Association is a common and very effective memorization technique. If you replace words with images that you are familiar with, it makes it much easier to manipulate and locate in your head.
Association is a common and very effective memorization technique. If you replace words with images that you are familiar with, it makes it much easier to manipulate and locate in your head.
Peace.
They don't do well most of the year, and they are only able to sell yukata during the summer. But I imagine they are still the only place around that sells/rents furisodes for Coming of Age Day (Seijin no Hi) as well. Still...that's only January and the festival season.Originally Posted by Buffalobiian
I think Kana basically is forcing Chihaya to act as a walking billboard when she goes to tournaments from now on.
Her primary reason isn't to advertise her family business, though. She simply loves the classic clothes and even more so in conjunction with the poems (or other things from the past, explaining why she tried archery). She said earlier she wouldn't join a club that didn't assume historical clothing. While she relented a little, she wouldn't, fortunately, give up entirely.
No, Kana isn't using the hakama requirement to promote her family's business and you're right, she's doing it out of love for the clothing. But I suspect that will be the result of her request. Chihaya and she (perhaps Taichi as well) will show up in hakama. If she's wearing something similiar to what she does during the OP, Chihaya's combined skill and appearance will make people feel that she is very elegant, and wonder where she got such a garment.
While Kana isn't doing it for business reasons, there is a likelihood that her family's business will experience a slight uptake. She is unintentionally forcing Chihaya to be a walking billboard. But don't forget that another part of her demands (edit: actually the primary one) was that Chihaya be the model for their catalog/pamphlet. Her family's store essentially got a free Chitose look-alike.
Last edited by Ryllharu; Wed, 11-09-2011 at 06:23 PM.
Episode 7 - HS
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Quite an interesting episode, even if I'm not yet sure if the addition of the studies nerd was good or bad. It's hard to say if he really fits into this series, but I do recognize the possibility my pov is just twisted by the (young) male presence so far having been handled by dudes like Taichi and Arata (their older versions quite bishounen), and Chihaya is naturally really bishoujo and even Kana resembles quite closely typical sidekicks in shoujo shows. Time will tell, I suppose, but at least it should be safe to assume there's no danger of the polygon gaining more sides...
The other thing making this episode interesting was naturally Taichi winning. When Chihaya was wiping the floor with him early in the episode, I was already missing Arata - to have Chihaya lose a match - but then we suddenly got the memory match with flipped cards and, voila!, Chihaya lost. Having her lose a match was a necessity but a part of me is sad it didn't result from Arata making an appearance sooner. Maybe he still needs a little more time to get his game rolling.
Indeed, there were three really good things about this episode.
The first two involve the Concentration match. One, is that Taichi got his drive to be good at karuta back. The other is that he forced Chihaya to recognize her weakness in the same stroke. With her dominating so often, it would be hard to convince her that her game is only saved by her superhuman hearing and lightning reflexes. Taichi was about to give up completely because he felt outclassed and inferior to her, but now, he knows with a little drive and practice, he might be able to truly challenge her from the other direction (the cards that aren't first syllable, Chihaya's strong point). He could focus on those card positions, and beat her consistently until she learns. That match will allow the both of them to grow substantially.
The third thing was how similar Taichi and Tsutomu are. The only difference is that one is extroverted, and the other introverted. Both are plagued by striving to be the best, and giving up if they can't. Taichi forced to do so by his mother for years, and Tsutomu out of a drive to be useful at all, even if his classmates won't let him into their circles. But Taichi found something he wanted to do even if he was only second best thanks to Arata, and found it again thanks to Tsutomu's intervention. Now Tsutomu has found a group that will take him in. It might look like Chihaya just wants him to fill a body count, but thanks to Taichi, Tsutomu found something else to get out of the club, a place to be welcomed to. All he has to do is put in the effort.
A fourth bonus item is that now Kana might have someone to play with. She can't really compete with either Taichi or Chihaya because the two of them are completely out of her league as a beginner.
That's an interesting one, since Kana is definitely going for the "feel" route with knowing and feeling for each card, while our new nerd is going for the memorisation route. Basically, less competent versions of Chihaya and Taichi. xD
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
Yeah, I neglected to realise his great role might be to allow Kana play against a more plausible opponent. A very good point.
Episode 8 - HS
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Nikuman is pretty strong. Who knows how much he had kept practicing karuta in his mind, including repeating the poems, but it's not like it could have entirely made up for real practice. Yet he was still able to put up a good fight against Chihaya. That's good for Chihaya, as well, of course. Now she has two people to play seriously against.
During every ep I keep waiting for Arata's dramatic reappearance. With no verified series length it's impossible to try to predict if it's going to be the next ep or five eps from now... The longer it takes, the higher impact it will have if executed well. However, I doubt I'm the only person who wants to see how good he is now and if he could gouge any romantic feelings out of Chihaya, who is still 100% full of Karuta and nothing else (not even sulfuric acid).
I was somewhat hoping Nikuman would actually beat Chihaya, but then choose to join anyway. But what I actually liked the most was that despite being a substantially large character, Nikuman is actually very athletic. Chihaya, athletic herself, was surprised at how good at tennis he was despite how much he was stuffing his face earlier.
Though he didn't really have the endurance to play a long tennis match, which was why he was quitting for the day in addition to being distracted by Chihaya. He was clearly the type, like Taichi used to be, who would quit something once they started to not be extremely good at it. But he also loved karuta the same what Chihaya and Arata do. He's a nice in-between character.
I thought Porky was slowing down solely due to Chihaya's influence. Otherwise, his trainers wouldn't expect something to be wrong with his performance in the latter part of practice.
