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I don't think anything more than the words, "Damn you MADHOUSE," are necessary to sum up this episode.

To say the latest episode of Chihayafuru was a big disappointment is far to big an understatement.  After leaving things as they did in episode fifteen, the last thing anyone who watches Chihayafuru on a weekly basis wants is a recap episode.  Doesn't matter if it was good or bad.

Well we got a recap, which means one less episode for manga content to be animated and yet another week of impatiently waiting for the start of the Fujisaki.Mizusawa showdown.  As far as recaps go, it was fine and luckily there was some new content.  The content was all omake material that was humorous in tone and it was spread across a number of characters.  Most notable moments include:

  • Kana's 3 eyelashes.
  • Chihaya and Kana discussing what type of men they like.
  • Nishida's sister and the pursuit of Retro, the Johnny Depp of the Karuta world (apparently).

Retro-kun's love life did take the centre stage for most of the omake content.  It was the only continuous omake storyline, and I guess in some ways it's a nice but fundamentally microscopic closure.  We now know how Retro and Nishda's sister came to be a couple, now let's move on.

Nine episodes left, and my questions about where the series will end keep coming back.  One less episode does mean they (hopefully) don't want to end things unresolved, but with a possibility of another season or a decent stopping point to allow people to switch over to the manga.

I'll leave it at that and let you guys fume (or not) at MADHOUSE for delaying such an anticipated match by even one week.  Chihayafuru continues to be very mean with its pacing.