Chihayafuru is an anime you could easily overlook, for various reasons (you don’t like how it looks, the description doesn’t sound particularly interesting, there aren’t enough cute girls doing cute things, etc).  Well now I’m here to tell you that, if you’re not watching this series, you are missing out.

What is Chihayafuru about?  It’s about high schoolers playing some Japanese game called karuta that you’ve probably never heard of before, gathering members to form a club, practicing and going through their own training camp, playing in the high school tournament, being separated from a friend and playing the game to meet up with that friend again…  Oh, no, It’s not Saki though.  It’s actually good.

It’s a believable story; it’s not some crazy tale of kids with supernatural powers that help them in the game.  And before you say, “Well, I watch anime for all that unrealistic supernatural stuff,” let me say that it’s realistic in a good way.  It’s easy to relate to, and the suspense and the excitement is so much greater.  The story isn’t predictable in the sense that the main characters always win because, main characters.  Not every match is a dramatically close struggle with the good guys clutching it out in the end.  When they do win, you feel like they deserved it.  You can feel all the effort they put into it.

I say it’s easy to relate to.  If you’ve ever tried to get good at any sport or any game at all, most of the questions you might have asked yourself, and most of the struggles you would have faced, are things that the characters in Chihayafuru deal with as well.  Do I really want to commit so much time and effort to some game?  Can I beat people who are more talented than I am?  And even, what is it that’s so enjoyable about the game?  Questions like these.

And before you say, “Well, I don’t really care about all that ‘trying hard’ stuff,” let me say that it’s more than that.  It’s about the characters and their relationships, and how they change over time.  The story has a way of making you fall in love with the characters.  Like real people, they aren’t perfect.  They have their good points and they have their flaws.  Maybe that’s why it’s easy to get attached to them.

I could go on and on.  The show is very touching, very emotionally moving, the music is great…  And if you’re going to say, “Well I don’t want to watch the show because of [blank about the show],” then I’m going to say, “Well I don’t think that’s a good enough reason.  [blank] surely isn’t the only good thing about the show.  Have you watched enough to be sure that [blank] is so significant that it really makes you not like Chihayafuru?”  If you just watched the first 3 episodes of the second season at anime club, you might think that the series is some cheesy romance series, or that it became more focused on love than karuta, or anything like that.  But it’s not like that at all.  The second season isn’t some simple love story, and it’s not some predictable story of “random new character falls in love with karuta and suddenly becomes really good.”  If anything, I’d say to watch the first 4 episodes of the first season, or even just 2, 3, and 4 (even just episode 2 if you’re really lazy), to get a reasonable idea of the feel for both seasons of the series.  But of course there’s much more to it than that.  Now, if you say, “Well I just don’t want to watch it,” then I’ll say, “Well I guess that’s you’re choice.”  But you know, some people say they know good anime, but they don’t really know what they’re talking about.  But I know what’s actually good.  I just watch stuff like Saki to make Chihayafuru seem even better in comparison.  I mean, why else would I watch blatantly bad anime, right?  I’m not one of those losers with terrible taste in anime.  And before you say, “Well it’s all subjective,” or something like that, don’t worry, I’m not trying to call anyone out on their bad tastes anyone’s tastes bad or anything.

PS – It’s been said that they have good T-shirts: