Chihayafuru Ep 23-25: Losers for a Year

We're back here on show Joe for season one finale of she hi a thorough and we've got things to say we've got our own kind of little competition where we're gonna rate them everyone characters the show couplings against their previous coverage so stay tuned to the end for all that hot takes or we're just both like yeah duh and yeah so oh right I should be like I'm Sarah you're host and I the show is me who is a kind of veteran

show Joe viewer introducing my friend Joe to show Joe as he isn't he did not grow up being the target demographic but now has the wonderful privilege of watching it now as a grown ass man and we get to hear from his perspective versus mine and Joe want to say hi hello we're here at the end of season one of she hi a thorough that was the most like scattered opening I think I'm I I do I do I do I'm like I went all sorts of places

and like like it's really weird because I assume if you're gonna listen to this podcast you would start with the first episode of a season or like of a show although our downloads when I look at like the RSS downloads do not match that which is very bizarre it's like but I really think it only matters on the first one you know oh yeah everybody who's listening to this probably has listened to other episodes of the I think they know what

the deal is okay the deal being a scatterbrain and try to keep up everyone to the I still think you should do it every time though because I think it's a good bit oh what random oh yeah like you doing the intro but not having written it down so it's just different every time yeah oh man I know some shows will do where it's like I'm Sarah and I blah blah blah if I was a character in the show or my feelings as like what I am for that week is related

to the content we're about to talk about but nah yeah I really should have because I write the episode descriptions and if you don't read those descriptions read those descriptions because I spend more than I spent a little bit of time on that yeah they're so well crafted and fine they're not a lot of I haven't been able to find a lot of good card of ponds to put in there bummer I mean none of us paid close enough attention to like be able to

catch any of them I feel like I could have been like incorporating some of like the poems or whatever but no one would know what those are so because it doesn't matter yeah nah well we'll get them next time those puns we're just seeing how you guys feel with and without puns puns dependent on show of which will announce what the next show we're covering is at the end of the episode yeah so get ready for that big reveal but first Joe you've

been busy so busy that you don't want to watch this crappy reality TV show that you're so not invested in that I want to talk about someone with so what have you been doing in the meantime I watched the fifth element for the first time that movie no not for the first time I've seen it a couple times but it's pretty fun it's like the costume being in the set pieces and all that stuff that part's great it's a really good it's not is it a

pastiche I guess it's not like a parody because it is just like a like a goofy sci-fi movie yeah I think it's just fun yeah looks good yeah my stepmom slash dogs name was li lu which I thought was a fun name for a dog yeah that's a pretty good movie what's that it's a what's the guy who's in a bunch of stuff main character actor Bruce Wallace yeah he's like one that I'm like nah doesn't do it for me typically but just anytime there's like

an actor and too many things it becomes less palatable to me to have them in a movie oh like you can't just not see action star Bruce Wallace yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah what else fifth or more thoughts on fifth element you love the opera or crazy pop opera song yeah yeah yeah just putting everybody ridiculous outfits and then everybody just like hamming up all their performances is pretty fun I think they should make more like really just absurd movies

yeah I'm trying to go on the last time just like a fun movie like that was made for theaters I mean that was like a little bit done well of the tone of what done well yeah I'm trying to think of like a blockbuster kind of thing with that I don't know the one of the Thor movies was kind of like this where it's like a ridiculous and it's like yeah it's one of the better ones yeah nothing really comes to mind like a lot of stuff has been more kind

of serious or it's like funny but not in a like self aware or like you know trying to present itself is like like that yeah I mean everything everywhere all at once is all is pretty goofy in kind of a similar way I mean there is more serious yeah oh it's pretty fun I think you like it I like that actress yeah so I watched that I've also been finally applying stickers to this gun to my build and oh my god let me talk about a stressful experience

that sucks I hate it I'd like to be there isn't it's like putting them on there no it's terrible I just want to watch you agonize over every little detail it would be bad it would just be a rough time I don't think it would be good it would be so good and that was just taxing how long has that taken I've been doing it most of this morning before I screwed up because I thought they were like water transfers or whatever so like you put them in water and

then you like put them on there and press it on there it turns out they were not they were just normal stickers but they were just printed weird so that one didn't stick really well so you know it's been it's been rough going some of those stickers are not getting on there but uh yeah oh well oh god was it called uh rubber concrete no I'm trying to think there's I can't remember anymore in college we have like this glue yeah we're like but

you could like rub it off easily and redo it um oh I see yeah I don't that I'm just giving up I'm like whatever I don't really care I am not this is where I'm like this is how I know I would not be getting to like painting miniatures or anything like that because it's just like oh I hate doing stuff like this good thing we stick clear of that section of the convention mm-hmm other people are really good at it though I mean I get

when people are good at it but I'm just like well all of my hobbies are things you can fix like sewing you could just do it again you know I don't like painting I'm like I have an art degree but I don't think I'm that like artsy particularly like even when I draw like I had this one class or is like okay we're gonna spend like a freaking entire week which is two classes each of which are three hours long drawing these ferns and the campus library

and I was like 30 minutes in I was like cool done and then I was like no keep make it more and I was like what do you mean it's done I can't like go more extensive than this is it so I just kind of like mulling around for that weekend drawing um yeah I'm just maybe it's because it's like I can't focus on one thing for too long um mm-hmm yeah you say that and yet okay I don't understand right because then I can sit for 13 hours and play

one game I don't know I don't know I mean I guess you're not doing the same thing in that game all the time right if you're doing different stuff so it's you know it's one activity within the game right right so yeah I don't know I guess that kind of makes sense I don't know I can also like I stayed up no sorry let's okay keep anything else with you before I'm commentating your section Joe it's the Joe show right now no not really I just

mostly did those things okay I cleaned my apartment nice nice how often do you use that exercise ball not that often sometimes I do but most of the time I'm not yeah I feel like it'd be good for playing VR on but then I'd be like I can't I can't have that thing there when I'm not using it but like where would I put it it won't fit anywhere the dilemma just having in my apartment oh yeah what have you been doing not sleeping well uh good lord

okay so Friday night I went out with some co-workers because basically one of them was having kind of like a housewarming thing because it was his place and then his friends were like okay we're going out and then I was like okay I never go out I'm gonna like clamp on to their plans and go with them so we all went um so we didn't go out to a place until 12 and then I didn't get home until four and then I woke up at 8 30 and then earlier in that week I woke up at like 2 a.m

and then today I like went to bed late woke up early so I had to take another nap like in the morning uh like I woke up an hour ago from a nap so you just having bad dreams no I don't I just I don't I mean I don't know I mean like I had this medication for sleeping that like the first time I took it I slept for I like took half of what like my sister and mom take and I was like unconscious for 12 hours straight so I was like oh dear I'll like get this for myself but take a

quarter of it but maybe I need to and now I'm taking like half of it but maybe I just need to take the full dose that I was uh prescribed and that will help because I just always have like I just have like bad bad sleep habit I don't know I maybe I'm like thinking for some reason yeah uh what's today Sunday yesterday like waking up after being out and stuff and feeling like my tummy feeling gross from drinking but I was like I feel like like if I for some reason that's when

I was like I want to work out I didn't but because I was like oh my stomach hurts but like I should start I should start doing something yeah new year new you yeah because I was like trying to see if there's like any wreck leagues or like but I've never played a team sport really uh very much and also maybe this is just because I binged hike uh continue to rewatch high q a lot last night in this morning so I'm all like ant sports team yeah um that's the goal I need to find at

least like I wish I wish I had like a friend who lived close by and we could be those chicks that walk around town lake just talking and speed walking I don't got that I don't have anyone also with nothing to do in their life like I do I'm sure there are many people who have nothing to do in their life uh be the last Elvis came out and that was pretty well received because it's you know I think a lot of people were dubious of it being like based off a person but it's really

just based off like the vagus era of Elvis so it's much more leaning into casino and vagus aesthetics than like what about him um so it's a pretty good course have these phases where it's like oh I want to play the Sims now but that means downloading downloading the entirety of the Sims and I have a bunch of the packs that shake so long and tell me so much storage on my computer and also the game labeled the Sims killer in Zoys coming out in a few months so it's like

should I just hang tight because and then I only play the Sims for like that one sitting that I feel like it and then I uninstall it again and then it's like it's like a whole thing yeah I have that same thing where I'm like maybe I should start playing Civ again because the new one's gonna come out soon so maybe I should remember what playing it's like and that just eats up a bunch of time check think of what's coming out that I'm excited about uh fantasy life

which was a game on the DS that I'm hoping we can play together on the switch and then Monster Hunter and the switch to uh the switch I'm getting the switch to because most it's called the switch to um okay well what a fun okay it works for PlayStation but that's because they like committed to that from the beginning Xbox and Nintendo have both been like let's just give them wacky names every time that makes it hard to remember the order for people who aren't super

tuned in and they can't just now all of a sudden that's like when Dragon Age two was named two but nothing else in that franchise has a number on it ah dude I like Xbox where it does add a number but it's just not the next number yeah it's just some other number uh dear right three 360 that's the last Xbox I had uh that was a good one there's a good one great controller still have a crappy knockoff uh Xbox 360 controller that I play most of my pc games through as the Xbox controllers

very good um I found a shojo discord oh I should send you an invite maybe um I just saw on like the shojo subreddit of like a bunch of folks it's like shojo jose dedicated server just with uh all sorts of folks and stuff so I'm gonna try and dabble in that and spread the word all that good stuff um I'm afraid I would get spoiled if I went in there so oh that's true maybe that's a good way for me to like determine like what is it people would want to listen to coverage about um as like

