Chihayafuru

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Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Chihayafull

Japanese: ちはやふる

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Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 25

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Oct 5, 2011 to Mar 28, 2012

Premiered: Fall 2011

Broadcast: Wednesdays at Unknown

Producers: VAP, Nippon Television Network

Licensors: Sentai Filmworks

Studios: Madhouse

Source: Manga

Genres: Drama, Sports

Themes: Love Polygon, School, Strategy Game

Demographic: Josei

Duration: 22 min. per ep.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 8.18¹ (scored by 183,603 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #398²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #488

Members: 461,566

Favorites: 7,961

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@chihaya_anime

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May be unavailable in your region.

8.18

Ranked #398Popularity #488Members 461,566

Episodes: /25

Synopsis

As a child, Chihaya Ayase had only one dream: to see her elder sister Chitose become Japan's most successful model. However, upon defending her ostracised classmate Arata Wataya from his bully—Chihaya's childhood friend Taichi Mashima—she discovers the world of competitive karuta and soon becomes enamoured with the sport.

Based on the Ogura Hundred Poets anthology, this card game where poems are studied requires excellent memory, agility, and a tremendous endurance from the players. Full of hope, Chihaya joins the Shiranami Society together with the newly reconciled Arata and Taichi, embarking on an exciting journey for the title awarded to the top-ranked female player—Queen of Karuta.

Since middle school, Chihaya grew distant from a dispassionate Taichi and separated from Arata. However, in order to improve her skills, Chihaya decides to create a karuta club in her high school. With the help of Taichi, another veteran player, and a few spirited newcomers, Chihaya's new-founded Mizusawa Karuta Club aims for victory in the Omi Shrine's national championship.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Chihayafuru is the anime adaptation of the manga with the same name written and illustrated by Yuki Suetsugu and serialised in the magazine Be Love. Animax Asia released the anime with English subtitles in 2013.

Two live-action films were released in 2016. The first, titled Chihayafuru Kaminoku, opened in Japanese cinemas on March 19, followed by a second film, titled Shimonoku, on April 29, 2016. During a stage greeting event for the second film, a surprise announcement was made that a sequel would be produced, although details for a production schedule or release date were not revealed.

The manga won the second Manga Taishou award, and the 35th Kodansha Manga Award in the shoujo category. Chihayafuru has become so popular that it boosted interest in competitive karuta. The manga has sold over 4.5 million copies and has been praised for combining elements of sports and literature.

Episode Videos

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Chihayafuru
Sequel:	Chihayafuru 2

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Ayase, Chihaya

Main

Seto, Asami
Japanese

Mashima, Taichi

Main

Miyano, Mamoru
Japanese

Wataya, Arata

Main

Hosoya, Yoshimasa
Japanese

Wakamiya, Shinobu

Supporting

Nakamichi, Mihoko
Japanese

Ooe, Kanade

Supporting

Kayano, Ai
Japanese

Suou, Hisashi

Supporting

Touchi, Hiroki
Japanese

Harada, Hideo

Supporting

Ishizuka, Unshou
Japanese

Sudou, Akito

Supporting

Ohara, Takashi
Japanese

Komano, Tsutomu

Supporting

Yonaga, Tsubasa
Japanese

Nishida, Yuusei

Supporting

Nara, Tooru
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Maruyama, Masao

Producer

Tamura, Manabu

Producer

Nakatani, Toshio

Producer

Iwasa, Naoki

Producer

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Opening Theme

"YOUTHFUL" by 99RadioService

Edit

Ending Theme

	1: "Soshite Ima (そしていま)" by Asami Seto (eps 1-24)
	2: "YOUTHFUL ~from Studio Yamato~" by 99RadioService (eps 25)

Reviews

Jun 22, 2013

MelKaven

Recommended

"What the hell is Katura?"
Of course, that was my first reaction.
But then...
Wow...
Just wow...

At first, this anime really didn't catch my interest. It was plain and dry, like trying to shape out the dry clay; but as it went on, I found myself immersed in it. Like a sea of colors vibrantly expanding across an infinite of sky. Yes, even now, fifteen minutes after I finally saw the last episode, I am still numbed by its excellence.

