Chihayafuru Episode 1

Alright, so for starters, we have a school and a girl named Chihaya Ayase, the sister of a model who is putting up flyers for a karuta club. Apparently, karuta is some sort of Japanese card game. Chihaya’s having trouble finding members for her club, and runs into her childhood friend Taichi. Chihaya is surprised that Taichi has a girlfriend now in high school, and is no longer interested in karuta. She remembers back to before she started playing karuta, when a transfer student named Wataya enters her class. He is teased by the other students because of his appearance and how quiet he is, but has really good memory. Chihaya notices this and starts to hang out with him, which makes Taichi mad. One day, Chihaya goes to Wataya’s house after they are both soaked in the rain. There, she starts to talk with Wataya about dreams, and he introduces her to the game of karuta. Basically, it involves something with cards and poem verses, but Wataya has the upper hand because of his memory. Based on observation, you remove a card, which has the second verse of a poem after hearing the first voice from a tape player. Wataya is crusing Chihaya, but she resolves to get at least one card, which she manages to do. Wataya then tells Chihaya his dream of becoming a karuta master. So yeah…a show about a game…where have I seen this setup before? I’ll give it a shot. Music was pretty good (the opening has a familiar tune to it), and the character designs are kind of reminiscent of like shoujo manga character designs.