because right this is the first time I'm seeing like a big like shojo dedicated gathering because we're all scattered about um hey uh tiktok got banned how does that affect your work um well we have not question mark we had like basically archived all our posts on tiktok so like we still have the account but we weren't actively using it for quite some time now when the when it first started having discussions of this um so it's not like actively doing anything um so a buy open the app

and it's basically just like we're we're working you know uh the president they're coming up president will says he's gonna blah blah blah so stay tuned and then just force closes the app so I just uninstalled it um so more so I mean for shojo that's where I was putting some stuff so if I but you know it's just saying it works it's all made up this is just Calvin's all we're just doing whatever yeah um no oh I have a date tonight we'll see how that goes oh that's exciting it's that 8

p.m. on a sunday thank god I don't have work tomorrow yeah that's uh interesting time for a date yes um you going bowling I just had no uh that's like not what I would want a first date to be no it's terrible first date it's terrible because there's no because it's just you guys going back and forth there's no downtime to chat because they're like okay your turn now now it's my turn um and then it's like I don't want to waste the precious hour we have on the lane so no taki let's

bowl okay yeah because it's all about the game you're gaming well it's a I don't know freaking bowling is expensive now if you go to freaking main event which is where yeah some places are not that bad but yeah it's got expensive at certain places um but yeah so just trying to now I had to deal with deal with the whole like oh god now I have like this thing happening that I committed to now I had to like just like a scheduled event try and be in the mood

to do anything at that time like yeah I can't guarantee I'll feel like it at the time but now I gotta go right right yeah um yeah that's I guess that's enough about me um and you've got extensive uh summaries for these these episodes are crazy finishing up this first episode is crazy to me because I got freaking it I got like hoodwinked on it because it's like I thought for a second we were doing something and then the next episode has happened and it's like no we're absolutely not

doing that thing you're a fool for thinking this would happen uh huh well that's good no I kind of got owned all right well we're here we are at the last three episodes of chiaya furu we are finishing season one um this episode so we're gonna start off with verse 23 which is called the night is nearly past we open on uh the end of last episode where chiaya lost to yumi that's the last thing that happened even though it feels like forever ago um yumi reports her win by four cards and her

coach comes up and is like you did it you're on your way to be queen again and she starts immediately feeling all this pressure that she didn't like from before but as she's walking away she thinks that without that pressure she would have run away already so can't have that I guess it's good you'll never escape karda you'll never escape um chiaya exits the room and yumi looks towards her chiaya cries and runs away and yumi's like well I'm not gonna run away like her

but just incredibly funny thing to think uh the rest of the card club chase after chiaya she locks herself in a locker and they're like chiaya you gotta get out of this locker you can't just sit in this locker uh but then sudo shows up and he's like yeah chiaya you gotta come out and shave your head remember and the card club is like no way you can't do this what if all the guys shave their head instead and kana's like oh even cut my hair real short which it already is pretty

short yeah like how short are you trying to get uh um sudo was like no that isn't gonna cut it uh then dr hurada shows up and he's like what are y'all talking about and he learns about the bet he's like wow chiaya's an idiot that's a terrible bet for her to make and then he's like anyway hey sudo how about if you beat me um or how about if I beat you the bet is off and sudo's like oh okay yeah sure so he takes that uh an hour passes and chiaya is still in the locker tai chi's like we

can't just sit around here so he sends the rest of the crew to go cheer on dr hurada while he plays and tai chi's gonna stay here with chiaya so they all leave yeah there is a part where i think oh because like dr hurada is like i'll do it and kana's like oh and then and then nasita and satan will are both like now i'll i'll cut my hair trying to be noble they both totally are into kana uh very apparent from that little um they also both already have pretty short hair so

really wouldn't matter to for them that much i feel like no yeah chiaya's gotta pay for her mistakes she gotta shave her head now i think you could just blow sudo off he doesn't matter um see um tai chi gets a text from iraada saying that iraada has won his third round match um because the his tournament's going on for the what they're from like the east side or something or the north or something i don't know i think it's different division yeah but it's the

same day um tai chi leans against the locker and tells us to chiaya she starts banging on the locker um tai chi continues saying that he's going he was gonna give her iraada's phone number after the qualifiers uh because i guess he hasn't done that yet and i guess iraada never did that either i yeah the freaking dude he told you just do it she was right there she was right there he didn't do it he chickened out uh how is this different from the emailing you were doing before

i don't understand i don't understand oh my god they're also lame okay they're open in the locker chiaya thinks about iraada and continues to cry eventually kana comes in to report that dr hurata and sudo are about to start playing each other um so tai chi taps in the locker tells chiaya that they have to go cheer on dr hurata she doesn't respond and tai chi thinks that only iraada can help her then chiaya opens the locker and is like tai chi we have to go watch dr hurata

in sudo play because like they're gonna be your opponent to class a next year when you make class a tai chi and he's like oh my god also he like fell backwards like onto her lap kind of because romance is the door opened uh wait but how a locker opens outwards not inwards it's like a locker but like it's like a it's like a two panel one so you like oh right and push it oh because it's like four panels wide or something it's really weird um kana is like chiaya tai chi

stayed because he was worried about you and she's like oh so then she gets up and helps tai chi up and tai chi thinks to himself that he's hopelessly in love with chiaya this is bad you're down bad man this is gonna go bad for you this is not going well for you tai chi is correct you get so owned this episode um we cut to dr hurata playing against sudo and sudo is like dang this old man is good the gang watches from outside and tai chi offers chiaya his jacket because it's cold now she's like

oh that's okay but he's just like listen just just take it so she takes it um then she thinks about how everyone was watching her outside and then she thanks the rest of the team for cheering her on earlier dr hurata beats sudo by three cards the guys rush after dr hurata and they're like thank god you saved chiaya's hair and he's like i did what because he had completely forgotten that that had happened he was just there to win he's like what i do and they're like he's like oh that's right i

remember now they were like he didn't even remember he was just playing uh dr hurata tells chiaya that she didn't thank yumi at the end of the game which is bad manners so like don't do that in the future um the next round starts and dr hurata is like damn this is hard on my knees but he goes into play his next match anyway in a monologue chiaya tells us that dr hurata lost in the semifinals and that heroshi and yumi won their tournaments uh chiaya sees kanai at the like ceremony and

kanai is like see you next to your rival which is a weird thing for her to say because she kind of beat her handedly i don't know if i would consider that person my rival i guess just because they're both continuing to pursue the dream of being queen and rivals the term of endearment between women but tai chi and hurata it's like war yeah well they're love rivals i feel like that's different but yeah that was just funny because i'm like is she really like i get why chiaya's your

or his rivals with you but you're not really with her because you beat her like pretty easily anyway chiaya's like oh right it's gonna be a whole year until we can do this again we're losers for the next year we're losers for the next year god it's so dour um we cut to iraata walking off from his tournament um then we just randomly cut to some guy hitting on chiaya at the train station in the morning he asked her out and she is all surprised then we jump in time

to like the card club and kana she where she told this to kana and she's like are you serious like just reject that guy he's just some random guy you can't agree to go out with some random guy but chiaya's like but no one's ever asked me up before what if this never happens again and she does like how is it possible that no one's ever asked you out before you're like super pretty and satomu is like well now that we've like hung out with chiaya she doesn't really seem all that

pretty anymore to be honest yes the kana has to clarify that guys nobody asked chiaya out because she's with tai chi all the time they just assume yeah i think we need tai chi um tai chi for his part is just yeah yeah tai chi for his part is just sitting there and he's just like whatever like just go out with him if you want to chiaya and she's like oh really and he's like yeah it's not going to work out anyway because you never like want to date somebody who never watched you play

card or before so it's not going to matter uh chiaya is like yeah i guess you have a point but he does keep texting me and kana is like you gave him your phone number just some random guy well i guess she never was seen him again probably well she won't after this next part oh tai chi grabs her phone and then blocks the guy's number on it he's like here you go and then he's like oh also from now on wake up early and ride the same morning train as me so you won't this guy won't bother you

um chiaya is just like oh okay and kana is like holy shit and thinks about how tai chi personifies two of the poems about openly expressing your love too bad everybody else in the club's an idiot she thinks as nobody else is able to pick up on this i know oh man okay because it's like tai chi at first is like yeah whatever do whatever you want but then immediately is like okay man you can't come with me so well he's like do whatever you want because this is a

stupid waste of time and obviously it's gonna work you know what i mean he's just like this is not a threat at all to anybody no yeah that's true so he's just like yeah go ahead waste your time saying like oh if he gets to know you he will stick around by saying oh you can't date someone hasn't seen you play card uh she's so intense it's also like scare off a lot of people you only care about this incredibly niche thing yeah so like if he doesn't also care about this you have nothing

in common it's over um chiaya looks at her phone and sees uh and we see that she has a rata's number now so i guess tai chi gave it to her good for him uh we learned that a rata lost in the fourth round of his qualifier chiaya wants to ask him about it but can't bring herself to message or call him she can't bring herself to do it stupid um we caught two herata who is frustrated that he lost his match because he's like was tired out because it turns out that quitting for a year messes up

your stamina to play like you know four games in a row or whatever um a rata decides that he's from now on going to treat every match like a real one and try to get back to where he was before at a rata's car at the society he's matched against a child the kid hates playing him because a rata is too intense um they play a game and he's too intense the instructor tells the like karta club society leader like i guess whatever the equivalent of dr herata is um but they really don't have any