**NO SPOILERS**
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...

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Aug 25, 2016

Cryptic-senpai

Mixed Feelings

Let's be honest: I'm not really a fan of sports anime. Or anything that revolves around sports. More to the point, I'm just not a very competitive person, physically. Give me an essay topic and I'll try my darn hardest to prove I can write better than my opponent. Give me some math questions, and I'll melt my brain from the stress of making sure I don't make a single error. When it comes to brain games, I am a perfectionist. But the moment I felt pressured to be better than my fellow ballet classmates, my inspiration and desire to go further trickled away and ... vanished. The moment I understood that my tae kwon do classes weren't just for recreation, they were for competing with my other colleagues, I just completely lost interest. It is not my forte, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. That's why I so very much wanted Chihayafuru to prove me wrong – to show me that sports anime can be just as good and captivating as any other despite my lack of interest in the subject. The show certainly started off with a bang.

The main character, Chihaya, is in high school. A meeting with a former elementary school classmate of hers prompts a flashback that extends across several episodes, detailing her previous history with this classmate and, more specifically, the start of Chihaya's passion for an unusual sport – karuta. Karuta not only requires physical prowess, it also requires you to use your brain, constantly: the basis of the game is the memorization of one hundred poems. Only fifty of these are used in any one game. The cards that are used by the players in karuta contain the second verse of the poem. To put it in a nutshell, a reader recites the first verse of a particular poem. You grab the card that has the second verse of that poem. It sounds simple, and in a way it is, but it takes a lot of training to become good at karuta.

I suppose you can guess why even I wondered if I would want to play karuta – the mental aspect interested me. Not only that, but I was taken in by the way the anime showcased Chihaya's love for karuta. In addition, I also liked that it touched upon different forms of love for the same hobby and passion: one of Chihaya's high school classmates is a girl named Kanade, who adores karuta, not because she is particularly competitive, but because she likes the poems, and the history and meaning behind each and every one. The variety and carefulness with which the anime presented its theme held my attention. I definitely found myself liking the characters, and by episode eight, I found myself cheering them on. Even the card game matches were exciting. I was nervous, hoping one of the main characters would win, hoping that things would go well.

But things started going downhill when I realized that, by episode twenty, I knew pretty much nothing about any of the characters. Let’s start off with Chihaya, the titular main character. She is obsessed with karuta. Part of this is arguably because it was the first hobby she actually started to like. As a child, her only dream was to see her older sister become a famous model, but a chance meeting in elementary school with a boy named Arata sparked her passion. Seeing how good Arata was, Chihaya wanted to be as good as him, perhaps even surpass him. Arata himself is a bit of a mixed bag. He is characterized as a stoic young man who has a similar passion for karuta, although he hasn’t been playing as much as he used to due to a tragedy in his family. Taichi is Chihaya’s childhood friend, and in elementary school, he used to bully Arata, but has since then formed a grudging respect for him. Then there is Kanade, a female classmate Chihaya and Taichi meet in high school, along with Nishida. I’ve already mentioned Kanade, and Nishida is an overweight boy who, similar to Chihaya and Arata, has a love for karuta.

“But senpai, you told me so much about those characters!” Yes, but did you notice that I didn’t include much of their personality traits? That is because they don’t have a lot. They feel bland and, ultimately, uninteresting, which is a huge problem in an anime that is more character-driven than plot-driven. The anime definitely does not spend much time fleshing out its characters. Some interesting sub-plots that were brought up at first – such as Chihaya’s awkwardness and inability to talk to her parents about her hobby – are ultimately cast aside later on as if they never existed. I would have liked to see Chihaya opening up about her passion, especially since she is supposedly so good at karuta and is progressing in all these championships and matches. What do her parents feel about her going on so many trips to play karuta? What about her sister? We’re not privy to any of that. Similarly, we don’t know anything about Taichi or Nishida’s familial life. Arata seems to live on his own, and the only thing we know about Kanade is that her mother supports her, if only because she is present at some of the karuta matches later on.

