Highlights
- A sequel to the Chihayafuru manga, titled Chihayafuru plus Kimi ga Tame, will be released in January 2024, following the story of new characters at the same school.
- The new manga continues the focus on the traditional Japanese card game of karuta and centers around Ritsu Nagara, a first-year student aiming to win the national high school championship.
- Despite the departure of Chihaya Ayase’s group, Ritsu’s new club has the potential to discover talented karuta players, setting the stage for exciting developments in the story.
In the December issue of Japanese publisher Kodansha’s BE LOVE monthly manga magazine, it was announced that Yuki Suetsugu’s Chihayafuru manga would be getting a sequel with brand-new characters. The new series titled, Chihayafuru plus Kimi ga Tame will be launching in the magazine’s January 2024 issue which drops on December 1.
Like the parent story, the manga follows characters invested in the traditional Japanese card game of karuta. The tagline for the series, “What has become of the Karuta club that Chihaya and the others have left behind?” implies that the events of the Chihayafuru sequel will be set at the same school.
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Chihayafuru follows the titular character, Chihaya Ayase, a teenage girl who developed a passion for karuta in her childhood after meeting her new classmate Arata Wataya. Karuta is a traditional Japanese card game based on the Hyakunin Isshu (One-Hundred Poets), a classical anthology of Japanese waka (classical Japanese poetry). The upcoming Chihayafuru plus Kimi ga tame follows Ritsu Nagara, a first-year student at Mizusawa High School, who aims to win the national high school championship in competitive karuta having joined the Karuta Club at Mizusawa High.
After the departure of Chihaya Ayase’s group, the club is left with just one A-level player, putting Ritsu’s ambition a little out of reach; however, like Chihaya and her friends, Ritsu’s group could unearth incredible karuta players. A brand-new visual was also released depicting the new cast of characters.
The original Chihayafuru manga by Yuki Suetsugu was originally published in Kodansha’s BE LOVE from December 2007, with the series running for 50 volumes until December 2022. The final chapter was published in the magazine’s September issue along with a spin-off side-story which was also featured in the collection of the 50th and final volume that hit shelves in December 2022.
A Chihayafuru anime produced by Madhouse ran for a total of 74 episodes split across three seasons, the first of which ran for 25 episodes from October 2011 to March 2012, while season 2 ran for 26 episodes from January to September 23, while season 3 ran for 24 episodes from October 2019 to March 2020. The series has also inspired three live-action films, two released in 2016 and one in 2018, with a live-action miniseries that premiered on Hulu Japan. The series has won a number of awards, like the second Manga Taishō Award in 2009, and the Kodansha Manga Award in the Shōjo category.
Chihayafuru is available to stream on Crunchyroll.
Source: ANN
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