members of the club that are at a rata's level ever since um morale the guy who lost a couple episodes ago stopped coming to practice we got a rata talking to morale outside morales house he like waited there for him to come home uh he's like or mora uh yeah morales like hey man don't tell me you came here to get me to go to practice and rata is like that's exactly why i'm here and morale says big talk from the guy who quit for a year and a half what you getting on me for not going

a rata can't respond to this so morale tells him that he can't help with his practice um then a rata pipes up and is like i regret quitting for a year and a half and if you you'll regret it too if you do if you also quit and morale is like or no yeah he's like you're gonna regret if you if you quit because then you'll never make master you'll never have your chance to become the master and morale is like damn dude you're like really intense is the point of card adjust to become the

master like that's just that's all it is um i don't think i can play like that anymore and then he tells him he tells a rata to let him know if he wants to play a friendly card game um sometime and then he goes inside he's like let me know if you just want to play for fun a rata is left out in the cold and he's like yeah i guess this is kind of out of character for me but i'm gonna be back anyway okay i don't think i would like rata or chiaya i hate intensity and they're both so intense

okay this is this is the point this scene like messed me up because i'm like oh are we finally addressing that like only playing a game to try to be the best is like maybe not the greatest thing in the world like isn't the way you should live your life well like the guy's like oh let's do if you ever want to play for fun hit me up and rata's like no yeah it's like arna decides he's never gonna play karda for fun again basically in this episode that every match he's gonna treat like it's

a real one and he's never gonna play for fun it's it's totally bizarre and even around being like this is why you've been playing karta this whole time just to become master like i was playing i was trying to become master but i also just had fun with it it seems like arna just doesn't have fun with it like that's what he's kind of in blind he's like dang man this is all you care about man we're gonna see how i thought this episode was gonna be about this and then it turns out not to be

uh let's see we cut to kana and chiaya uh walking to the challengers match between east and west okay it's east and west i think they were i think they were east or no chiaya i think arana is west and there is yeah yeah um the so there's two matches it's hiroshi versus some guy and yumi versus some chick we don't know who these other people are um chiaya thinks about if she hadn't lost her cool playing against yumi maybe she could be at this tournament maybe she could have won

the game starts we immediately jump back to arana destroying that child who is scared of him at the car to society the kid through tears tells arana that he'll become stronger he'll keep playing until he's sick of it he says is that gonna make you happy arata and it does it does make arata happy that this kid this child cries in front of him and says this um insane like this is like i'm i'm like arata's feeling maybe i'm playing with that guy it would be so discouraging it just sounds

terrible it's it's like uh i you know they treat this like it's a good thing kind of or like i don't know how they're gonna treat this this kind of goes unaddressed basically never quit is like the the be all a truth of this world quit is really weird we'll never be happy because i've regretted and you'll never be happy um anyway their car to leader comes in and tells them that um and this the challengers match yumi won in heroshi lost we got to heroshi who's like god damn that was tough

he's like fanning himself he's like dude we had to play three games that's crazy the guy played was like it's ridiculous it's totally exhausting uh he keeps talking while everyone looks like looks on stoically like they're all like oh he's just really talking to himself to make himself feel better uh what it feels bad heroshi sees a stoic dr. herata come up to him and remembers that dr. herata's dream is to have a car to society produce a master one day

heroshi reaches out to dr. herata and they both cry uh let's just put that pressure someone else has to fulfill my dream oh man they okay so you called this because you're like they need to be doing like best of three things for these high six stuff you were right yep you called it also i

did yes we see dr. herata in a suit it's not very often that we don't see him as a little like hard like get up oh yeah but he always has to wear brown that's his color um she highest says how it hurts now to lose but she wants to look back one day and say it was worth it it's at this point that i'm like they make kardus seem like the most miserable sport ever like it seems like it just sucks uh to be around all these hyper intense people yeah uh we cut to school because we're

only halfway through the episode that was half of the episode we cut the school where she high has a friend named michiru she has a friend that one girl from the one gag episode where they do the recap and there's like a short gag that chick was real and she's back i don't know if they're friends but or she's just like checking in like because she basically tells me like i'm worried you don't have friends or whatever so i they call each other by nicknames um uh i feel like they're

they're kind of friends i don't know if they ever hang out or do anything but you know no absolutely michiru's like dude i'm worried you're gonna spend your entire high school career playing karda and doing nothing else um chi high is like oh i don't know if that's true uh michiru gives chi hiya a fly for their class christmas eve party is like hey you're going and she's like oh but i practice that day and then michiru is like nope she announces to the rest of the class that chi

hiya is gonna be there and also satom is gonna be there they're gonna both be there they're gonna go to karda practice go socialize you losers it turns out everybody in the karta club has like a class party or something to go to or like a event to go to so they decide to cancel practice on the 24th like you'd want to go to your club practice on christmas eve well i mean it's right it's always we talked about this in kimi nitsudoka i think but it's like it's in japan very much like

a couple's holiday so like i don't know if you're not in a couple then it's like let's just just strengthen numbers hang out together instead better than being sad alone at home yeah yeah yeah it's just funny to be like you would practice on newsy for your club oh yeah no um crazy hi goes to the christmas party and all of her classmates are like wow she's actually here you have good hand me down clothes you're so cute um and she gets to talk to some of her classmates

she talks to some boys from the mountain climbing club and is happy to have some social activity she's like this is great i never get to talk to people i thought this is so good because they're like yeah sometimes we just like race to see who can pitch a tent faster and i'm like oh joe you should be in this club you love camping and assembling tents doesn't that sound like a blast yeah it's just very goofy oh man we get a montage of everybody at their class parties uh we see kana

being very specific about how to do hot pot she's like she's like you've got to put them in a specific order um we see that nishita is good at bowling because my my boy's good at sports sports man and then we see tai chi who was invited to go karaoke with his class but it turns out he's the only guy there and it's just a bunch of girls and he looks totally miserable he was tricked he was tricked for god um sitoma comes up to shiha because they're in the same class they're both there

and is like i just talked to a bunch of girls i mean they only asked me about tai chi but like still i talked to a bunch of girls isn't that great and shiha is like yeah that's awesome she says she's been having a good time meeting her classmates that she never talks to and then she's like ah too bad the rest of the cards the team couldn't be here and sitoma who tells her that he read in a book once that if you wish somebody was there with you they're like family to you

oh and she's like hmm what could this mean she's this man about how i feel about people i thought she was gonna be like let's get the gang together i thought she was gonna be yep nope no the party ends and she wonders uh who she wishes would be there then she calls a rada on the phone he answers and shiha says nothing he eventually is like is this shiha because i guess she's never contacted him before so he doesn't have her number in his contact list i mean he tells

her that he's at his kardic loves christmas party so it's kind of loud um shiha still hasn't responded and then she remembers a poem that kana taught her about once she finally says wow phones sure are cool they're like uh misty bridges because misty bridges was the poem kana taught her about and then she's like anyway good to hear your voice and then immediately hangs up okay so she has a number i don't understand the communication of japanese telephone

yeah arana is like um what and shiha thinks to herself that it's a good poem and then walks off has been cut to credits oh my god it's so funny yeah christmas episode christmas oh my god she just forget calls she just says some weird stuff and then hangs up she doesn't even like him as a person like he's just a figure to aspire to be but doesn't actually want to talk to him and this doesn't like he's better in her mind than in reality or something it's it's so weird well like

she it's it's like she's scared of him a little bit you know what i mean she can't have a conversation she has to like not talk or either do all the talking there can't be any back and forth like she thinks of him as like her superior kind of like i feel like she looks at him through the lens of karta like is he better than her like she can only talk to him as an equal when she's as good at this card game as he is yeah that's true um which is like a weird dynamic to have because i

don't think he thinks that at all i think he just thinks they're friends but he just like is kind of an awkward guy and also she's very acting very weird around him because like when she sees him that one time she like bows to him and he's like dang we're not even playing a game and you're acting like we are yeah it it's just yeah friendship is a strange thing in this show yeah it's a little weird i can't believe how owned tai chi gets like he's only the first episode

this is the first episode yeah see god i so like this episode was crazy to me because it sets up all of these things that are like hey uh or like it keeps bringing up the question or like implying the question of like is it good to dedicate your entire life to trying to be the best at karta not just playing it but like actively trying to be the best right because you get the scene with morral who's like talking to arata being like is that really all you care about man and then you get

the scene where she goes and like you know everybody goes and hangs out with their classmates and they're like oh this is great i could just like be a normal high schooler wouldn't that be fun instead of dedicating every moment of my life to like trying to be the best at this thing and so like up to this point it's all been the question of like are you gonna run away from karta because you don't like you don't you don't think you're gonna be the best or you're like plateauing or you're

not getting any better and that's kind of the stakes have been so far that's kind of the question that's been raised where it's like if you don't think you could be the best are you able to like push through and keep trying right and that's how they're framing running away like this is tai chi's problem this was you mean you me's thing um you know that that's kind of like arata for well he was grieving his grand grandpa uh which i guess he regrets doing um yeah don't let anything

stop karta even major life events but i feel like this episode brings up good points actually where like where i was just like look i mean i can't keep this up forever like i don't like being super intense all the time i like to just play for fun sometimes and you also get the other thing which is like the class party which is like making the point that there is like a material opportunity cost here for dedicating your life to karta which means that like you're not going to

