Subculture Anime Blog

Mako-chan’s underwhelming return.

Summary:

Chiaki’s class has pool cleaning duty, but Chiaki refuses to help because she would not benefit from it. An enthusiastic Makoto still believes that he would make a spectacularly clean pool without Chiaki’s help, but she soon interrupts her friends by entering the pool with a running hose. This has Makoto, Yoshino, and Uchida forming a plan in secret. Yoshino and Uchida promise to help Chiaki learn to swim at another pool, but while they do this, Makoto takes the hose from her. Makoto accidentally sprays Chiaki with water though, causing a water fight between the girls afterwards. Makoto panics when he sees the girls’ wet clothing afterwards, and Chiaki quickly has him bring buckets to carry (already prepared) as punishment.

Uchida notices how hot it is on another day in class, annoying Chiaki with how much she has to express this. Yoshino brings up how good it would feel upon entering the pool after being hot for so long though, giving Uchida even more hope. Chiaki thinks to herself that humans have no need to swim, but as she starts to think about how their bodies are composed, she comes up with a theory. Going to the hall’s water fountains, Chiaki attempts to raise the amount of water she has in her body slightly above the usual seventy percent. This causes her to have a bit of a stomach ache though, leading her to Kumada-sensei’s office. When Chiaki meets the rest of the class outside, they notice her bulging stomach as she feared. Yoshino and Uchida, noticing what appears to be an injury on her finger, decide that Chiaki shouldn’t feel forced to enter the pool like this. This relieves Chiaki, but as she sits in the sun while everyone else plays, she realizes that it is certainly hot.

After coming from the pool in class, Kana expresses to her friends that she would like to swim even more. She of course invites Keiko, and Riko quickly agrees to go after believing that Kana would be inviting Fujioka as well. To Riko’s surprise, Kana stops with these three people. This causes her to make implications that Kana should invite more people. Fujioka, having overheard Kana’s conversation, also attempts to make obvious suggestions that he would like to go to the pool. Keiko easily realizes the two’s feelings, but Kana remains oblivious. Kana eventually takes into consideration Riko’s suggestion to invite some guys as well, but after realizing that everyone would be together in particularly unattractive swimsuits she decides to change her plans all together. Shocked at this conclusion, Riko and Fujioka wonder if they had made some kind of mistake.

Chiaki wakes one day to find Kana already awake. She mentions how rare this is when she meets her sisters afterwards, but Haruka brings up that she only wakes early when she is ready to play. At the pool afterwards, despite her initial excitement, Kana becomes annoyed when Fujioka and her other friends will not approach her as she swims away from them. The usual group of friends easily notice Kana’s annoyance at the apartment later, and Touma guesses that Fujioka is the reason. Fujioka explains that they were playing onigokko (tag) at the pool, but he couldn’t come up with the courage to touch Kana since she was a girl. Touma understands, leading her to demonstrate how easy it should be for him to touch others. This has the group touching each other in a circle, but Fujioka continually touches Touma in inappropriate places because of his belief that she is a boy. Fujioka eventually guesses that Touma is ready to play a man’s game of onigokko, chasing her around the house as she panics.

Preview: A beach episode right after a pool one? NO WAYZ.

Impression:

Fujioka is da man. It’s so unfortunate that the only guy in this series who has the guts to take direct action is always screwed over. Most of this episode was nostalgic of everyone’s childhood days, as usual. I can’t remember the last time I played tag, or made such hilariously indecisive suggestions in class with friends. Chiaki’s side of the episode was more out there, with things like her image of changing the percent of water in her body being completely ridiculous. Uchida’s dumb theories weren’t something totally uncommon back in the day either though.

Despite not a lot happening in this episode overall, I took the chance to notice how much the gestures in sequences make things so unconsciously fun to watch. Instead of talking heads for entire scenes, things like the characters’ crazy hand movements had me smiling all the way through.

But yea, for the return so many people were waiting for, Mako really didn’t do much in this episode. Maybe next time?

EDIT: I’m going to have to agree with Aroduc too. School swimsuits, suggestive water drinking, and Fujioka’s straight up grabbing Touma? Oh my.