"when present tense gets strangled in the mire / made of our cozy decomposing wires"

[larryhammer]

OMGOMG! Chihayafuru!

It's a josei sports manga about uta-garuta, the memory card game based on the Hyakunin Isshu. A tournament sports manga written for younger adult women, with a protagonist who is initially a sixth-grade girl. (The opening prologue shows her six years later, and judging by series artwork there will soon be something of a timeskip to closer that age.) And the art is solidly beautiful in an understated way, in the detailed rather than sketchy sort of josei style. The scanlators do an awkward job of explaining the game, but sensibly (given game mechanics) leave the poems untranslated and eventually provide a link to this version. It is, indeed, good stuff -- award-winning, too.

The title, btw, comes from the first line of Narihira's #17 (it's a stock epithet of uncertain meaning only used to describe the gods) but also with reference to the protagonist's name Chihaya.

Unlicensed (it's so deeply Japanese culture I can't see it getting licensed, outside of in Taiwan), 6 chapters scanned, with a new group just picking it up after it'd been dropped. And I think I need to look up more of Yuki Suetsugu's back catalog.

Or in other words: OMG SQUEEEEE

---L.

Comments

[jennifergale.livejournal.com]

Wow! Just blitzed through the first chapter - I don't know the poems, but had no trouble following the game - and that brief description was enough for me. Definitely bookmarking this one for later. (I got talked into trying Naruto again, and still want to catch up on Full Metal...trying to figure out where I left off. :P)

[larryhammer]

Isn't it pretty? in a way that doesn't impede following what's happening?

Not to mention Chihaya is the sort of energetic pre-adolescent that the genki-girl character type is patterned off, without being that type.

(I need to buy up the next couple volumes of FMA -- I've caught up with what I have.)

---L.

[jennifergale.livejournal.com]

lol! Oh goodness...that genki-girl page is hilarious. (Though, I completely endorse Haruhi's style, because of the whole distorting reality thing...)

[larryhammer]

There's a LOT of lovely pages like that on TV Tropes.

---L.

[kchew.livejournal.com]

My mother-in-law plays cutthroat karuta, which is a version of this game. My kids play it with an Anpanman set. Now I must read the manga. Because, *really*.

[larryhammer]

An Anpanman set would be lovely to behold. What's being matched?

---L.