be able to hang out with your classmates and make friends and stuff like that high school does suck though so i you know yeah but i mean like you know what i mean like chi hai enjoys meeting everybody like this is a good time but this is like a thing that she doesn't get to do because she's like dedicating her whole life to karta and i just think it's interesting at these this episode brings those two things up next episode it dunks on both of those things like it never happened

but this one episode i'm like okay maybe we're gonna do something with this in the future maybe arata getting a child to cry and tell him that he's gonna keep playing karta until it's painful is bad actually yeah i don't think it's going to be i don't think the show thinks that's true healthy but like they frame that in such a negative way i don't know do we want to move on yeah okay it's just another long ass episode uh oh shoot i didn't write down i didn't write down the

name of the episode verse 24 has a name but i didn't write it down it's okay i don't know what's gonna i don't know what's gonna say anything i assure you we open on chi hai insisting that the karta club watch the master and queen matches today at tai chi's house and tai chi's like why and she's like because you have a huge s tv and he's like yeah i guess um but there's a problem because tai chi uh because all of a sudden tai chi's mom shows up because she's here today because the

place she was going to got rescheduled or something chi hai is horrified because her mom clearly hates her for like getting tai chi to keep playing karta longer than she thinks he should play karta eventually tai chi is like chi hai let's just go to my room you know where my mom isn't constantly looking at us um and tai chi starts to walk upstairs to where his room is and chi hai remembers long ago when tai chi didn't want her to go into his room she's like i'm having some weird feelings

about this i'm having i'm feeling a feeling as the op place dear yeah his mom man is mom sucks yes just like a little gremlin woman um see chi tai chi goes into or no chi hai goes into tai chi's room like kaze hi is he has no wall art or anything she's like dang your walls are bare um she immediately sits on his bed and tai chi's like god damn this is way weirder than i thought it was gonna be well normally nishojo should be hesitant oh snap sit on a boy's bed scandal yeah like if you

if you thought of him as a romantic interest that may be something that takes pause if you don't think of him as that he would just do it yeah boy he gets owned so hard i guess was your bedroom room bare no you have like water in your bedroom yeah i doodled you young justice characters and you put that up yeah i had stuff um yeah i don't know what's up with these boys no personality um i guess because like right a lot of times there are rooms like you sleep at night but then you had to

like put away your bed in certain situations and rearrange should be just more of a common space so like if you have a bunch of decor maybe it doesn't work with both versions of the room who's like multi-purpose you know i don't think you do that for your room necessarily like unless people are hanging out because they have like common rooms well i think it depends if you sleep on a western style bed um that's what tai chi has yeah so not in this case i guess

or it's never mind neither cause i have never this regard moving on maybe tai chi's just uh you know mattress on the floor kind of guy what do you what do you go to the college yeah well i'm a good mattress uh don't we joe so comfy what i don't know what are you saying to me air mattress you just stay on your mattress when i was at your place no no that was fun i'm just talking about like there like the college guy who only has that he doesn't have a bed frame

and like has cinder block stuff i don't be tight like that because he's rich uh let's see tai chi's mom bursts in and is like you're supposed to keep the door open and he's like okay clearly nothing's going to happen anyway the rest of the karta club shows up tai chi brings in drinks while his mom tells him that he should consider quitting karta because all the other members look lame he ignores her because he's like shut up what the hell is wrong with her dude she's got problems i'm like

she's not ashamed to say it in front of him because sometimes it's like the guy has a mean mom but he's unaware that she's like that no no it's all out there yeah everyone knows sucks she wants people to know she thinks they're that way dude she's life is kind of sucks yeah yes yeah the master and greed broadcast starts everybody's intentionally watching tv except for tai chi who keeps looking over at chi haia we see shinobu and yumi and shinobu is noticeably heavier from the last time we saw

her kana is like holy shit shinobu's hokumo was crazy expensive what the fuck yes what how much did they say it was like um i'm like it was like 20 000 or something like 10 000 dollars freaking insane yeah crazy everyone else is focused on something else though and we dedicate lots of time and back and forth to it oh yeah we get because she's like fatter now uh-huh um she haia notices that shinobu has a snow maru handkerchief and pouch she just keeps around with her um

shinobu looks incredibly pleased with herself she dabs herself with the handkerchief it's extremely funny she does like what the heck is that weird thing and and chi haia explains that you have to win in a lottery game by eating ice cream it's tomu's like did she get heavy from eating a bunch of ice cream and tai chi is like isn't her like gaining 20 pounds gonna affect her gameplay 20 pounds is that how much that was uh it's something like that okay i don't feel like that's enough to

be that transformative yeah i mean it's a cartoon i don't think it would be okay i don't think you can gain that much weight like you just can't gain that much weight without noticing because she also kind of acts like she doesn't notice it uh huh yeah uh the broadcast starts with the queen's match so that means what happens and this is confusing they play the king not the king the master and the queen match are both played at the same time in the same room but the broadcast

is only going to talk about one at a time so it's going to do the queen match first and then the king's match but both of them happen at the same time which i say because one thing that happens and one is going to affect the other in a moment so we start with the queen's match they give some background information about the two players we learn the following things about yumi she's a grade six and karda which they keep saying even though what the hell is a grade six okay i okay i made a

note because at some point in the next episode they say they have like a little text thing explaining at the top that class a means your grade four if you're in class a at least so i don't know how you gain additional grades but stay in the same class maybe it's just like to like track amongst the top who's the best and it's just like number of tournament team one or something like that yeah maybe it's just like something like like an elo score or something like that where it's just

like oh this person is this rank but like every tournament just hasn't opened for a because otherwise there's not enough maybe there's like a special tournament or something for like only grade fives but like that's probably not how they do things also we learned that yumi is 24 even though they made her seem ancient for summary they seem like she was like in her 30s because she's like i've been working at this for 10 years she's 24 she's so young yeah what the heck she's acting like

she's like oh my god this i'm so old and decrepit now you're 24 shut up and she works as a bank teller um then we learned some stuff about shinobu this is what we learned she goes to high school in kyo-do her high school does not have a car to clubs so she had to practice with the mioji car to society until she was in sixth grade but i guess she mostly practices at home leading to my theory that she has no friends 100 percent um in the broadcast we see shinobu do some practice swings

swings which chi is like oh that's that's like really out of character for her she never does that shinobu's like dang this hakema i got for my grandma sure is heavy why did i even wear this my grandma isn't even gonna watch this match um then we get a shinobu flashback shinobu flashback time we learned that her and her mom had to live with her grandmother after her mom got a divorce her grandmother agrees but says that shinobu has to learn something and i have to say her

grandmother refers to her as that girl and i cannot stress this enough but shinobu looks like she's like five in that flashback yeah well i thought it was gonna be like she was like born out wedlock or something with how she was talking about her like yeah which is crazy because this is like her mom's this is freaking sucks too this is like the 90s like let's see uh child shinobu's a little weirdo and not that great at anything she does like playing

cards though her mom's like you have to find something to do shinobu or like it's gonna be really awkward living with her grandmother who's like a weird tie well yes the grandma's like well if she's gonna stay she needs to find something to do and then her mom keeps trying i'm like does a kid like need to have a thing or is it just fine if they're like doing whatever listen the entire theory of chi haifuru is to pressure somebody so is to cook somebody in a pressure

cooker their entire life until they produce the results you want and then you can finally not regret your whole life yeah yeah oh my god you're so right um one day shinobu randomly finds some card cards in the drawer she's like these are really pretty and her mom's like you need to find something real and she like throws the cards out and then shinobu runs to go pick them up and her grandmother sees her with the cards and tells her there's a card a society nearby and maybe she

should just go to that or something so it's like it's it's like the concept that shinobu needs to do something the grandmother didn't have anything in mind like it doesn't matter what it actually is very weird maybe it's like oh if a kid does not have a thing to focus on they're just gonna be destructive or get into trouble yeah i guess i mean i get that but like i don't think this should be causing you stress to like find your thing to do you know what i mean it's like it's

like the bad version of that mm-hmm it's not just like we need to find her something to do it's like if she doesn't do something then she's a burden on everybody yeah uh we jump back to the present where the match has finally started it's a best of five so now we're doing best of fives let's go uh you means doing pretty okay in the opening couple of rounds um she stands up only after a few cards and

we learned that her strategy is to drag the game out as long as possible because shinobu isn't that experience with super long games makes sense because she's always like demolishing people and getting it done so quick that she wouldn't have experience in long ones yeah that's that's the theory um shinobu is not playing her best and she apologizes to the cards she realizes that the haka wasn't the thing that's heavy it's her literal body which i assume she's had for more than one

day so i don't know why this is a revelation also it turns out that she actually ate all that ice cream instead of doing the you know the normal thing which is throwing it away can't be wasteful now you can be wasteful it's fine um we go back to the shinobu flashback she got bullied in school because she was um obsessed with karda she was just like look at the cards all the time some boys take her cards and hide them all around the classroom but instead of like crying or something

shinobu just calmly searches for the next hour or so to find all of the cards um and in a voice server she says that she loves karda and that karda loves her too as like one card they hit on top of a light like comes down to her it's a pretty good scene i really like the scene back in the present shinobu starts a stage of comeback she does the thing where she swipes only the edge of the card and she hides like oh my god she's doing the thing where she only swipes

the edge of the card it's like she's connected to the card with strings shinobu starts to go on a tear shiha recognizes that shinobu thinks of the cards like her friends and starts to cry tai chi is like i bet she wants to practice right now i bet that's what she thinks watching this thing um at one point shinobu misses a card like she swipes over it instead of touching it because a card from the master's game which is right next to them hits her in the back shinobu

