Chihayafuru
a review by hoeberries
a review by hoeberries
(No major spoilers here, although all secrets of the universe can be found within Taichi's eyes.)
I think, after that, I'll give you a nice, slow shoulder massage, because you must be sore from carrying Chihayafuru on your back for 247 chapters.
You started off as an entitled rich kid. You grew into a frosty-hearted shoujo prince, equipped with your looks and fangirls, scoring top grades, so on and so forth. But what really makes me feral is how you try to move beyond these base states. Your character development is the pillar that holds this series in place: you work painstakingly hard, trying to become someone who does not take the easy way out, banking your youth on this one seemingly pointless activity that does not come to you naturally—the niche of niches that hates your guts. Why? It would be so easy to give up. You have it all outside of karuta, but at your core is your self-loathing, sharp as a knife's edge, reiterating again and again that, despite your many accolades and admirers, you do not want to be you. You are littered with insecurities. As such, you obsess over bettering yourself and supporting others, only for those efforts to often amount to nothing when you fail, fail, and fail again.
I relate to you intensely! You give so much but struggle to open your heart. People love you, but you run away before they can prove it, putting on this aloof mystique when you're really lonelier than anyone. Literally me! I ache over how unrequited you are, pining like the Inaba mountain pines for a girl who, quite frankly, does not deserve you, because it is I who truly deserves you, who will pamper you with kisses and hugs. I throb over your nonlinear path to self-forgiveness, which is all too often one step forward, two steps back—all such a far cry from the straight-arrow aspirations of our other protagonists, and yet still essential to the story, propping everyone else up through your twisting, meandering narrative roots burrowed so deep into the earth. You beautiful boy! Let me piece your heart back together and whisper into your ear that, at long last, you've done enough.
I am sure, eventually, we can have a fantastic life wherein which you can sustain me with your yummy doctor earnings. Simply be advised that I am a poly prat, so we're moving on for now.
On behalf of the fanbase, sorry. Being one of those malnourished, slobbering Taichi fangirls, I used to hate your four-eyed ass. I would ridicule you on internet forums, talk mad shit in discussions with my ex-friend (I ruined relationships over this) and knit scraggly spectacled voodoo dolls to fill with needles. Such was the extent of my hatred.
Something made me change. Perhaps it was watching the anime and discovering how fucking adorable your Fukui accent was. Perhaps it was that confession of yours, when you bowed and showed the utmost respect to your should-be spouse and caused my heart to lurch out of my chest. Or perhaps it was the gradual realisation that you were a clumsy, shortchanged, poverty-stricken child who is kind and optimistic despite it all, and my dedication to your privileged bourgeois rival was the height of class-traitor problematics.
I guess this makes us enemies to lovers; but of course you are too kind and forgiving to think of me as an enemy, so maybe not. You couldn't think of Taichi that way either, in the end. You're just too damn sweet!
I think of you as a sky-blue lake awash with cherry blossoms, transparent with your contagious love for karuta, something you effortlessly reflect onto impressionable tomboys. When you play, it is with the grace and fluidity of water. Losing your grandfather left a nail in your heart, but you were able to embrace your community, open your heart to others, and grieve the person that meant the most to you. At your core is not the remorseless karuta demon they paint you as throughout the series, but always that starry-eyed child who simply loves to play an obscure traditional Japanese card game. What I respect most is this joy and purity! Without it, there would be no story, no beacon of shining karuta love for us to pursue even as you spent so much time far away from the action.
I do think you could have been developed a little more, and it is a shame that you were so often confined to Taichi's shadow simply by virtue of having less screen time. The ending in particular shortchanged your character in a big way. But isn't it so like you to accept that with grace and compassion? I myself am so spiteful—I never could.
And you have the cutest accent, oh my lord. I just need to reiterate that.
Your being dwells in secret places. On the surface is the unbeaten Queen, but behind that, tucked away in miscellaneous, winter-encased city, there is a vacant room, stacks of classical poetry, and there, certainly—a tiny girl, her lithe fingers sweeping through the air again, again, again, again, again, again, soundless and engulfing in the way of evening snow.
I want to scoop you up, skinny or chubby or somewhere in between, and give you a big hug. You really need one. After all, your exterior conceals an awkward, lonely teenager who makes friends with cards because she has no one else. Literally me again! Minus the whole world champion thing. You are not a prodigy in the way of others in this series, as your work has been unavoidable and deliberate, performed in isolation throughout your life. You are very much in your head. This produces a simple and lovely contrast with the fireball that is Chihaya, pitting warmth against cold, bonds against solitude, and sounds against silence. Where it matters, though, you are both goofballs. No fashion sense to be found in our protagonist, shaped by flames, nor our antagonist, hewn out of ice.
