Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
Sesshomaru
ちはやふる 2 is a charming sequel to the popular first season. A truly captivating show and a very successful mix of the sport genre, with exciting competitions and the subtle sophistication of the Shoujo genre through friendship bonds. If you enjoyed the first season, this gentle, yet passionate continuation of sport and drama is sure to appeal to you too.
Story: funny - doing the same thing, but a bit different (9/10)
In the first season, the story is in the foreground and introduces both the characters as well as the traditional Karuta. Now that we know the setting and the characters a little better, story and plot take the opposite path, and that is exceptionally well done, by the way. What I really appreciate about this sequel is that the plot is emphasized but not in the foreground. The…
Read at the sourcelv100sneaking
Chihayafuru season 2 is pretty disappointing.
This season is incredibly slow compared to the first season. The main characters were developing well last season but they ground it to a halt in this one. Every match feels exactly the same, just with a different set of faces. The Mizusawa gang seemingly loses all confidence at the start of every match, but by the end of them, win or lose, they've got Superman levels of confidence. EVERY match.
This season has got more inner monologue per 26 minutes than any single human is capable in a day. The directors insist we know what all 100+ characters are thinking at all time, even when they are completely irrelevant to what's going on in the episode, and they insist on making every thought as detailed as a doctorate's thesis. The directors also i…
Read at the sourceM3Cyberpunk
"Strongly recommended for people who loves Slice of Life,Game based shows...If you want a show which will make you emotional (by showing you happy/Joyous scenes about life mostly,not sad ones) & give you goosebumps in about 80% of the whole show"👌🀄🎲
Honestly,I've never thought I would get so many goosembups,emotional impacts just by watching a indoor game based story...Definitely a Masterpiece.❤️💘
It's not just an anime,It's about life,It's about how dreams moves you forward,how working hard birngs you success,It's about how you learn from your failures while chasing your dreams & becoming a stronger person & so on..😌😍
An amazing storyline that revolves around a indoor games,while It may seem like just a game related show at first...It's actually much more than that...The way this an…
Read at the sourcetheadrin
Wow, just wow - what a series. In this review I'll be covering both season 1 and 2, since I cannot imagine anyone who has finished season 1 would not immediately rush out and watch season 2. Spoiler free review and thoughts to follow.
If you ever wanted a sports anime to actually have some romantic elements in it (although fairly subtle/light) then you cant go past this one. It is a top notch sports style anime in the tradition of Haikyuu, Kuroko no Basuke and Hajime no Ippo, just written from a Josei/female protagonist perspectibve. Such a perfect match, with the tension of the games, mixed in with distinctive likeable and diverse cast and such strong character development.
You can't help but fall in love with each and every character. You will laugh with them, feel their pain and joy…
Read at the sourceKyou_Tadashi
When something becomes more than what others suggest, you know its special and imperative to you. This is what Karuta means to the characters but what is more fascinating about it is not just their different ways and techniques in playing Karuta but their various stories and reasons for playing Karuta. This is the backbone of the show and I think they were successful in channeling the the material to make viewers fall in love to this anime or at least I did.
Story: 9
Initially, I thought that the beautiful faces of Chihaya, Arata and Taichi would require a very good material for romance. It could have been an advantage for the show to invest on intimate relationships but nonetheless, I think the show has already a direction and that is to showcase a different side of an average teenager…
Read at the sourceRhyned
*CONTAIN MINOR SPOILERS*
This is a continue review from Chihayafuru season 1. Well, then the characters goes into second semester and tried to achieve what they lack in the first semester: high school competition, training karuta new members, achieving higher rank per individual, and winning solo championship.
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THE BAD SIDE FROM SEASON 2
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1. The season 1 is good because it covers many strategy you did not know, but in season 2, there is just a little new strategy introduced.
One of the strategy is to hear multiple syllable in instant. For me it is BAD. How come human can achieve multi syllable by single syllable, no one in the real world can even differentiate that. The anime tends to be unrealis…
Read at the sourcevegetablespirit
Hyakunin Isshu (literally 'hundred people, one poem') is a Japanese card game typically played with a collection of two hundred cards. Each poem in this collection is by a different poet, and split into two halves: the first half for reading, the second for grabbing. In a match, the reading halves are then called out, and pairs of players must race to grabbing the corresponding second half of the poem. Chihayafuru excels by making this game of stratagem into something too human to ignore. It has no regard for how silly or strange a passion for the game may be, because the only thing it's concerned about is engrossing you as if you were a part of the deck itself.