thinks about how much she hates the current master and we get like a quick shot of him shinobu wins three games in a row and keeps her position as queen yumi walks to the waiting room and thinks about how her card club must be disappointed in her after they all came this way to watch this match she gets mad at them for having such high expectations of her because like she did her best at everything what the hell else is she supposed to do uh she opens a door that's like

behind the room that she's in and finds the entire club listening in on her she sees them in cries she bows to her instructor and she says that she wants to make it back here again what the hell's wrong with them why are they give her a moment my god this is like i like nobody here has ever been a human being before oh my god shinobu's interviewed on her win when asks what her strength is she says that she isn't all that

strong also apparently she forgot that she played yumi last year which was pretty funny yeah she she hi asked tai chi if he has any cards that she can practice tai chi ignores her while thinking that he can't dedicate himself to her because he has to try to win master he can't be having a love story this is a show about being the best at karta what's he thinking he's in the wrong right now watching like i can't help her you know she wants to do this right now but i gotta

prioritize myself um yeah so being a um freaking is okay to say simp okay okay um yeah nishida turns to shihai and is like dude what the hell you can't go practice the masters game is about to start since they broadcast them sequentially you can't go practice what the hell's wrong with you why are we what do you think we're all here she's like oh yeah i guess i don't understand why she wouldn't want to watch them too without that's what she is dude i don't know it doesn't make any

sense um we see the current master uh suo hisaishi who's playing against some guy we get a montage of people watching this game we learned that suo won his first two games by five and thirteen cars respectively and one of the announcers is like wait a minute wasn't that the exact same score line as shinobu's match that's weird and we get a brief cut to shinobu who comments that that suo sucks she hates this guy so is he just like mirroring their game because he was bored maybe

that's how i read this but then they never comment on it and he also doesn't seem to do that like when we get his intro like he doesn't seem like that kind of guy um yeah i don't know that's like that sounds like i guess it sounds like a thing that like sudo would do or something you know like when you're just kind of screwing with the other player yeah that's suo doesn't seem to think about the other player at all when he plays because his match is next episode we learned that suo is the

three time defending master and that he still hasn't graduated college those are the two things we learned about him and caught it was like that's a really lame introduction uh nishida tells i don't know why we're obsessed with the livelihood of these people so much like wouldn't it just be about them playing this game it's so funny because like the women's one they both get like little montages where they like take behind the scenes photo like a picture like video like we see yumi at work we

see shinobu go into school and then for the master they're just like oh yeah this guy he's been here for three years and he still hasn't graduated from college that's it it's so funny uh nishida tells she high that she should pray pay attention to suos game because she plays more like he does than how shinobu plays um we see some of his game where suo takes a two-syllable card when only the first syllable was read and everybody stunned the announcer tells us that during an interview suo

said that while there's technically only seven one syllable cards to him there are 28 as we cut to credits bomb bomb bomb uh yeah we'll just go into the next one because it's just his match again verse 25 is called moonlight clear and bright we jump back into the match everyone is like what does he mean if there's 21 or there's 28 one syllable cards somehow master suo is able to recognize an additional 21 cards with one syllable the announcer is like his game sense is incredible

while every single person in the show who's watching this is like his game sense is super lame i don't know why they say this well basically i think they just are meaning more his like personal style is lame oh yeah it's it's extremely funny to me this is so funny that we like finally meet the guy who's the best in the world at karta and like everybody thinks he's lame yeah maybe that's why he's not getting as much like uh deep diving like shinobu is the better representative of what

they want people to think karta is rather than him even though she's kind of weird too at least she keeps it on the download in these big matches yeah yeah also probably because he's but he's the three time to chant like defending champion right so they i bet they just don't have anything else to say about him they're like yep he's back yet he still has a graduate in college yeah yeah um um let's see we get a scene where sua takes another quote unquote one syllable card uh he

learned or we learned that he could recognize the card that's being read because he can hear the minute differences in how the card the card reader reads the first syllable uh for example this card reader who he knows by name really likes japanese pronunciation and reads the word like differently depending on what the next word is so he's like learned all of the reader's quirks basically uh everybody watching this is like that's crazy is he psychic but she highest seems to

understand and tries to listen real close as sato mu opens his notebook because he's about to become a hero we cut to mariah's house again or morrow what's his name yeah that guy the guy that iraata who is like i'm not going to play with you uh we learned that he has two little brothers who are watching the same game as him they're all watching the master match uh and they're like his brothers are like

that guy's crazy they're what he's way better than you big bro um right thanks to himself that he really didn't put up a fight this year and it's it's his fault that suho's left alone like he knows him i think that he like stopped playing because he went against suho and like he was so demolished by him that he gave up okay i think is the implication that makes sense because i couldn't tell if it's just like he knows him personally or something or this was just like

you know i left him like i'm not there to like play against him yeah we cut to iraata who's trying to analyze the game by copying the playing field as it's happening um he remembers some advice that his grandpa gave him um which was that the challenger is always at a disadvantage in these matches because they aren't used to playing in that environment iraata tries to visualize what playing against suho would be like but he can't but he knows he can't take cards the way

that suho can suho wins this game that's a good strategy sorry visualization yeah that's good well have like be playing it out in front of him as it's going on too it's good um suho wins game three and defends his master title so his instructors congratulate him on winning but they also tell him to actually graduate college soon and suho's like okay and they're like dude you've got to be more confident man he's like so bored or like dejected or something he's just like uh yeah thanks

okay yeah i'll graduate college yeah i'll do that and yeah i think he's kind of like i'm a surfer bro vines or like he's just can't be bothered he seems kind of timid to me like he's just like ah god i gotta be in this space and everyone's recording me uh but then he acts so goof or like almost trolly towards synovu in some parts this is where i'm like did he did he purposely match her scoreline because it seems like he probably could he like he won really easily it

didn't seem like it was tough for him at all which makes me think that he probably did because like shinobu only wins the first match by five or whatever because she was like not doing great but then she wins by like 15 or something and suho probably could have just won though i suppose by 15 if you wanted to yeah yeah um shinobu's teacher congratulates her and asks her she'll come back to the mioji society sometime because like everyone would like to see her uh she's like yeah sure i'll

stop by when i got a little bit stronger and everyone's like oh she's basically saying that she's not gonna go yeah dang girl why i don't know why she's like or i guess that's the play this way she could reject them i guess it's like a strange um method i would just be more vague like oh yeah maybe sometime there's not like i'm the best in the world but once i get better well i don't think she thinks she's the best in the world i think she thinks she's worse than suho and that

bothers her oh yeah maybe this is why she doesn't like him because i think she knows that he's probably better than her uh which surprises me that there isn't like a queen master match like exhibition master yeah i'll try to think because if like right they say this is the only time to watch him play so maybe he doesn't do tournaments very often so she there is no opportunity for them to go head to head that's kind of a bummer this clearly or is it like they can't compete in normal

tournament but shinobu who's still in high school can compete in school ones yeah yeah that's why she was at that other one maybe yeah well like i yeah i don't know uh or well they also probably live in different areas and you know high school girls shouldn't be hanging out with some old ass dude um yeah uh let's see um yumi's coach sees this and thinks to himself that the current master and queen basically have no teachers and thus can never become teachers themselves which i guess

matters they don't seem to care uh and then suho and shinobu take a really awkward picture together it's very funny mm i love that like this entire show is everybody like obsessing with being the best players akara in the world and then we meet the two best players akara in the world and they're both like weirdos who don't seem to like anybody else very much yeah yeah it is good like none of them like like the societies that they go to none of them seem to like their teachers none of them

like really seem to like karta all that but i mean obviously shinobu does the other guy is just like yeah i don't know it seems like he's just good at this mm the karta club is all dour um i guess because yumi lost and i think it's like damn that guy's insane like what it's oh yeah we'll never catch up haunting him a prospect yeah that's why they're all bummed out okay uh taishi's mom comes in and throws them all out everybody who isn't taishi watched to the train station the rest split

from chi hi but before leaving satomu turns to chi hi and tells her that according to his data she has 21 syllable cards and she's like whoa really yeah this is a cool little moment yeah it's a good moment that's because satomu rules it turns out probably the cool music uh we jump back to taishi he calls irana and irana is like oh hey happy new year and taishi's like yeah man that was a little while ago anyway did you watch the master's game and irana's like yeah i was trying to mimic the game

here when suddenly mariah walks into the room that iran is in because he's had his car to society and he tells mariah tells irana that they're gonna play together right now i like this scene because this is the first time i feel like taishi and irana have like interacted in a way that seems like they actually are friends normal yeah yes yeah i uh maybe it's because it's like they yeah they do feel similar about chi hiya and they've both kind of seen each other at their worst taishi when he was

a kid irana up until recently so outside the car at least it feels more like equal but yeah um i like this yeah yeah because it seems like irana was actually kind of eager to talk to taishi and maybe felt bad he didn't wish him a happy new year and taishi's like dude it's cool man like don't worry about it that was this this is good we get more of this conversation after this other scene we cut to chi hiya and sitomu at school sitomu explains that chi hiya is good at 13

additional cards depending on who the reader is and he's also like yeah like you notice that you're like faster with these cards right and chi hiya agrees sitomu explains that basically every a rink player has some cards they're faster at so this isn't like a you know totally unknown skill chi hiya looks at sitomu in all of his notes and then she goes into her bag and gets some candy out and gives it to him so tomu's like i don't want this but taishi or but chi hiya is like this is all