It became necessary for you to thaw. You had to become a businesswoman! A streamer! Those YouTube scenes were low-key cringey as heck, but I respect the hustle nonetheless. Get those sponsorships. Get that cash. I just want you to do well in life! It's very sports manga for me to end up rooting for the enemy just as much as our hero, but this one goes above and beyond. I do not want you to lose! I want you to stay on the summit! Of course, you eventually learn that there is room in this place for many; that even as you stumble, another can pull you to the top.
Something that always stuck out to me was the relationship you share with your grandmother: unspoken and intricate, as one might expect from a string of gems sustained between two jaded Kyoto women. That stylish matriarch holds you in high esteem, demonstrating such formidable respect for your dreams, as silly and unachievable as they might sound on paper. If what you do is not a profession, you need only make it one. If you cannot do it, who can? This is what she says to you, passed between young and old, the hag and the girl. You are young, beautiful, and the best in the world.
Cling to your snow crystals: those silent, glittering beads, revealing the night via the pale glow of the future. Your takes pierce the sky like white winter frost.
#####Psst, Suou! What an eccentric guy you are. The soft-spoken dork who sits atop the karuta world, nerding out over the beauty of voices and staunchly blotting out anything else. I sometimes choose to read you as autistic, though I am not sure if you are. You're kinda a mystery, yanno?
#####Your strategy is antithetical to the series as a whole: a deliberate sedation, weaponising your lack of passion for the game you play, focusing on the texture of sound, a faraway vanguard available only to a special few. This location is peripheral and insubstantial, as if it were a desert mirage, and although this grants you near-unrivalled ability, it also disconnects you from others as you become lost in a paracosm of success.
#####As we know, this series is all about love and community, something you try so hard to run away from. (Uh-oh. Literally me times three.) At your core is a sunken shame, as you push yourself from your family back home, which includes the woman that means most to you. You are a misfit, an outcast, all of your own making, all-too-aware that your life here is ephemeral, that your hereditary disability will one day render you blind. As your character unfolds, we start to see how sympathetic you really are. The jigsaw falls into place.
#####Most of all, I love your relationship with Taichi (typical, I know), who you took under your wing despite seeming nothing alike. You flaunt unexpected wisdom as you bond with this highschooler, who is also running away from something, on some manga-long pilgrimage to find out who he really is.You serve each other well, negotiating these pivotal people that you have constructed your lives around; people who, because they mean so much to you, have always been pushed further from your flickering hearts.
#####So you flicker and flash. You accept you are a ghostly candle at constant risk of being blown out. You nurture your body, shielding your ears as if they were your life—your final tethers to the banks of the living. And you are the Meijin, damn it, insubstantial or not! Some write you off as talented, but then it was you that described talent as a sort of flame: those who possess it can light the blaze faster than anyone else, and yet that alone will not guarantee the flame's strength, nor how long it burns.
For a long time I sat down and asked what Chihayafuru does to make itself more interesting than the average bitch-ass anime bildungsroman. I thought of a few things generally confined to "well uh, good characters, the story actually progresses, blah blah," but one that stands out is the focus on older characters.
You are one of these older characters. The mentor, the coach, the sensei. I expected to remain in that role throughout the series, dropping truth bombs and pieces of karuta wisdom that feed growing, fighting protagonists which are at that stereotypically formative age. I was surprised when you wrestled the spotlight away from them with your strength of a bear, showing you weren't nearly done and who cares if you're old, because you can still kick ass even with a shitty knee! So silly was I for again underestimating one of those smouldering burnt fields just before they burst into a field of thriving green youth. If only we had a Studio Shaft paint job for this one too. Not that I dislike the actual adaptation, but it can be a bit stale.
Anyway! You remind us that these flower-laced fault lines of youth and passion are not restricted to the moments before we graduate high school. These are people we're talking about, and no matter your age, there is still room to grow and bloom into who we are meant to be, many times, over and over. Thank you for being the best mentor that Chihaya and the gang could ask for, not because of your knowledge, but because you fearlessly pursue your dreams alongside them. You teach us to wear your heart on your sleeve. To leave nothing in the tank. Breathe in deeply, then completely exhale. Always go for the bottom-most-right card. Be kind. Try your damndest in everything. Youth comes many times.
Kana! You like poetry. Me too, girl, me too. On the whole, Chihayafuru does an exceptional job of weaving the Hyakunin Isshu poems into the fabric of its narrative, often with you as our well-meaning guide. It's precious how you arrange peoples' shoes and such for small bounties of good fortune. You are also the OG Taichihaya shipper, and though I eventually backstabbed the Taichihaya alliance in favour of the Taichi x Me reality, I gots to respect you.
Sudo! I love sadists, and you happen to be a particularly likeable one. And we need some scummier cinnamon rolls, yanno, because everyone's so damn lovely in this series. It's a shame you ended up losing to our leads so often, but oh well. Someone had to be in that spot. It's cool that your goal is to rise in the karuta organisation rather than to become the Meijin yourself.