Whereas the first season primarily concerns the importance of friendship, the second is purely about self-improvement. A recurr…
Read at the source98T4nk
If you have not checked out season 1 watch that first because this 2nd season literally takes place right after season one with the same great stuff along with new things. Bit of a shorter review than im accustomed to but here ya go hope ya like it and agree if ya scene it.
Story- Read the synopsis but if you have already watched s1 your not really missing much. Chihaya is now in her 2nd year and aims to become the individual highschool champion in japan as well as have her karuta club with 2 new members along the ride become the highschool national karuta team champions. Not missing much from the sports/game playing side of the story but alot of new things as well as the love triangle progression between the three main characters Chihaya,Arata,Tachi. The romance isnt really prevalent but…
Read at the sourceUltraDoom
Some increased schizophrenic pacing and frustrating storytelling lead to an experience that is slightly less satisfying than the first season. Another one of those seasons where an additional third could completely redeem and change my opinion of the second. The suspense in this season was almost unbearable but awesome at the same time. A few story elements that were main arcs in the first seemed to get blown over in this season which was a bit disappointing. With all of that said this anime is still very good and really delivers on the action and suspense front. I also found myself really getting into the rhythm and tone of the readers and the game overall, it was a really engaging experience. The characters develop well but I would have liked to see them go just a bit further. I will lik…
Read at the sourceBanjoTheBear
(This has been slightly adapted from my reddit thread)
(This is a review for Season One and Season Two)
Here comes spring, now the flower blooms. A simple phrase that is said multiple times throughout the show, but truly invokes many different feelings: anxiousness, trepidation, excitement, confidence. What lies within Chihaya Furu is a spectacular show which has now become one of my all-time favorites.
STORY
Chihaya Furu has a simple story. Our main protagonist Ayase Chihaya is looking to become the Queen, or the best "karuta" player in the world. I think the phrase "it is not the destination that matters, but the journey" fits the show perfectly. The show gives us Chihaya's goal early on. But it is not this goal that truly matters, it is what she encounters along the way that defines…
Read at the sourceasckj1
Combining my views on both seasons-
A straight 10 for everything in this show.
Story: The topic is difficult. Karuta is not a sport that any of the people outside Japan can relate to. And I don't think even in Japan this sport would be too famous. But this game has an extremely interesting concept of combining the Japanese poems with cards. For any sports anime the matches of that sport need to crafted extremely well for the show to get noticed and appreciated. This show does exactly that. The pacing of the scenes aptly builds up the atmosphere of an exciting match.
Art and Animation: Well drawn characters and backgrounds. And fantastically animated matches. A card game like Karuta which involves fast moves on taking the cards which have poems written on them can be quiet a difficult c…
Read at the sourceMeg-nyan
I'm going to be writing this review in assumption that you, the readers, have already watched the first season of Chihayafuru. I dove into this second season with high expectations from the first, and *most* of those expectations were satisfied. We follow Chihaya and everyone else into another year of karuta, drama, and romance. This season explored new themes and served as a lovely follow up to the first.
Story: 9/10
Chihayafuru's story is mostly known for two things: romance and karuta. If you were looking forward to more romance between our three main characters this season, then I suggest you look somewhere else. This portion of the story has a huge chunk of karuta and focuses mainly on Chihaya and her friends' abilities, motives, rivals, and passion. While the romance may be minimal,…
Read at the sourceTheLlama
As the two seasons present themselves much as a continuous series, with little to set them apart, this review is made and posted for both seasons of the series.
If there is one word that describes Chihayafuru, it is "passion" - indeed, "Chihaya furu" means passionate. On the surface there is little that separates it from typical sports anime, from the focus on the team and team spirit to rivalries to tournament story arcs where you're typically served the main characters' opponents' motivations and reasons for participating in this sport. Through tears and joy we follow the main characters' journey through the world of this sport, and Chihayafuru very much follows this trend. As for the sport in question, the series focuses on a rather obscure (at least to a Western audience) card game kn…
Read at the sourceksyndrome
***Before talking about Chihayafuru, I have a few words to say about Studio Madhouse*****
Studio Madhouse has been nothing short of a powerhouse ( hehe ) in the anime industry for the past decade, having churned out a plethora of excellent anime series and films. I have been particularly impressed time and again at how diverse their works have been, ranging from dark and violent series such as "Death Note" and "Black Lagoon", to mahou shojo series like "Card Captor Sakura" and life dramas like "Nana".
