#Shinobu Wakamiya

[banchagu]

[inthelittlegenny]

honestly might do a second one this was fun

[ghostietea]

Long time no Chinobu <3 This is from a prompt for the @joseiforaction fundraiser event on Twitter

[marcod0meupolo]

chihayafuru provavelmente tem meu cast feminino favorito quando se trata de animanga! todas elas tem personalidades tão únicas, motivações e defeitos que fazem a gente ter um apego tão forte até pela com menos aparições delas também sou completamente apaixonada por como as mulheres adultas e idosas são escritas tão poderosamente como as mais novas

e quando eu digo que amo todas elas é porque eu amo MESMO todas elas

[do-you-ship-it-polls]

Do you ship it?

reason: They're both fans of weird item, one about bear for Chihaya and a snow man for Shinobu. They also have a rivalry which make their relationship intense

[aboatmanadrift]

gay people

[shoujomangathoughts]

Chihayafuru Thoughts - Random Moments

The return of my Chihayafuru thoughts! This time I’m gonna focus on a couple random scenes that either stuck out to me in some way or that I don't really have another post or larger topic to fit them into. This may become a series for me to talk about moments I enjoy but I don't really have a larger narrative through line to talk about in regards to them. There will be light spoilers for essentially the whole series so here's your warning.

This scene has always fascinated and lowkey amused me. This comes right after the chapter where Taichi wouldn't allow Chihaya to go to his room and when he ate the cake off her spoon, and for Chihaya to notice that he's acting strange is interesting to me. I say this mostly because it's so early on and yet she just kind of forgets or gets used to it because she doesn't ever really mention it again. Technically Taichi still had a girlfriend at this point and I don't think he'd fully figured out his feelings either, but the fact that she seemed to be noticing and then later was completely blindsided by his feelings has always made this moment stay in my mind. It's also fascinating because so many others noticed his feelings too; Kana, Sumire, Harada, Tsuboguchi, Desktomu (he wasn't surprised Taichi liked Chihaya, only that he was turned down), hell even Chitose called it out and she was hardly ever around them.

//Also as a sidenote, while I love many of the different art styles and the evolution of the manga's art, something about the art early on hits different.//

I know this chapter and Chihaya's "answer" ruffled some feathers, especially when the author seemed to say Arata was soft-rejected here (some people seem to think of that as "damage control", but with this among some other things she's said, I think it's worth noting when an author who writes so many things in interpretable or relatively vague ways actually comes right out and clarifies what she meant). My reading of this scene (even before knowing what Suetsugu said) was that Arata was indeed soft-rejected, and that him saying "I'll work on getting closer to you" is an acknowledgement of the fact that outside of karuta, he and Chihaya don't have all that much of a bond. I think this is interesting since I can't think of many instances where he did truly work on that, but I always thought that he was becoming more aware of the fact that he and Chihaya weren't as close as he probably wanted them to be. I've seen the blushing get brought up as a defense of her "not actually rejecting" him but I think in general, they're both awkward and talking about love and his romantic feelings which can be a bit embarrassing and awkward. The most important thing here for me was that Chihaya herself never really gave an indication that she was telling him to wait or that she'd have more to say at a later time. She said how she was feeling in that moment; doesn't mean it'd never change, but to me she very clearly didn't reciprocate his feelings in this chapter despite having every chance to say it if she had.

I think, on a whole, Shinobu is one of the most fascinating characters in the series. Seeing how isolated she is and how much the game means to her, and seeing how dejected and outright frustrated she gets that she can't make a career out of it is one of my favorite parts of her arc. This line about creating a profession being the reason she's using social media (rather than reaching some level of celebrity) has always stood out to me. She realizes that she can't make money from the one thing she has the most interest and passion in, and resolves herself to carve a place out for herself instead of accepting that no such place exists. I've also always found her relationship with her mother interesting as Shinobu very clearly sees certain things in her mother that she doesn't want for herself (there's a line about being a leech off her grandmother that particularly drives this home). And similarly her mother is clumsy in communicating with Shinobu and is at times almost vicariously living through her and her accomplishments in karuta, yet here we get a moment of her mother starting to see her in another light. After this is when we start seeing her mom try a little harder to support and watch over her because she sees her daughter fighting for her future in a way that she seemingly stopped doing (if she ever did). Shinobu on a whole is quite independent at the start of the series, in part due to her isolation, but I loved watching her gradually gain more people around her and how she opened up.

This is a small moment but one that I really like. Taichi and Chihaya seem to have mostly gotten past the awkwardness of some of their previous post-Taichi confession interactions and seem comfortable again. But then when Taichi mentions the fact that Chihaya covered for Hanano when they took a picture at the queen match, we get a panel where she just stares at him. I've always seen this as a moment where it's reiterated to Chihaya how well Taichi knows her and how easily he reads her. In a way it seems like she feels she can't hide things from him, which makes sense as this is right before she confesses her feelings. It almost feels reminiscent of the "he's the guy who's always been working hard with me" line and the "Taichi's always been by my side" line. She's entirely focused on him.

Though she's by no means a super prominent character in the series, I really like Miyauchi-sensei. From going to a teacher who thought of Chihaya as only being an eccentric girl to seeing how much passion and effort the karuta club was putting into practicing and playing. There are a lot of small but great moments with her throughout. Making the team tasukis and later headbands, supporting the students even at tournaments unrelated to the school (Yoshino and the Queen match come to mind); she really ended up attached to and inspired by these kids. That's why I picked these panels to talk about her. It's a full circle moment where she thinks about the end of the first generation of the karuta club, and the fact that she's emotional is proof that this club has become something special to her as well something she will likely protect in the future.

