#............eventually

i touched a little upon how the anime and manga differed here but i don’t think this was a point where the anime and manga actually diverged, unlike what this tweet suggests. 

because taichi does notice that chihaya’s attention slips away from him, which is why the conversation shifted towards being about arata. 

(i’m just going to dub this the and the ensuing parts before they become karuta buddies the Chihaya Incident™ for clearer reference)

we then see that the class has a negative attitude towards him. 

that’s not to say the tweet is entirely wrong though. the anime did take the above page out. perhaps because it was too mean or explicit? regardless, the reality is that both manga and anime followed the same formula of chihaya notices arata → taichi is mean towards arata

now let’s examine the page again. why would arata then think taichi would have approached him first if not for chihaya? it’s clear that his classmates seems to be bullying him even prior to these few panels. 

if we find arata’s thinking to be odd, it’s because we assume that taichi was an active participant in his bullying prior to the Chihaya Incident™ but there is not textual evidence to actually suggest that. and there definitely would not have been an escalation in the ostracism that arata faced if not for the Chihaya Incident™ either. 

putting that aside, perhaps we assumed falsely and that taichi hadn’t been actively bullying arata. it does still seem like a huge leap for taichi to go from bystander to pro-actively befriending the class outcast.