Lets also not forget about their long standing partnership with the great Satoshi Kon, as well as Mamoru Hosoda, whose latest film "Wolf Children; Ame & Yuki" (I wrote a separate review on that film ) has only furthered his legacy as great director in his own right.
**** Now the real revi…
Read at the sourceMotherOfUltra
Finally...Chihaya's second journey is over.
My initial response was this; who'd have thought that an "old" element such as karuta would produce two masterpiece animes? Indeed, who huh. If I did, I'd have gone and taken all the credits. Ah well.
I have written the review for Chihayafuru as well, and when I did, I was quite glad that the second season had begun as soon as I had finished the first season. Pretty fortunate of me if you asked.
Now that I talk about this, let me just tell a little story about my God-given timing. For those who haven't seen Steins; Gate, just ignore this and go to the review written below.
My brother is also an anime lover (He's not really Otaku...cuz, well, he's not that serious) and told me to watch Steins; Gate if I didn't want my life wasted.
However, I fell…
Read at the sourcetommy73
Karuta! Arata! Taichi? K-karuta!!
Twenty five more episodes worth of charming romance and competitive karuta fun? Yes please. But don't expect a balance between the two; there's more latter quantity than the former, and whether you should be satisfied or not is up to your preference!
Who expected, or even acknowledged beforehand, that the true presence of competitive karuta would be ever so fierce and exciting from its outline? Well, I sure certainly didn't when I started from season one. Karuta is more of a complicated sport than popular ones such as baseball and basketball, and the entirety of season one teaches that it requires much more than just reaction timing and memorization to win against other players. I enjoyed season one thoroughly, but watching karuta itself doesn't just hol…
Read at the sourceSeraphP
I don't usually write reviews on MAL ever, but this show just... It just needs it. If you're about to watch this show, you've already seen the first season so I'll just skip on the contents and go straight to what makes Chihayafuru 2 amazing.
This show is just consistently great. The character interactions and development is top notch. There is never any downtime and any time spent on any character or event has a purpose. The characters feel genuine and they feelings really permeate through to the viewer. The karuta matches are tense and no outcome is ever predictable, making for a very enjoyable watch. Even then, when the focus is not put on the karuta matches, you're never left waiting for another one to begin since there's always something interesting going on between the characters.…
Read at the sourceTheArchangel
"Impassioned gods have
never seen the red that is the
Tatsuta River."
-Poem 17 of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu
The poem now most well known to viewers of Chihayafuru was written by Ariwara no Narihira, detailing his unsuccessful relationship with Fujiwara no Takaiko. After falling madly in love with each other, the two would be lovers attempt to run away from the palace. Naturally, given the rather wispy and nostalgic tone of the poem, this attempt failed in a spectacular fashion. Despite this, Ariwara no Narihira became well respected much later on and was most likely the basis for the nameless hero of "The Tales of Ise." His name, along with other famous poets, such as Ono no Komachi and Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, were later included in the Thirty Six Immortals of Poetry.
History lesson…
Read at the sourceAngraj
One of my favorite things about anime and manga is its ability to make the usually boring and mundane things exciting and emotional. Like Hikaru no Go, it takes a game few people play and it builds characters. I can honestly say, even after watching two seasons of the characters playing karuta, I still barely know anything about the game.
Overall, it's an excellent series. It is exciting, emotional, humorous, romantic, relaxing, and tense. Great story telling and character development. If I had to find an issue, it's the endless love triangle, but the main character is completely oblivious to anything else besides karuta, so it's okay.
Fully recommended: Two Thumbs Up
Read at the sourceStark700
So, you ever tried something in your life and wanted to be the best? Well, I mean in terms of not really being the best but to try your best. Then, you realize that you journey to success is a lot harder than you ever imagined it to be. There are obstacles such as competition, stress/anxiety, and other factors that can influence your path to that destination. However, there are some people who just loves to try in order to become the best of the best no matter what the outcomes are. For a certain young girl named Chihaya, the journey continues with this brand new sequel by the name of Chihayafuru 2.
Finally, Chihayafuru is back with the sequel known as Chihayafuru 2. I was quite excited when I heard the making of a sequel. When Winter 2013 came, I was even more thrilled. Indeed, the serie…
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