Another relatively brief moment but one that I think encapsulates one of my favorite themes in the series: youth. This moment where Tsuboguchi talks about youth describes a lot of the commentary the series makes on the topic. We see primarily high schoolers but also characters like Harada, Inokuma, Sakurazawa, Tsuboguchi himself, Sakura, etc. all be examples of players who continue playing despite varying life circumstances. We see people carry passion way further into life than just during their high school years and I feel as though that's an important thing communicated in the series, especially given how karuta and its tournaments work. Having something you're passionate about and continuing down that path or finding new ways to reach people with a similar interest is a beautiful thing. It's reiterated throughout the series how important the time they have in high school is because life will get more complicated when they graduate, but this panel of Tsuboguchi talking to his team and telling them that he enjoys the game even more now is a great reminder that life doesn't end with graduating high school. As someone who was already out of high school when I read this series for the first time, I really enjoyed moments like this that remind younger people to value time in high school while not letting it be their peak (though in some physical aspects like Chihaya's hearing, it might be the peak lol).

This one is based almost solely on Taichi's line "sorry for standing in your way". I've always been intrigued by the author's choice of using this line because it comes across as somewhat more negative and direct than I expected when reading this part. I know sometimes this is the result of fan translation (still unbelievably grateful for the work they put in to help make things accessible though!), but for sake of analyzing this, I'll refer to this translation. To me, Taichi says this probably for a couple reasons. One of which is that it's the end of the match where Arata truly saw him as a proper rival for the first time, and just as Arata could tell that Taichi "loathed him", Taichi could also tell that Arata viewed him as a nuisance. I think this just kind of slipped out after Taichi lost which makes sense because no one is happy to lose to their closest rival. I think another reason that he specifically uses "standing in your way" is because as we essentially know (but it's confirmed later), Taichi feels left behind after watching Arata and Chihaya announce their goals to be Meijin and Queen as kids. They both have been chasing that dream the whole time whereas Taichi has been unsure of himself. He probably doesn't think he is as "deserving" of facing the Meijin because that hasn't been his goal the entire time and he knows that's always been Arata's goal. Either way, even if it was said only out of bitterness, Taichi and Arata hug it out afterwards and Taichi is able to encourage Arata to win. Just always been an interesting choice of dialogue to me.

One of the best parts of Arata's arc for me is when he finally realizes that as much as he loves his late grandpa and his karuta, there is a certain pressure that comes from following a prominent player. Realizing that he's been hypocritical about playing your "own" karuta and that he's tried to avoid nervousness for important matches by leaning on his grandpa's style are truly great moments for him. I also love how this is explicitly communicated by his dad, who turned away from the game because his father was so extraordinary at it. Watching Arata use things that he learned from practicing with his grandpa as well as playing in a way that suits him is genuine growth. He's taking the time they spent together and using it as a push to help him continue down the road to become Meijin himself. I also really like the support that he feels from Chihaya and Taichi in these moments as well; a nice reminder of some of the other people most instrumental in who he is in the present. The moment when Taichi walks in and Arata realizes that he "crushed his dream" is a nice way of showing Arata getting out of his head and just playing in a way that feels the most natural to him. He realizes that to get to where he was, other people have had dreams trampled and that this was a match he shouldn't waste by getting mentally blocked. At the end, when he describes playing Suou as being similar to playing his grandpa, it's nice to see him acknowledging that in order to be himself, he had to feel as though he'd surpassed his grandpa in some way. Reminds me of the times throughout the series where students are afraid of playing their teachers because of the fear of "acting like a student" rather than a rival. Arata came a long way as a player and the Meijin matches provided a lot of good insight into a character who was so confident most of the time.

This was something that's been in my drafts for a bit as a space to put some ideas down for another Chihayafuru post, but I didn't really feel the need to make long posts about each so I just kind of put them all together. Thanks for reading if you made it this far!

[leftycharacters]

Today's left-handed character is Shinobu Wakamiya from Chihayafuru

[homokommari]

Hi, I hope you're doing great! For an art request, could I ask anything Chihayafuru-related?

here's karuta nerds

if i had my way shinobu would be chubby all the time and chihaya would have her tomboy hairstyle from her childhood. and they would be endgame.

[beauty-marked-beauties]

Today's Beauty-Marked Beauty is: Shinobu Wakamiya from Chihayafuru

[nanaosaki3940]

Guys, yo!!! I just finished reading the Chihayafuru manga today and damn!!!! 😭😭😭💖💖💖

(I stopped reading it for a while and a friend of mine told me to get back with it. Now I know why!!! 💕💕💕)

Chihaya and Taichi are a couple now!!! 😭💖💘😍

[watcher-ofthe-sky-art]

“I think this even now that until you get to the urayasu room, you shouldn't look the queen in the eye.”

[pleasemyshipsdonotsink]

[ghostietea]

Fuck this post and happy birthday SHINOBU

[yumartist]

The making video will be released for the first time. 🌟

I hope you have a good day. 🌸☺️

Yuma - We Will Fly “Making of video”

[nezu-mi]

Chihayafuru - ちはやふる