Something Else is Going on...Actually, No, the Something IS the Thing That is Going On: Chihayafuru

In August, I will be posting about sports as therapy in anime and manga--as well as the all-consuming relationships within sports in anime and manga. 

The post here focuses specifically on the Taichi-Chihaya relationship in Chihayafuru. 

In many fairy tales, the character who undergoes the strongest internal arc is the female character. From Cinderella to Snow White, the prince is little more than a cipher, a stand-in for the heroine's triumph. 

Chihayafuru impressively switches these roles. Although the catalyst or action figure is Chihaya--the teenage girl who draws together her elementary school friends and motivates them to remaster the game of karuta--the character who undergoes the most change is Taichi, as he comes to grip with his own ambition and abilities. 

He also comes to grip with his romantic feelings--but those romantic feelings are not divided from the game. The game is not even the container for the romantic feelings. The two are inexorably woven together since Taichi's supposed rival, Arata, Chihaya's inspiration for the game, is also his rival at the game and his friend. The two young men maintain a relationship separate from that with Chihaya. 

At the same time, the three form a trio: their energy, vision, and insight galvanize other characters.

Since it is relatively obvious to an outside viewer that Chihaya has conflated nostalgia, personal ambition, and her passion for the game with Arata--a conflation that would end if Arata lived closer and became more than a memory-on-a-pedestal--the actual relationship between Chihaya and Taiki is allowed to thrive. 

In any case, the use of romance in the series is less about romance and more about the multiple threads of desire--that is, desire to win, to be part of a team, to understand the poetry, to beat one's personal record, to achieve a specific goal, to see one's friends again, to regain the past, to simply play, to learn more, to look cute...everything is woven together.

The same can occur in murder mysteries where romantic disillusionment can become hopelessly entangled with greed, others' goals, and physical needs.

Chihayafuru, of course, handles the entanglement far more positively.