Subculture Anime Blog

Drama in MY Umisho? Get out of here!

Summary:

Momoka finds that she is not really improving much, even though the competitions are approaching soon. Masa appears with his own plans to improve, showing a list of things to do. He unveils his secret plan as a ridiculous suit, full of little gadgets. However, as soon as he jumps into the water, he electrocutes himself. The team decides to use a more traditional way of training, using rubber ropes to allow them to swim in place. This works pretty well, but Amuro swims so much that she is sent back in the opposite direction. Luckily, Kaname throws Seito into the pool to prevent her from hitting the concrete. While on the way home, Maaya suggests that Kaname let her ask him for anything if she does well in the finals. This makes the rest of the team agree, as many of them come up with their own suggestions.

The time for the competition finally comes, so the team settles into their rooms on location. Mirie is late to getting to the hot springs where the rest of the girls are, and the rival team enters the changing room. Mirie has conflicting thoughts of what to do, as she does not want to be discovered. Finally panicking after hearing them talk so much about the Umisho, Mirie runs out in panic. However, she runs right back in after seeing the boys in the hall. Nanako and the rest of her team arrives to the same springs as the Umisho girls, with Mirie as a captive. Nanako proposes a competition in which the winner is the team that can stay in the hot water the longest. The losers would have to have their under hairs shaved in front of their team. After the Masa and the boys cause the border to fall, the winner is decided to be the Umisho because of Mirie.

The next day at the start of the competition, the swim team does extremely poorly because of the exhaustion from the previous night. Despite her enthusiasm, even Maaya fails to do well. In the locker rooms, Momoka expresses that there is still hope in the next day’s events. However, Maaya despairs at her failure, because he has always done well before. She storms out of the room, so Kaname chases after her. Seito and Masa follow soon after. Kaname eventually finds her, but he stops approaching when he sees that Mirie has found Maaya as well. Maaya is convinced that Mirie doesn’t understand at all, but she begins to cry on her chest. Mirie comforts Maaya, telling her that it is hard for her to fail as well. Maaya regains her composure after this, and reminds Mirie to do her best the next day. The boys are knocked into the distance for watching soon after, with the exception of Kaname.

Preview: The competition continues.

Impression:

This episode was really funny until they cut to the drama portion of the episode. Masa’s suit was ridiculous. It even played music! The competition between the two teams seemed like an excuse to show all of the girls naked for a long period of time, but hey, this is Umisho we’re talking about. I was kind of taken back when they started talking about under hair though. I just didn’t think they’d go there. Makio asks “what about those who don’t have any yet?”. Haha! As I always like to say, a love comedy has to have a hot springs episode, and this one even had the stereotypical “boys falling through the border” situation. I really wasn’t expecting Maaya’s fit to be so dramatic, but her scene with Mirie was pretty nice to watch. I honestly kind of wish that Kaname would have helped her instead. There’s minus one for the childhood friend complex. Even the preview for this episode was funny, with Masa’s over the top dialog. It looks like the climax of the series will be based on the finish of the competition, which isn’t surprising for an anime based on a swimming club. I hope we’ll at least be able to see a bit of closure between Kaname and Amuro though. This is a love comedy after all.