Inokuma! A mother who still competes in karuta competitions? Takin' cards one minute, breastfeedin' bubs the next? SO COOL TO SEE. This is what I mean when I say this manga nails the older characters. It is aided by the game that is karuta, where everyone is free to participate in these little tournaments no matter their age, gender, profession, etc. Speaking of which...
Kuzuryu! Kuzuryu Youko! I suspect no one remembers you except for me. You're that older reader that debuts towards the end of the series. And how awkward you are! By your own description: too tall, too blunt, too sensitive to the cold, and with a voice too unnaturally deep to be suited to reading. Kyoko once said she loved your voice, and that was enough for you to become a reader for the rest of your life, through college, work and an arranged marriage: you found refuge in these niche game that you did not wish to properly compete in, cultivating your reading to a point where it is praised even by sonic connoisseur Hisashi Suou.
This all came to an end when your husband had a stroke. You dropped everything to help him recover, even as a cognitive disorder took hold of his brain, and everything you had built together flaked away. You stopped going to tournaments. You nursed him professionally, never faltering as he became worse and worse, eventually passing ten years later. The funeral came and went. It was there that you met Kyoko again, so long since your first fruity meeting, long ago.
"Come back to this game where we all feel connected," she pleaded, because we won't be here forever. You would return to read in the final match, and it is then that we hear that first card which has been broadcast to a point where we should be numb to its powers: that in Naniwa bay, after sleeping all winter, the flowers are blooming. Mono no aware 'n all that, and heck, it HITS! I feel ill-equipped to summarise the little life story that had me WEEPING when I first read it, as if it were the entire series compressed into a bittersweet microcosm. We bloom, we wilt, we start again. We recite these words, over and over, continuing until the time we are stripped from the tree like plum blossoms, spirited along by a spring breeze, only to press gently into the damp earth when our journey reaches its end.
THE STORM BLASTS RED LEAVES FROM MOUNT MIMORO, SETTING THE TATSUTA RIVER ABLAZE.
You are the best main character we could ask for, even with your rough edges. That first card tore open the floodgate of your heart, announcing you as energetic, straightforward, and brimming with passion for karuta. You are dancing white-hot ball of fire and I am a transfixed pyromaniac. Though it is others that support her journey, it is the ace that blazes a trail forward.
It's rewarding to watch you inspire those around you. You are the one that shines light across the eyes of Arata, turning seawater to steam as he drowns in grief. You extend your hand to Shinobu, pulling her out of that faraway winter, melting her crown of ice. Inevitably you can be too dense, or too laser-focused, which leads to you tripping over your feet, leaving Taichi with bruises and burns. But of course I forgive you for this. One of my favourite parts of this story is you learning how to appreciate the game of karuta in new dimensions: not simply as a competitive snap-'em-up, but as a compendium of language, and then using language to express yourself. There is so much meaning to be made of life, and everyone must try to make their own. Isn't it the fate of all living things to one day compose a poem? You will make a great teacher one day, though you still have much to learn.
You're a typical shounen protagonist, and the truth everyone tries to ignore is that typical shounen protagonists are awesome, so there is no shame in being that way even in a sho/josei manga. It is the success of Chihayafuru that it unites all the best tendencies of so many demographic categories and channels them into one: the competitive, self-improvement engine of sports shounen, the emotional maturity and (forgetting the ending for one sec) well-developed romance of a shoujo, and that indescribable secret sauce belonging to something more josei (or maybe it's just my imagination, because honestly this isn't that josei lol). With you at the helm, this series makes my heart pump, flutter, and thrum, all at once.
Manga artist Suetsugu Yuki doubtlessly took inspiration from sports shounen greats, considering she was caught out blatantly plagiarising Slam Dunk earlier in her career (LOL, great taste though). She then spread her wings wider with the rest of the cast, confessing to divining Taichi from André Grandier of The Rose of Versailles, sampling that hidden bougie yearning that gushes like an underground river throughout this series, beneath Chihaya's dazzling flames. None of this was planned, allegedly—she allowed the characters alter the course of the narrative, which led to some who were only meant to be side characters (Taichi, if you can believe it) becoming protagonists in their own right. I think, considering this, Chihayafuru is the epitome of a character-driven story, by its writer's own admission. So you can see why I wanted to write a letter to these magical people.
Let's wrap up with a thematic Hyakunin Isshu poem:
Like a boatsman
Adrift at the mouth of Yura
I do not know where this love will take me
I have so much love for everyone in this manga! A cast like my very own children of every age, and there is no way I could ever sift through their ranks and pick a favourite, unless it's Taichi, because my favourite is so totally Taichi. Where will this love take me? I hope it is on the path to being a kinder, stronger person, more willing to open their heart to others; but of course I can never know for sure.
Anywho. Learn the pain of creating something, y'all. Chop chop!
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