The Series (5/5)

    When I reviewed the first season of Chihayafuru last September, I did not expect to like the series as much as I did. I mean it is a "sports" anime about high-schoolers who play a poetry based card game.  However, the series ended up grabbing on to me and not letting me go. It was a show based on a card game that I had never heard of, and had no inclination toward, but the show made you not only care about the game, but made the viewer care about the characters, their situations, and really gave a lot of great slice of life character based moments and story beats. Fortunately for fans of the series Season 2 continues on with this tradition.

    ChihayafuruSeason 2 picks up soon after the first one. The school is limiting space for extracurricular activities so the Kuruta club needs to find more members so they can leverage the school for the space they have. Unfortunately, they are unable to find people who share the same love and devotion for the game that they do, and so the process is quite difficult. Of course, there are also life issues that spring up between all the Kurata that make things even more difficult for the gang.

   Chihayafuru Season 2 like the first season has moments of spastic comedy, nice dramatic turns, and a compelling central sports theme.  The drama is compelling from one match, or situation to the next and I found myself watching all the episodes in fairly rapid succession. The animation was in the same style as Season 1 and looked fantastic, and overall this is becoming one of my favorite ongoing series.

Audio/Video (4/5)

    Sentai again presents Chihayafuru in a very solid 1:78:1 1080p AVC encoded transfer. The image style is soft, but is reproduced well, colors are stable, and I found find not much in the way of issues. Audio is handled by DTS-HD MA 2.0 tracks in Japanese and English. Everything audio wise sounds fine, and I could detect no issues.

Extras (1/5)

    There is a clean opening and closing, and trailers.

Overall

    Chihayafuru is one of my favorite ongoing anime series right now. The Blu-ray looks and sounds fantastic, but is limited in the extra features department RECOMMENDED.