i have to give you right now to pay you back um kana sees chi hiya practicing reading in the hallway like reading the poems out loud she thinks to herself how she owes to tomu or chi hiya thinks to herself about how she owes to tomu for telling her about her special cards kind of listens to chi hiya recite the poems but then chi hiya freaks out because she just noticed kana was there kana tells chi hiya that she wants to become a certified reader one day that so that she can read for chi

hiya's queen match chi hiya's like yo that's awesome i that's exactly what i hear you say because like you have to be a class a card a player to become a reader and kana is like excuse me yeah dream crush immediately at the card club kana is destroyed and she's like not even tai chi has made class a yeah how the heck am i supposed to do that um she sees tai chi practicing his swings and everyone's like wow he never used to practice his swings tai chi remembers the rest of his conversation on the

phone with irata where irata told him that his grandfather used to say that there are ways to beat somebody without having like the best game sense you just got to take cards faster tai chi and chi hiya are about to practice together when tai chi tells chi hiya that if he wins he's going to burn all of her daddy bear stuff and she like freaks out is like why would you say that tai chi is like oh i guess i can just like mess with my opponents which is probably why sudo is such a

jerk huh i don't think tai chi should do this i don't think tai chi should become a jerk to get better at card uh yeah well i uh he's just trying it out also chi hiya's easy easy to throw off yeah uh play starts and kana is doing the reading she thinks about how to read properly so she can pass her reader test one day we cut to a teacher's meeting the other teachers want the card to club's room uh practice room for the concert band but uh miyayuchi is able to defend the card a club

but then a man who looks like he's being puppeted by death itself is like oh they can keep the club if they get five new members how about that miyayuchi's like all right fine i guess we'll take that deal but she is not very confident that they'll be able to do that it's tough getting five to begin with yeah uh the card club members notice a note left under the door from miyayuchi it says that they have to recruit five members by next year or you know next year they have to recruit five more

members also their budget got increased to 300 dollars everyone is like oh my god five new members how are we ever gonna do that except for kana who's like hell yeah 300 dollars yeah those budget 30 dollars before so yeah more kimono money um we get a scene mirroring the first scene of the show where chi hi hangs up the sign while wearing track pants under her skirt as we cut to credits the credits are a montage of scenes from this season and then after the credits we get a bonus

scene where miyayuchi is like okay chi hi put a poster right there and chi hi is like oh yeah she's rooting and like play card with us next season yeah no hate that hated that don't don't break the fourth law chi hi i don't want to talk to you girl you're crazy it's not this is not the end of the show it says chi hi there's another season yeah oh man then it ends okay season one it's chi hi a furu i can't believe mariah comes back in and is like just kidding iraada i'll help

you be obsessed with becoming the master after watching the master after my little brother said i suck it's not gonna be like they're not gonna backtrack on it i just don't think they're gonna i just i really everything they set up so far has been like you should obsess with becoming the master of karta uh huh uh yes i i mean i guess so it's is this the most down you think you've been on a show that we've covered so far outside of season two keep me to do okay maybe um or like not delivering

on what you would hope that they would explore i mean it's our first sport first and probably well no angelic layers kind of sports ask but yeah i guess the closest thing we can compare a lot of these things too i think it's just it's the most jarring because i think it's weird that they like especially in that first episode we covered today where they keep bringing up reasons why it may not be a good idea to obsess with becoming the best and then it just doubles down on it constantly

i mean i guess the show itself is only doing that to be like no you really should i yeah it's just weird it's like it doesn't have the intention of being like oh yeah maybe but it just seems like because like you me is burned out like that's what's happening to her right yeah she's burning out of karta and it just like it kind of wrecking like it does the thing where it shows all of the ways in which she is and then it's just like at the end it's just like but she's just

got to keep going you just got to keep pushing through she can't run away because then she'd be running away like a coward yeah it's just so odd to me i've definitely run away from things i don't let that stress in my life is well even framing it as running away i feel like is a choice you know what i mean yeah like nishita didn't run away from tennis to play karta you know what i mean yeah yep yeah i don't know yeah it's it's it's weird in that it keeps doubling down on that i wonder

i really do think that the other seasons have to comment on this because it just came up so many times in these last like that is like of the theme of the show is are you gonna run away from things that are difficult or are you gonna push through them but it keeps presenting like totally reasonable reasons why you would stop pursuing something but it doesn't really give you it's just like but you'll regret it if you do and i don't know if that's like that can't be true for every single character

like i we have to run into a character in the later seasons that's just like i just got tired of it yeah or like what if we got like a scene with with suo where they're like hanging out with him and he's just like oh i just play karta like this isn't my whole life like i also do other stuff just not his homework in college just not his homework in college yeah he probably just gets like high on the weekends or something i don't know 100 yeah i would be very interested to see

to see like where it goes from here um yeah i feel like one thing that's go ahead subtly no yours is on topic go ahead oh i'm just gonna say this feels like one of those shows where like the first half is one thing and i'm like okay and then the second half could be something that like makes this one of the best shows ever where it like really goes into that stuff and like really considers all of these things and like does getting crushed by pressure

good or not or it could just keep doing what it's doing and just be like kind of whatever to me so i think there's a high variability about what i will think about she high if we were at the end of it but at the end of this one season i'm kind of just like okay like we set stuff up we haven't really paid stuff off yeah i'm excited for well okay let me uh what was like i was gonna say it's not like a focus but in these episodes basically right tai chi and mitzai's feeling and it almost

seems like he's resigned like he doesn't see i'm right okay his his love is just miserable because first he is all like being in love means you're like always on edge and this and that when you're with them and now it's like it just seems like he's like tired or like so blase about his feelings about to hiya it's such a strange no i mean i think that's probably the best stuff in the show no like tai chi just like basically in like an unrequited love situation and he just keeps

having to go through it even though he knows it's doomed like yeah it it's so hard just turn it off yeah it's hard for tai chi because like he wants to do better at these things like he wants to both win over chi hiya and like get her to like him and also get better at karda and he can't do either of those things throughout this entire season he gets no wins ever this whole season no it's brutal yes uh i am happy for kana to have like a goal because she's one of our more interesting characters

and this is like playing off her interest and it doesn't have to do with winning i mean sadly she's gonna have to win stuff to do this but like the ultimate goal isn't like being the best at beating people but just like getting to um i guess kind of just uh represent the thing she likes so much um so yeah i like that i don't yeah i don't remember is clearly everything that happens from here on out so i can't say if things will like live up to your your hopes or if it like

doubles down on the sportiness and never accept a feed and blah blah blah yeah uh i mean mostly i'm invested in tai chi right now of like what's gonna happen to this kid like is he just gonna get destroyed next season like that would be brutal i think they'll probably get somewhere this next most tragic character ever it's so rough for him he's so nice otherwise like he was kind of a brat as a kid but that was years ago he's a kid you know whatever yeah i guess with that do you

want to start getting into our picks um the first one well here's a question having so this is like you're one of your favorite shows right having watched season one again very slowly has your opinion of it changed at all yes i think so like so i think well because here we're like thinking on more things but i think when i was like originally just casually watching i was very much more like because i had never watched a sports anime before so i was more into like

the game and the like different ways of playing and that stuff more than like the characters or relationships and stuff um so having to like analyze it more on that end of things definitely makes it feel different i don't remember maybe like season two or i've season two maybe is like even better i don't remember like which one stayed with me the most so uh i'm not sure uh i'm not sure how i just remember really really enjoying it i've only rewatched it this is

only my third rewatch though so um i yeah uh yeah yeah yeah i mean that makes sense i feel like over the course of this we've gotten more down on shihaya as the main character specifically yes i feel like that's been the biggest surprise to me yes i mean like i think we don't i feel like maybe we don't talk about enough kind of here is that like it looks really pretty like the art is very good and like there are scenes in this that are like really not like the one you mentioned

we're like satomu and says like she has 20 cards that looks really good i really like the flashback with shinobu where like she talks about how karta loves her and the card flies down to her like there's a lot of really good things and i was like you know the action shots with like suo playing and stuff like that is also pretty good yeah um it's just you know hard to talk about yeah the music is also very good yes it seemed it might seem like i'm very down on this show but i'm

actually like i'm having a pretty good time it's just like it's just harder to comment on the good the yeah it's the visual elements be like this part's cool this looks good yeah uh yeah okay we can get into our listings our lists our end of season lists okay i'm ready all right i got i got mine i think all right so the first one we do is what top three characters in chi if you're rude the current ship mm-hmm all right yeah so i'll go first okay oh yeah you go number three

and then count up to one yeah uh that's your number three okay all right christ uh i can only think in the other you you go first let me reverse order okay well do you want to do our number ones then what's your number one tai chi yeah it's tai chi's my number one that's for me too he's such a good like sympathetic relatable character but like not and even though it seems like he's perfect he's not because we got to see him as a kid and you know like immediately had a bunch of character

growth and he's pretty and i like the like smart memorization part of his playing of the game i think it's cool um yeah and yeah he has the most like character stuff going he's the most drama i also like even his like card of problems are like he's doing the best he can and he's really making any mistakes but he just doesn't have any talent for him like he just doesn't have any game sense and that's why he's bad at it and i'm like way more sympathetic to that than like other other

