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astrocourt 's review for:
ちはやふる 1
by Yuki Suetsugu, 末次由紀
The book: Chihayafuru #1 (bilingual edition)
The author: Yuki Suetsugu (trans. Stuart Varnam-Atkin and Yoko Toyozaki)
The subject: Chihaya and her friends take part in a card game called karuta and strive to become champions.
Why I chose it: I didn't, actually; my Japanese penfriend sent it to me on her recommendation.
The rating: Four out of five stars
What I thought of it: This is the first manga I've read; I hope it won't be the last. The premise might sound quite dull – a story about some kids playing a competitive poetry-themed card game?! – but it's actually very compelling. It makes me want to play karuta at the very least.
The characters are painted well, in such a way that you care about them and their journey (at the risk of sounding like an "X Factor" contestant). While there are hints that romance might be on the cards (pun stumbled across unintentionally, but thoroughly enjoyed) in future volumes, this is more a story about friends, discovering and chasing your own goals in life and how our priorities change as we grow older, which makes it a refreshing change from a lot of Western YA literature. The art and composition are also good and really complement and enhance the story. Most of all, though, I never imagined I'd get so engrossed in reading an account of a card game competition – it was as if I were watching a sporting event.
I definitely recommend this, though I'm not sure exactly how to categorise it in order to recommend it to a specific type of person. I suppose it's a coming of age story at its heart. I haven't read any further in the series yet so don't know if that's going to be a disappointment, but hopefully it won't.
Just one more thing: At the end of this edition are translations of fifty of the one hundred poems used in karuta. Here is my favourite one, number 35:
The author: Yuki Suetsugu (trans. Stuart Varnam-Atkin and Yoko Toyozaki)
The subject: Chihaya and her friends take part in a card game called karuta and strive to become champions.
Why I chose it: I didn't, actually; my Japanese penfriend sent it to me on her recommendation.
The rating: Four out of five stars
What I thought of it: This is the first manga I've read; I hope it won't be the last. The premise might sound quite dull – a story about some kids playing a competitive poetry-themed card game?! – but it's actually very compelling. It makes me want to play karuta at the very least.
The characters are painted well, in such a way that you care about them and their journey (at the risk of sounding like an "X Factor" contestant). While there are hints that romance might be on the cards (pun stumbled across unintentionally, but thoroughly enjoyed) in future volumes, this is more a story about friends, discovering and chasing your own goals in life and how our priorities change as we grow older, which makes it a refreshing change from a lot of Western YA literature. The art and composition are also good and really complement and enhance the story. Most of all, though, I never imagined I'd get so engrossed in reading an account of a card game competition – it was as if I were watching a sporting event.
I definitely recommend this, though I'm not sure exactly how to categorise it in order to recommend it to a specific type of person. I suppose it's a coming of age story at its heart. I haven't read any further in the series yet so don't know if that's going to be a disappointment, but hopefully it won't.
Just one more thing: At the end of this edition are translations of fifty of the one hundred poems used in karuta. Here is my favourite one, number 35:
With people you can never tell,
Will they have changed when next we meet?
But here in my dear old home at least,
The plums still smell as sweet.