, well I guess, according to Tsutomu's notebook, there actually is one. In that case, here's to hoping we'll also see how Taichi and Nishida can improve as well.
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I'm uneasy about the direction the team is taking. After all the emphasis on teamwork from previous episodes, now at Taichi's direction they are all pursuing their own individual goals. After all the stuff about playing karuta for fun, now we have Taichi desperately wanting to win, for the ulterior purpose of keeping up with Arata. I wonder if they haven't all gone off track somehow.