The seventh episode of the drama series "Chihayafuru: Meguri" (NTV, Wednesdays at 10pm), starring actress Ami Touma, aired on August 20th. The preview for the next episode after the main story showed Mizusawa High School alumnus Mashima Taichi, played by Nomura Shuhei, who also appeared in the film series, which caused a stir on social media.
◇The following contains spoilers.
In episode 7, with just a few days until the Tokyo preliminaries for the Competitive High School Karuta Championship, Meguru (Touma) and the rest of the Umezono Karuta Club are finally in the final stretch of practice as they aim for Omi Shrine.
At the suggestion of Sota (Soma Santoki), Umezono begins scouting other schools ahead of the Tokyo preliminaries. In order for Umezono, who is inferior in ability, to win the preliminaries, he has no choice but to gather as much data as possible from other schools and formulate a strategy, rather than going head-to-head. Now that Kanade (Mone Kamishiraishi) has gone to Kyoto, Sota says he is the only one who can do this, so he retires from playing and volunteers to take on the role of manager. Wanting to fulfill Sota's wish to focus on working behind the scenes at his final high school tournament, Megu and the others split up and go to other schools for training sessions to gather information.
And so, the Tokyo qualifying round finally began. The person who appeared at the opening ceremony was the master, Arata (Mackenyu)...
In the preview for episode 8, which takes place after the main story ends, Taichi, a member of the Mizusawa High School Competitive Karuta Club in the Chihayafuru film series and currently a medical intern, appears. On social media, there was a flood of excitement at the appearance of Taichi, played by Nomura. Comments included, "There's Taichi!", "I'll be crying next time," "He's finally here!", "It's so exciting to finally see Taichi," "I can't wait for next week," and "I've been waiting for Taichi!"
