Note: This review covers only the first season of Chihayafuru. Original writing date: 11/09/2017.

Chihayafuru is a sports show through and through. It teaches the sport’s rules, it encourages people to play it, school clubs are used to impact on a younger audience, and the characters in it all work together as a team of friends in order to grow and show us the mantra of “hard work makes everything possible”. By its essence, Chihayafuru would be just another forgettable attempt at the genre. Unlike Baby Steps it does not bother tackling the future of its cast as professional players, unlike Prince of Tennis or Cross Game the sport is kinda of shady and unheard about. So what does it offer to stand on its own? How does it evades the annoying tropes of the genre?

Lead character. The answer lies in there. You see, most sports shows are about a young boy born to play the sport and joining some school club. Chihayafuru is the very same, yet Ayase Chihaya is a girl, and far from a girl in a shounen sports show. She is your average shoujo lead, the clumsy yet energetic girl. This is her tale as she starts playing karuta, a card game inspired by ancient japanese poems, and her struggles to spread the sport at the same time as longing to see her childhood friend and love interest, the ace karuta player, Wataya Arata. Fret not, if not one of the very best sports show, Chihayafuru can be at least one of the most refreshing of them.

Karuta

Ok. First of all, let’s get rid of the game. Most sports show only uses the sport as a mean to its objective: encouraging new players and spreading a message of health, social awareness, and inspiration. The same happens here, but karuta is an insane sport. Absurdly insane. First of all, it requires the players to memorize, in long term, one hundred poems broken into two parts. The first part is recited during the play and the players must react quickly to pick the card with the correspondent second part of it. This means also incredible reflexes and arm coordination. Card placement is also a big issue, requiring short-term memory as well. This is not a game anyone can simply pick up and play, it’s extremely regional, based on japanese literature, and requiring skills that can only be honed with years of practice.

It doesn’t matter though…

Karuta can also be boring to play when you picture it in real life. Hearing an almost priest-like chant in complete silence and concentration while memorizing plain written cards is not exactly something you would do to have fun. Regardless of that, however, Chihayafuru makes every match an exciting thing to watch, focusing moments of its narrative to point out skills required by the game. If you are a true sports fan, you can also enjoy Chihayafuru’s best asset as well…

It’s about the background of the sport

Yeah. If you enjoy many types of sports instead of simply one or two, it’s highly possible you enjoy them because of their background. You don’t simply watch tennis because the match is fun, you watch because you know what is at stake. There are records, there is a ranking system at play, there are titles, a tour, a history to the sport that enriches its atmosphere. Chihayafuru biggest strength is exactly that. Instead of simply moving through tournament to tournament as most shounen sports shows, this time karuta is given a enjoyable background that grows along with the episodes. The choice of such unheard and closed-off sport also helps in that regard, as you can almost see the whole world of karuta within one season and understand most of things that are at stake from quite early.

And it’s a shoujo

Ok. It is announced as a josei, but there’s hardly a difference between them. However, being made with the female audience in mind gave us Ayase Chihaya as a protagonist, and that’s a big deal for this kind of show. Shounen and shoujo leads follow their templates most of the time and can be very similar in many aspects, but there is one where shoujo leads have big leverage: consistency. Whereas shounen leads quickly betray their initial ideas, such as the shy boy instantly being swarmed by friends and girls or the weak willed boy leading a group of friends, shoujo leads rarely get such treatment. They can even get multiple guys loving them, but they were never announced as the social-freak or as lacking resolve. Ayase Chihaya’s cheerful behavior from the start is her most important asset and her very initial idea. You see her trying her best and struggling only when it really matters, nothing is simply ass-pulled to bring the plot towards her, and that by itself is an amazing thing to do in a sports show.

But a light shoujo

Being a shoujo, of course there is romance in the air. Ayase, Wataya, and Taichi form a love triangle explored through the season, a group of childhood friends who found their bond through karuta. Fortunately, this romance is decently held to the support role as the tale of karuta players, tournaments, and school clubs takes the lead. It sometimes get back on the mainstream and it turns out as an important emotional factor for the three heroes, but it is amazing how natural that feels.

And it’s beautiful

Madhouse studio does it again. Most of the excitement from the karuta matches come from its amazing production value. Chihayafuru is colorful, sharp, and boasts an incredible consistent animation quality. Add to that a decent sound direction and a sweet voice-acting and you have one of the best production of its genre for sure.

Chihayafuru was forgotten in my backlog for years. I mean, look at that, a sports show about an unknown card game? Shoujo romance? No, thank you. Also, Hikaru no Go never got me, so why would I bother with this unheard japanese-only sports too? Well, it was my mistake. A BIG mistake.

Chihayafuru manages to be a sports show that breaks most rules while carefully using them. Its first major point is taking the shoujo style in favor of a shounen one, removing the annoying shounen lead we all hate and picking a genki lovable girl instead. Its second hit comes in picking a unheard sports where the entirety of it can be seen, giving us a better sense of what is at stake even if we are simply watching a highschool tournament between clubs. Finally, it boasts a production quality unlikely to be seen in others of the genre. Those three major points come in tandem with a well-paced shoujo romance and the all-known formula of sports show with exciting matches, dealing with defeat, and prospecting future clashes.

Chihayafuru deserves a chance.