the final chapter of chihayafuru makes no sense from a narrative perspective. you don't spend the vast majority of the story where chihaya canonically have feelings for arata and then have her choose taichi out of nowhere (the same guy she rejected). we don't see her feelings for arata change, it would be one thing if her feelings were ambigious to both guys but it was always toward arata. and we also don't see when her feelings for taichi develops. even if you ship chihaya-taichi, there's no way you could be satisfied with this ending since we never saw the development actually happen.
not to mention, we purposely didn't get chihaya to respond to arata's confession but we know based on her reaction (her blushing at the mere mention of arata and her eyes literally sparkling) that she has feelings for him but her focus was on becoming queen and not feeling like an equal towards arata. even in the final arc, there are several moments of her blushing and being shy around arata. this wouldn't make sense if she didn't have feelings for him and her feelings can't suddenly change within the match. and yet, chihaya never even give arata an answer after all this time. he confessed at chapter 119 and the manga ended at chapter 247. arata just randomly finds out that her and taichi are together and she doesn't even have the decency to say anything. this is objectively bad writing and makes no sense knowing the author hasn't made mistakes like this in the manga but suddenly does it in the manga.
it's clear this ending doesn't make sense with the story that was built up over the past decade when it was clearly aiming at chihaya-arata and its safe to say that the author (who's known for deleting and being apologetic whenever she posts about arata) did it out of fear and backlash. the lack of chihaya-arata interactions makes sense because why else would two close friends who shared their dream and finally reached it together act like they're not close? a mere high five when chihaya always hugs her friends.
end of the day, chihaya said she'll always love karuta and love arata and that was never disproven by the author. won't be surprised if one day it comes out or hinted that she doesn't like the ending to her manga
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