The stern teacher's participation was one aspect that I rather liked. Nerd's introduction was somewhat one-dimensional, but this one managed to create some sort of tension every time we saw her.. and expected her to hold a grudge and foil Chihaya's attempts in some way.
Wonder who the club supervisor's going to be... :P (prolly a bit over 50% confident)
Last edited by Buffalobiian; Fri, 11-25-2011 at 09:13 AM.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
Episode 9 - HS
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I have a slight feeling Taichi wasn't overly happy to act as the proxy in delivering Arata's happy birthday message to Chihaya... But it looks like Chihaya isn't anymore completely oblivious to Taichi's presence. How much Arata's mail would wipe Taichi's little deeds from her mind, is another question.
Provided they can keep up and functioning, this training regimen might be really efficient in speed-training the two newbies. They should get a few chances to play against other low-level players once they can play somewhat fluently, though. It's no good to play against the same few people all the time.
As much as Taichi objected, it was pretty clear that Chihaya's training method for the newbies was the correct one. While the experienced players won't necessarily be learning anything, Kana's joy at getting her first card against a B-rank is a feeling that she will likely never forget. The high-level play the two of them are enduring now will prepare them to quickly climb ranks once they start playing against other players of their own rank. They are learning a lot of techniques, and like Kraco said, ultimately having them play only against the three same people will get them experienced at only beating those three people. But aside from the physical conditioning and raw experience (and super-human hearing in Chihaya's case), they are more than prepared on a mental level, which is what the game largely is about. They'll find their tournament opponents easy in comparison.
Chihaya is exactly the type to forget her own birthday. Beauty in vain indeed. It was also nice to see Chihaya bring herself down to earth after seeing Kana and Deskmoto pass out from what she put them through. They responded that it wasn't a problem, but Chihaya recognized that she has to look around a bit more, and not focus so completely on karuta. She's got a bunch of new friends now, she should take care of them.
The more we see her in practice-wear and kimono, the more I become aware of Kana's compact body. She's petite, but has relatively large breasts. It feels wrong, but so right. Chihaya is elegant (until she speaks or falls asleep with her eyes open of course), but Kana is fine too. It's nice that she's so reserved, but she could flaunt it if she chose to do so. That's a character trait that I like.
Growing up in that household, I have to say Taichi is much better than what he could have been.
I'm sure Taichi just didn't want Arata's involvement in their birthday party - not so much being the relay point. He doesn't like Arata and gets pissed that Chihaya is so obsessed about him.
We've seen Chihaya beat the two Rank Bs, but they've also shown that they've got plenty of skills/potential too. I want to see how long it'll take them to reach Rank A too, instead of staying in rank B (so that the writers can show that) she's that much better than them.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
Not wanting to serve as a relay point for a person you don't like and are envious of is 100% natural. It was just one facet of the bigger picture.
Episode 10 - HS
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Another fine episode. Another episode that makes me wonder how I can get excited about the matches of a game I'd never heard of before. Though to be fair, if it was this cast, I probably would care no matter the sport. Nevertheless, the direction is jolly good. I'm no great fan of a plot element of experts suddenly losing their skills temporarily for whatever reason, but it worked somehow in this ep.
Desktomu, and Kana, were subjected to some really harsh treatment and talk but I'm glad they sorted it out. Hopefully they all learned something from it, because surely it should have been the others apologising to him, not the other way around.
It's starting to seem like Arata is being kept away until some sort of climax. He's even being denied direct communication with Chihaya. Taichi's silent thought of it being because they both want to keep Chihaya unspoiled is kind of twisted. Taichi is with Chihaya every day, but Arata isn't even able to reply to an email? It'd be kind of arrogant to think one mail from him would suddenly change Chihaya's world. Well, maybe it would. I guess that would also be wishful thinking from Arata. He has now some distance to karuta, so he surely should be able to think of Chihaya more separately from karuta.
I love Kana's mania for traditional clothing and poetry. I like her almost as much as Chihaya. She really is the antithesis to Chihaya, reserved and maintaining elegance where Chihaya falls asleep immediately after winning and has to get dragged around like a drunk office lady after a corporate party.
But their happy jumping hugs of joy over Kana's first win...
I'm looking forward to the match with Retro and the Sadist. The two of them are pretty interesting. Retro being a weirdo with divination powers, and the Sadist accurately predicting the Screamer Team's level of skill. They used teamwork, but they really were annoying and not all that good.
Taichi is turning out to be a good club president. He was able to turn the whole thing around simply by giving Chihaya a little flashback by throwing his cards all over the place, then patting everyone on the head on his way back. I may not like his possessiveness of Chihaya, but I'll give Taichi a lot of credit for being able to read people, andmanipulategive them an appropriate morale boost, or cut them where it hurts the most.
Taichi has always been capable at everything. It is his personality that sucks.
Peace.
Arrogant? It would be self-depreciating if anything.. but Taichi's totally right. One response from Arata would have such a drastic change.
I'm unsure if the situation has anything to do with it though.. is Chihaya so obsessed with Arata because he's out of reach while Taichi's right there with her? Besides the fact that he's (likely to be) stronger than her and she likes a challenge (as well as her old team of three).
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
Would it? They even met not so long ago and then Arata chased the train, no less, on his bike. I can't really see how one mail would be such a big deal after that.
I don't think Chihaya has once in her life thought of romance, so her obsession with Arata must spring from karuta and the fact it was Arata who taught it to her. Despite knowing he dropped it for a while, she must still consider him some sort of karuta god. But who knows, maybe there are some underlying feelings she's not consciously aware of. Taichi at least is afraid there are. Arata himself gets no screentime, but based on the fact he doesn't contact Chihaya directly, it's safe to say he's not all business anymore.
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