kind of problem you know what i mean like that's a pretty sympathetic problem to have or it's like it's not like he's just not putting in the effort or he's not paying attention or he's not watching other people's games or any of that stuff it's just like he just doesn't he just isn't good at it naturally yeah yeah he's also my number one uh what's your number two kana is my number two okay who's your number or okay she'll say more why is kana your number two okay uh well i i mean

right she out of the members of the club she has like the most i think interesting relationship or like meaningful relationship with carada um because it's like because it's the thing she likes or an element of what she likes that she can do with other people versus she hires it more being like a social thing or shinobu it being well social in like a different way is where it's the only connection she has but kana it's like fun because she loves the the poetry and the history and

everything has meaning to her um and she's really cute and i like how much more aware and sympathetic she is to tai chi um and her business sense so i like her a lot yeah she has like a lot of good scenes i feel like um but my number two is to tomu okay yeah um nice nice he has the best car to game and it's because of him that it's the best car to game in the entire series it would be that actually like explains what's happening and makes it dramatic and good uh

it's the most dramatic game by far also his like collecting data it also makes it more interesting at like a macro scale of like why carda is interesting that there's the different quadrants some people are good at hearing stuff faster than others like understanding how people different people play the game is i think the part of the game that's interesting um and he's the character that mostly personifies that and i think that's that's what makes the game play part

or the car to part of this show fun for sure um but your number three uh i feel like i like nishita a lot i don't know i feel like we haven't gotten very much time with him so i may be remembering things that happen to come but i don't know i like his like like kind of more grippy comments towards like tai chi's wealth and he just kind of says things as they are and i he's athletic and i like his hair um and uh i don't know he's more relatable i guess

some characters yeah he's probably the most normal guy nice on the team and also he gets to deliver some pretty good punch lines it's pretty good can i guess what your number three is yeah who do you think my number three is shinobu it is shinobu yeah i knew it i like shinobu she's a little weirdo uh i love little weirdos as we all know um she she went from not knowing this snowman has a name to i'm gonna win

this contest to win a pencil bag and it's like insane i hope we get a lot more screen time with her next time because i think she's very funny yes well she's the reigning queen once again so she'll continue being like the finish line for chiaya so i'm sure we'll see more of her this might be unfair just because she's like not in very many episodes but i i do i i'm constantly being like i want more shinobu content i want more shinobu stuff i like how she hates suho i like how

how yes i know she like heckles sudo uh yeah she hates sudo also whoo yes who's your least favorite character um the lady who says lucky oh she gives a card is so fucking annoying yeah she was up there for me uh yeah i don't know chiaya man she's pretty chiaya is your least favorite that's about it no she's down there i don't know i don't i wow she was like my number four yeah top oh she was almost my top three chiaya yeah i mean i still like chiaya like she's goofy maybe chiaya's sister

that one's pretty low too i forgot she has remember when she had family problems they just went away yeah yeah uh yeah my least favorite character sudo sudo sucks i don't like oh right i don't like how he's introduced to somebody stronger than chiaya beats him and then he gets to come back and like dominate everybody it's like what's going on with this guy well chiaya is like the most inconsistent player ever so i guess so but it's like stability she beats sudo and then sudo beats

nishita by like 20 cards but like chiaya can't beat nishita by 20 cards what's happening yeah weird it's just weird i know they need to like keep another person around to be like our like a heal it's just weird to introduce the healer somebody who gets defeated and then later on is better again well that's what our main characters are going to go through two or like they lose and then they get better so that's true i guess he can have growth too even though he's on his way out

of high school all right uh relationships who's winning chiaya's heart who are we cheering for are we cheering for tai chi or irada i'm cheering for tai chi but also like i feel like he deserves better than chiaya i think he should give up on chiaya i want him to give up yes i mean but that's like he's been into her since he was a kid so i feel like to him at this point she's been like such a huge part of his life even when he's not around her that it might be hard to let go of that constant

in his life like i know that tai chi's whole thing is like i don't want to run away from stuff and it's framed like that but i think i want him to come to terms with the fact that he can stop pursuing things and his life will still be okay yes well also is you know if someone's not interested it's not running away to like accept that they're not into you you know please please don't be persistent if it's clear they're not interested yeah and chiaya does seem to like irada like

actually even though she can't think about things in terms of human relations but she didn't call him that's who she called what she thought about who i want to be family with yeah i mean irada's cute um he had a tough childhood yeah um yeah we just don't get very much of him yeah he gives so little yes all right you want to rank the shows that we've watched sure all four shows i mean i guess we can split kimi to doke into seasons if we want to do because this is only season one of

chiaya ferio that's true uh okay i guess we'll update it we'll just update it as we go along we'll treat it as one thing yeah okay um like you got a number one bad i like what did i like talking about the most on the podcast versus which one do i actually like you you go first you go first is it angelic layer yeah my number one still angelic layer i think again it's complete it's a fully completed one which is kind of unfair to my number two but um

i mean i liked it better because it was fully completed i don't know what else to say about it like yeah it was good it had points and made things there were good action scenes in it i like the thematic content i liked the characters i liked making a big doll game to do medical technology you i guess i'll say like this is like manga-wise skip beats my favorite ever i i i okay i'll say number one is chiaya furu just because i really i guess i am a sucker for all

the sporty i like the competitiveness i i like the art style um there are lots of likeable character you know like we have a pretty big cast of characters that we get decent decent amounts of time with versus like other shows we're like angelic layer we barely get any time and we wish we had more time with some folks at least we're getting like constant interactions with everyone um and i think card is cool yeah tai chi's hot big contributing factor no it's good um

my number two is skip beat it's funny it's good i wish it continued it's the most i wish that one continued out of all of the ones that we've had so far uh yeah it's really good i'm gonna put it as number two as well because it has a similar element of like it's the industry and like refining skills and learning different ways of doing things is interesting it's like not stagnant because every every project or character she plays will be like a different uh hurdle to overcome

um and yes it's hysterical and kiyoko's our best protagonist i think um and uh i love the manga so much so that it's yeah best manga ever um okay uh my number three is community doke uh it's a good show you know it has ups and downs right sometimes like season two doesn't have a b plot which really hurts it a lot and season three has some stuff that i'm not the biggest fan of in terms of what happens but the characters are really well formed i think that's probably the best character work in

that show uh then any show we've watched so and you know there's some good relationships in that so i really like that one yeah i'll put that one as my number three as well um uh and then i get okay sorry i was just gonna say like it's just the one that like i felt the most watching it like when it was you know like cutesy and happy like you know my heart would like you know soar and then like there's sad parts not even like cried during so like it made me feel the most of uh

yeah yeah saw because a good protagonist there's lots of french like actual good friendship in this show um probably the best friendship display yeah we've seen for sure so yeah the best like description of actual relationships that people have in real life mm-hmm yeah yeah i think my last one is is chi hai furu i think this is a lot of like opportunity to rise in the ranks with later seasons but season one really is just like a sports anime i just don't like sports anime

speaking of sports anime my number four would be um angelic layer and i i mean right it's like one of the first ones i ever watched and i mean i i definitely this is one where watching it to you know and talking about it made me like it more than if i when i just sat and watched it like the fight scenes are cool um i don't like the protagonist uh especially like her little friends like the coolest characters the characters we don't get that much time with yeah which is a

bummer um just crappy ass mom and uh worst mom ever uh so yeah that's have we only done four shows we only done four shows i really feel like now that you say that okay it took up so much yeah it was pretty long uh i do feel like angelic layer is a good show to watch slowly like week to week and i feel like uh chi hai of furu is one that's probably good to binge yes very much so yeah i think uh well because especially with chi hai of furu and skip beat there is like we would watch the

episodes and i'd be like dang i wish i could just keep watching it but i had to wait until next week um so like you know exciting and wanting to continue yeah is not something i always have with shows um the next one here we have is couples i don't think chi hai of furu introduced any couples that would rank tai chi and his girlfriend tai chi no no his girlfriend he brings up with on the phone um are there any potential couples that you would rank on this

i don't even think the potential couples are very good um maybe kana and nishida uh they never interact though no i know but well she's so not interested in any of them no she doesn't care uh yeah we don't get well we barely get basically it's like implied feelings and that's it nothing else romantic nothing acted upon nothing revealed no uh main chick not even aware so yeah i think and we've already discussed couples i guess up to this point but um

because most most you need to okay that's the one basically that one has the best ones uh yeah i think i don't think we need to update those rankings at all um no no openings um i think chi hai of furu might have the best open yeah i just i feel like it only has a lot like the song of yeah i mean because i was saying jelik leyer probably has visually the most interesting but i don't like the song yeah um i like the song of kemi nitsu jelkei's openings but it's

uninteresting visuals yeah um skipy kind of whatever yeah um yeah i think chi hai is pretty yeah all the nice like haikama texture backgrounds yeah it's not like outstanding like the song is outstanding and the visuals are not necessarily good so i think that beats out the other ones that are kind of lopsided let's see we have scenes of analyze we should probably just wait until the we get to the actual series finale of chi furu um yeah this is a pretty nothing school

uniforms also throwaways just like skip beats uh i liked it more than skip beats i'm trying what do we ever see the winter it's just like a cream color blazer isn't it like it's not memorable i can't even remember what they're not they're not striking at all particularly no no not uh we'll give these a thumbs sideways i guess like whatever um ranking our four main characters dear god uh i mean i number one okay i like her

kiyoko number one obviously main character all right number two are we the same one is it soloko yeah soloko yeah from kiwi nitsudoke i would say chi haia oh yeah chi haia yeah yeah it's more interesting misaki's just kind of boring she's kind of just a template like she's kind of just an archetype right yeah she's just like the main character girl like girl main character yes i feel like she should come always come last unless somebody is worse than like a nor like a neutral

