Chihayafuru 2 - 2

"As My Love First Came"

Whatever happened to respecting your senpai?! I probably would have kicked Hanano out right away after that admission to her ulterior motives.

I can't say I don't like Sumire as a character; she's not very considerate, but she is a normal girl after all, and she's following her heart enough so that she even decides to stay in the Karuta Club when everyone else has given up on Taichi. As a member of the Karuta Club, however, I wouldn't stand her for a minute. I'm aware that Sumire doesn't understand Karuta quite yet, but her blatant lack of interest is nothing short of an insult for Chihaya and the rest, who live for the sport and take the club very seriously. In fact, everyone but Chihaya seems itching to get rid of her and the one other kouhai they managed to retain, Akihiro Tsukuba (Miyu Irino), another disrespectful little snot who considers himself too good for the lower-ranked senpai because he used to play a derivative of Karuta in Hokkaido. It's clear that these two are here to stay, however, and they both show inclinations that they'll probably become just as engrossed in the Hundred Poets as the others did over time.

For the time being, however, Sumire is locked-on to Taichi, even stalking him all the way to the Shiranami Society, only to find herself even more confused. Just what makes Karuta so fun that someone as serious as Taichi would become this obsessed with it? It's Harada-sensei who gives her an answer: "I've been playing Karuta for 45 years and I still don't know." That only confuses Sumire further, but it's a great answer; there's no real reason for why we enjoy things, just as there's no real reason for why we fall in love with someone. We just do. Sumire is a little intrigued by the answer, and she returns to the club, though determined to do as little as possible. As much as she'd like to pretend she isn't interested, however, her joy at taking her first card isn't fake, and Chihaya knows it, which is why she asks her to cut her fingernails for her own safety. Of course the fashion-minded Sumire doesn't like this at all; in her outrage she accidentally blurts out her interest in Taichi and her real reason for staying in the club, to her own mortification.

Chihaya and Kanade give chase when she storms crying from the room, despite the boys' opinion that they should leave her alone and allow her to quit. Kana-chan is the one who finds her, and it's this traditional girl and her modern counterpart who really make a connection. "I think tears are a sign of a beautiful soul," is what she tells Sumire, and in that moment it's clear just how similar these two are. They're both romantics, though in a different sense, and Kanade finally gets through to Sumire, inspiring her in a way Chihaya never could. It's a symbolic act that the first thing Sumire does upon returning is cut her fingernails, and even Tsukuba seems a little more open to following instructions now.

Even with these two on board, the Karuta Club hasn't met its "five new members" condition, and Chihaya feels the most guilty about it all. Not only was she partially responsible for scaring the kouhai away (though it's not entirely her fault, as the new members were more interested in Taichi than the actual sport), her failure at Nationals is what caused the team to become disqualified in the first place. The other members don't blame her, however, and now that they've got their first two kouhai in a more stable position, they're beginning to understand why Chihaya is so obsessed on teaching them a genuine love of Karuta.