An anime about a traditional Japanese card game? But let me tell you. This is probably one of the most underrated anime of recent years.
So picking up where season one left off, Ayase and her friends are now second years. Their Karuta club is still alive and kicking, but they need to recruit some new members. If you don’t know, Karuta is a card game based on the 100 poems of some collection. Seriously, I don’t know. I just know the rules of the game because of this anime.
Anyway, they’re off to recruit some members, but this specific task immediately brings out various problems within the group. Specifically, each of them has their own particular goals, that may not be suitable with introducing newbies to the game. Add to that the problem that most of the recruits don’t know anything about the game…
It doesn’t help how most of the recruits were drawn in by seeing Taichi and Ayase in hakamas during the club introductions. In fact, the recruit who received the most focus clearly joined only to chase after Taichi. So yeah, recipe for disaster.
In all honesty, the episode simply brilliant. It kept with the mood of the first season completely, so whatever you liked about the first season would stay true. Moreover, it used the recruitment of freshmen as a means of reintroducing the game, as well as the motives of each of the club’s members, without taking away anything from the 20+ something minutes of air time. In my books, that is a job well done.
Rating: 9.5/10
Points to Note: Seriously. You should be watching.