Beautiful analysis of Taichi’s character by crimson_angel_ @ Myanimelist
About Taichi’s talent, it’s clearly underestimated within the world of karuta. Karuta is also a particular context where tactics showcasing shrewdness are seen with wariness and called nasty. In football, for example, the attitude of luring your opponent into a mistake with (honest) technical gestures serving the purpose of confusing them is not only average, it’s considered good. Players do practice their technical skills in that regard to the point that such gestures are often praised for being aesthetically pleasant, let alone remarkably effective (kind of like when Taichi put on his mother’s perfume, it was pleasant and it did help him achieve his goal because the opponents were distracted by it). Not by chance, Taichi is a football player. Suo says he can be even better than him when it comes to that kind of tactics used in his sport like feints.
The matter is, as I see it, he does have lots of talents and trained skills that may apply to a whole range of different fields, among them karuta. He’s clever, physically fit, a keen observer, has amazing will power and focus, he’s a hard worker, has amazing memorization, he’s an analyst and strategist, he can study the opponent’s behavior to borrow the same technique or to annihilate it with a counterplan. Plus, he has an amazing balance and sense of team play. When he was at Yoshino, he had to remind himself that he wasn’t playing as the Mizusawa president because he has a natural inclination toward taking care of others and making sure they are doing well in their own battle, to promptly support them in case they are facing difficulty.
This is one of the main reasons why I personally appreciate his character more than others. Chihaya and Arata had a hard time taking care of their respective teams, being mostly unconscious of what was happening around them and even when they did try to correct that attitude and take care of it, it somehow was more difficult for them to balance taking care of their own play and thinking about the team. For Taichi, that’s never been a problem (of course there are still games where you’re more focused on your play than others’, but that’s only natural). That is because his personality makes him very conscious of what happens around him. He’s not only great at managing multiple tasks, he has amazing sensitivity to other people’s feelings which makes it easy to empathize with him, being the team mate and leader he is.
It’s peculiar how he somehow ends up always “going off alone” as Chihaya says, despite his good disposition toward others. It’s like people rarely try to understand him as much and as deeply as he tries to understand them. They prefer to stick to their own idea, rather than digging deeper to know him better.
I’m glad that Nishida and Komano are comforting him at the end of the game, they’re probably the only ones among characters who are the same age as him who can understand him at least a little. I bet Hyoro-kun does too to a certain extent, though they aren’t close enough for him to openly express his respect and admiration. I did appreciate hugely how he kept texting Taichi throughout the high school team matches during his hiatus though, asking him to come over. Taichi too was happy and supportive when he saw Hyoro win in their previous encounters and was, in turn, motivated to face his own battles with determination.
I’m sure Chihaya, Kana and Sumire will also try to to be helpful in their own way, when the time comes. Tasuki scene was a nice touch.
Long story short, I think Taichi has a number of great talents that - while not being necessariyly specific for karuta like good hearing- can allow him to do well in almost everything he does, including karuta itself. So it’s just a matter of practicing and having confidence in himself for him to succeed there. Some of those skills, while applied to karuta can make him become a “monster”, when he does believe he can do it.
As for other players considered karuta geniuses, most of them have just a very good attitude to the game for playing with commitment from their early years (Arata, Shinobu) or are naturally gifted with karuta-related specific skills like good hearing (Chihaya, Suo), or both.
But whether those talents guarantee a long and steady successful career, that’s all but a given. Actually, in most sports, there are countless athlets called talents who never get to achieve full accomplishment for their skills because they get lost during the process of training and working for it. I absolutely agree with Suo’s position in that regard.
No matter how you start out, it’s only hard work that keeps you there in the long run. Not even lucky people are lucky forever. And physical skills do decline with time, so you need to compensate with a lot of training and a clever use of your resources (kind of like Inokuma does).
Taichi doesn’t lack anything to become a top karuta player. It’s just about his determination to stick around with it and understanding if the journey is worthy. Like Harada said before, it can’t only be about frustration, you need to get some reward along the way. He didn’t want to accept any shortcuts to be successful (Famous quote about becoming an A class player not being his goal, but becoming a person who doesn’t run away, if anything).