but yeah chi haia is pretty is is pretty low yeah i don't like how her train is being childish that's not my favorite trait for a main character i don't like that where she gets to be exempt from any character yeah growth yeah uh all right um should we do our the real the real ranking we're gonna rank all the best side characters so like the number one of each show against each other that is so tough it's tough so i think these are the number ones from each show right i think we did um

hitoko from angelic lair yes yeah uh i guess it's not just the one from every light but like those are these are the contenders i think that's the only angelic lair from kimi to doke yeah we have my audio and we have karumi and maybe we have chiizu i don't know it depends on what your opinion is um and then skip beat it's kind of just moco uh yeah and then from chi haia it's you know i guess our top twos tai chi tai chi and maybe kana and maybe it's a tome for me i don't know what are you

ranking them i i would put skip beat at the bottom just because we haven't had very much time with moco and moco at the bottom yeah like she's cool but for what everyone has seen so far we don't know that much about her um and we only get to see her interact with uh kiyoko so it's like we don't get to really see how we feel about her when she's not with her because we love kiyoko so by proxy she becomes likable yeah i agree yeah that's your uh number whatever i guess we're starting

from the bottom four yeah you want to go to the do you want to start from the top is it just show by best okay okay yeah let's go to the top i get that one but i think it'll be easier to think top down um god okay mine's the same withholding it is okay i was gonna say withholding season three i just i really like ayaan a friend kiwi need to doke so i would put her and karumi up at the top okay or you love hotoko i'm so i'm so i'm so in hitokos camp it's okay for me it's a toko and

then ayaan a and then yeah i guess karumi well no maybe and then tai chi i'd put tai chi number three maybe tai chi number three yeah that sounds pretty good actually um and then karumi i put hotoko and then moco and then moco yeah yeah that sounds pretty good um yeah so i guess that's kind of that's a right feeling right now i need to start making like actual graphics to represent these um by composing our socials or something yeah but let us know what you guys think either

through our email show joe podd at gmail.com or you can DM or comment on instagram tick talk out instagram is it and um or how else can they get us to see what they're thinking joe uh email what do you mean consumed i have consumed your segment review oh well you can't we're not going to answer reviews but yeah you can leave a review if you want well we'll see what you think yeah yeah yeah that's sure that's sure well yeah you can leave a review uh on your podcast platform

of choice um please do that it's a good way to spread the show um it's a good way for us to uh understand and get your feedback please rate us five stars if you have other feedback you can um email us or something uh don't don't rate us lower than five stars uh make sure to do that because we we've been we've been sitting at a certain amount of ratings for a while it'd be nice if you can get that up a little bit um our birthday gift for anniversary of of um show joe

podcast february 11th almost there one year almost and we've been consistent as hell weekly at least may slip a few days we want to announce our next show oh yeah for the first time ever in show joe history we are covering a series that neither me or joe have watched so that'll be interesting and it's also like a genre standard kind of classic roses of Versailles the rose of Versailles rose of Versailles uh so uh which yeah so you you might be a little more familiar if you want to

yeah this is my poll so um this is the rose of Versailles is an anime adaptation of a manga that is very important historically because it is one of the uh kind of first show joe manga that got popular that had um an ongoing storyline because like originally show joe manga is kind of these four panel comic or like these you know short comics like week to week kind of thing like you'd seen like a newspaper that kind of thing um this is the first kind of or not the first but one of the

first um continuous story lines has plot has characters yeah it's serialized that's the word i'm looking for thank you um it was extremely popular in the it came out in the um 70s i believe yeah um i believe that's true all this hell all this series we've covered uh yeah the first the first volume was published in 1972 um so it was extremely kind of important in terms of like the industry the manga is we are going to watch the anime adaptation that's from 79 to 80 so it's

you know this is a this is an old show um so old it is available to watch on um plex on poluto tv on sling tv on crackle on amazon prime it's kind of any of those like free with ads kind of streaming services that's what it's on so it's not on crunchyroll but it is on those other things uh so you should be able to watch those we are going to cover the entire series i believe we're going to start with two episodes and then go to three if it is easy there's 40 episodes total um

okay so we'll we'll see how difficult it is or how much stuff we have to say this is kind of normally how we do we start with two and if it's easy enough to summarize or we can do it kind of quickly uh we'll jump to three to kind of speed things up a little bit um i'm very excited for this because this is one of the first kind of uh you know show joe things that's going to be the source of a lot of genre conventions um that we're going to see in later stuff and we probably

have already seen in later stuff so i'm excited for that i like watching old anime uh sarah you're gonna have to push through it's but i mean i've watched a select few old ones um i don't think i've gone back as far as the 70s but uh it'll be it'll be interesting it'll be good for me as um um an anime viewer to be more familiar with uh the shows that paid the way for um show joe which has now died sadly the legacy wasn't enough to keep it going for the rest of time uh uh yeah well so

studio mappa did make a movie version a remake a movie remake of some part of it i don't know how much of it it's supposed to cover that is supposed to premiere in like a week or something uh so this is relevant you may watch this movie and you know there's gonna be you know we might watch the movie after we cover it at some point later in the future yeah um and see what's different and what's not and i'm excited yeah okay so uh look forward to that or it's gonna be a ride for all of us

that's right it's girls love not girls love is it i don't know how to look that up okay themes and analysis without spoiling everything the themes and analysis section in wikipedia has sexuality history historicity and feminism and gender as the three sub sections so i think we're gonna be i think we're gonna talk about girl i think we're gonna be talking about gender just i was gonna go off in this show it's freaking talking all the deep stuff the drill tweet

this whole thing reeks of gender yeah um it'll be good for a musical adaptation sorry there's a live action film oh no called lady oscar oh boy oh i've heard i feel like i've heard of that english language romantic historical drama film wait this was what this was directed by a frenchman this isn't even japanese oh an adaptation of it that's crazy well i'm hoping if if i like it there's sweet new edition of the manga hard cover all that that looks cool and books so like maybe if i like it i'll

get that i i've also been like oh i kind of want to get those because they look really nice the re-publishes yeah mm-hmm yeah i'm in trouble here i i am out of book case room and i don't have room from our bookcases so that settles it i gotta move to a bigger floor plan that's right my lease is up sweet only solution yes um yeah so i guess that's what we've got for you this week um this one was a little longer for all the app discussions and rankings so thanks for listening

look forward to i don't know if you want to wait and see how our coverage is and then try watching the show or just oh you should watch this is it this is the only way you'll learn about the show watch along with us it's all on all these platforms you have access you can anybody can watch it for free with ads well see yes i don't my brother he was like probably 10 at the time naruto he's like oh this looks so old so i don't know people i can it's gonna be like wild i get

i don't know i've been watching like old Gundam so i this is gonna be incredibly normal for me familiar yeah it's gonna be a different style this is like when styles are being solidified it's also before a lot of anime tropes were solidified so you're not you're gonna see things that like are maybe the like forerunner for some tropes later on and sometimes the way things developed in the future are worse sometimes the original trope is better well i'm hoping it seems like it'll have

like a good protect like strong protagonist so i'm excited for that oh hell yeah um we need we need a more likeable protagonist after coming off to high foo roo i i am like a little worried that i'm gonna i'm gonna look back at this and be like oh like we use like this is how you if this is like a more like socially progressive show from the 70s than anybody gets come back i'm gonna be so mad i'm gonna be livin oh i feel oh now i'm like oh no this is not what's gonna happen it might happen

this might be a really cool show i think this is the makings of a really cool show i guess we'll see um yeah but yeah you know yeah maybe they'll make them like this anymore who know we'll find out oh gosh so i'm really excited i'm i'm hyped for this yes so well so we'll see if our if this is like the energy you bring next episode or if it's like things are crazy in the 70s or yeah if i'm gonna be like their hair is out

of control also we are gonna return to chi high furu uh we'll watch season two probably after rosa for sigh or you know maybe we'll have something really short in between them or something like that but we are gonna watch the other two seasons of chi high furu just not back to back so it's not just like yeah endlessly watching because 75 episodes we did it we did it can't keep me new to do okay how much of that 2024 did that take man it was really it was really those season

three hour long episodes like i know it was only five episodes of the podcast but man those were so long it was so hard to summarize that they were brutally long um but i'm also looking forward to like the old school because i really i feel like 80s anime had pretty catchy look because it was like very girl group anime openings at that time so yeah be interested to see what the opening this is definitely like the rose petals on screen show um roses in the name yeah so it's gonna be

like for sure i think that's what this thing is like famous for yeah yeah so uh but until then wrap and then bring it up yeah uh what do we learn if um if a child through tears tells you that he's gonna play a game until it hurts him maybe like go buy him an ice cream cone or something maybe don't smile so that's where shinobu's ice cream could have been going to yeah if you're trying to win an ice cream contest just throw the ice cream away you don't have to eat it it's fine

not much money was yeah that sounds expensive oh you think she wins like money for winning for being queen there probably is like a prize right i feel like well they said they can get scholarships for it so at least that but that's only if you go to college i mean most tournaments have a cash prize there's gonna be some incentive yeah it can't be enough to be this motivating yeah no there probably is yeah also shinobu's grandma had like a extremely expensive hakema so i'm sure

this like she's her family's rich or whatever loaded they can make it affordable at ice cream all right that's it we're done here