What is more, is that the love plot feels artificial. Watching the first episode, you can probably guess pretty quickly that Taichi has a crush on Chihaya. That actually develops a bit throughout the series, since by the last couple episodes, Taichi admits this to himself. Chihaya, on the other hand, has a long-standing crush on Arata. The problem is that there doesn’t seem much of a reason for her to have this crush. Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for unrequited romances, and to some extent I can sort of understand her idealization of Arata. But, it sort of loses steam when she emails him and texts him, and he never replies. Not even when he actually sees the emails. There is one scene where he asks Taichi to give Chihaya his cell phone number, to which Taichi responds that he should do it himself. But we don’t know anything about what happens after that scene. We don’t know how Chihaya got Arata’s phone number. The scene just sort of ends and progresses on to the next one. To put it simply, Arata shows pretty much zero signs of being interested in Chihaya. In fact, he has a closer relationship with Taichi than anything else. I’m honestly guessing that the second season will reveal that he has a crush on him.

Back to karuta, though, since that is the main shtick of this anime: the matches, at first, are interesting. However, later on, they get rather repetitive and predictable. You could argue that in a game consisting of two players battling one another, there are only two possible outcomes, but you could still make it more interesting. Chihaya is supposed to be a good player, but she is always so amazed and taken aback by her opponents that I wonder where all these good players were. Why were they hiding in the woodwork? Taichi’s matches were overall more interesting than Chihaya, mainly because he tends to keep his cool and focus on the match, unlike the main female protagonist.

Another thing that I take contention with is that Chihaya is in group A, the rank that composes the best players in karuta. We are told early on that it is very difficult to get into group A. Chihaya then gets into group A. She must be a really good player, right? Maybe, but we don’t see much of it. She commits so many faults, makes so many mistakes, and loses so many rank A matches that I find it hard to believe she could even obtain A rank in the first place. Maybe the point is to show that she is talented at karuta. That is fine and dandy, but if you tell me a character is good at karuta and then show them being completely flabbergasted later on, you are not doing a very good job of convincing me that they are worthy of being in the group with the best players. Taichi and Nishida are far more believable A rank material.

Arguably, the thing I liked the most about Chihayafuru is its focus on different ways you can enjoy karuta, and finding your own reasons to be passionate about it. These aspects are applied to karuta, and other sports by extension, but they certainly don't need to be. They can also apply to a whole lot of other things, such as hobbies, school, and, really, anything else you need or want to focus on. That was something I thought was really interesting, and it was a nice theme throughout the show as a whole.

Chihayafuru’s OST is nothing to really write home about; it’s there, and it works when it needs to, but I didn’t find myself looking up the soundtrack to listen to them again. The opening theme is YOUTHFUL, performed by 99RadioService; like the band name, it’s a serviceable OP, but not completely my cup of tea. I liked the ending theme a lot more – a song called Soshite Ima by Asami Seto. The seiyuu for the most part do a good job. I couldn’t really discern any voices I liked in particular, although I certainly recognized some of the voice actors and actresses.

The art and animation is really where the show shines; Madhouse always does a good job, and Chihayafuru is no exception. The colours are bright, the character designs are very likable, and the animation is fluid. There are occasions where CGI is used, but it is never jarring or distracting, and fits in well for the most part.

Overall, Chihayafuru starts out very well, but ultimately loses steam in the long run. I can’t say whether or not it’s a good sports anime as a whole, since I don’t watch many at all, but I certainly enjoyed it as long as it managed to be engaging for me. In the end, I’m not certain I would recommend it to those who want to try the genre out, so I’ll leave that to people more knowledgeable in other sports-oriented titles. It was good while it lasted and would have definitely benefited from tighter and more consistent storytelling, in my opinion.

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Sep 30, 2020

Misbah_shah

Not Recommended

The Theme was really boring to me. A card game known as Karuta, in which 2 people have to snatch the cards before each other, didn't seem to me interesting enough, as it was seeming to the protagonists.
Female and male protagonists are beautiful and handsome respectively, but the girl is so over obsessed with the game that I was hating it.
I wasn't getting her obsession, maybe I couldn't relate. What caught my attention was "Taichi getting jealous With Arata because of Chihaya"
Maybe he liked Chihaya for a long time, so I thought the story will be interesting, when some goal (Karuta) will ...

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Wataya, Arata

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