Recital over, the members of Konatsu’s club begin to drop like flies. Will she be able to keep her choir club alive?
What They Say:
“Swinging and Meeting”
Kona’s choir club has fallen apart before it had a chance to start. That hasn’t stopped her, she just needs to find 3 new members.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Last episode seemed rather rushed, as they accomplished more than what some series cover in an entire standard 13-episode season. Will they slow down a bit? We start with a flashback of the garden-variety childhood type: a playground bully who is then countered by the bullied boy’s sister. We have yet to know who, exactly, these two were (though perhaps we get a hint later).
But who cares, since it’s time for fanservice!! Yes, time to show Konatsu naked in the bath! Except that you don’t see much (obviously), and the scene is there mainly to show her younger brother announce that he and his friends are quitting her choir club since the recital is now over. This was pretty much expected, since we knew that the focus would eventually have to move to Konatsu and her friends.
This leads to Sakai having a bike malfunction and an unlikely man coming to her aid: a foreigner who is walking a pig (yes, a pig). He seems to recognize something about a charm that she has attached to her bag and says something about her hair and eyes. Sakai freaks out and bikes off, but the man and his pig (yes, his pig) run to catch her. She outruns them, however, so we are left with the mystery of his identity and how he might know her. Back at school, we see two more choir members quit, as they were only interested in seeing the famed violinist at the recital. Looks like Konatsu is going to run out of members soon. And of course, this spells potential doom, as the stick-in-the-mud Vice Principal, who is now acting principal for the school intends to follow the rules to the letter like the little martinet that she is.
Tanaka is in a worse situation than Konatsu, who has 3 (sort of, Sakai is probably looking to quit) members, while the Badminton Club has a grand total of 1. His first attempt at trying to increase his numbers is to approach Wien, the new transfer student from Austria. A pretty desperate state of affairs. It seems that Wien is rather excited by the prospect, as he goes over to Tanaka’s house. There, he goes into Tanaka’s room (Tanaka forgot to lock up his bike) and there sees Tanaka’s older sister in her underwear (so, they decided to up the fanservice quotient this episode by a large margin). Thus begin the grand plans to save the Badminton Club. I guess.
Now things come more into focus. Over at Sawa’s house, the local store owners of the shopping district are planning for their summer fair. All of the old ideas are being noted and voted down by everyone, when Shiho (Sawa’s mother) suggests a music contest. Cue Konatsu’s next venue. Of course, she needs to get to five members first, and for that, she and the choir girls have to beat Tanaka and Wien in a game of badminton. As it happens, the girls outnumber the boys enough to win the match. Of course, Konatsu doesn’t abuse her victory. All along she had planned to find a way to do both, and thus is born the “Choir and Sometimes Badminton Club,” which will mainly be about singing, but will occasionally do some badminton, thus allowing Tanaka to compete in the inter-school tournaments.
Club formed, mission accomplished, so we think, but Sakai is still wanting to retire from the club. She holds off, however, as the gang visit the Principal in hospital, who approves of their club. He also meets Sakai for the first time, and we learn, as anyone could have guessed, that he knew her mother. Her mother was one of his students and apparently changed the very way he viewed music. So, it’s clear that Wakana’s mother was a very talented musical artist. Of course, the reverie gets interrupted by the Vice Principal, who immediately tries to sabotage the club again, though this time it is Sakai who stops her. It would appear that the Vice Principal’s attempts to put down Konatsu rub Wakana the wrong way, despite her desire to run as far away from the club as possible. Club formed.
Two and two get put together when Konatsu learns of the shopping district’s music competition, and tries to get the owner of the local beach food joint to choose her and her club to be their act for the contest (the owners of the various businesses will be selecting teams to represent them). They are some members short as Sakai, leaving school, is again confronted by the mysterious foreigner who says that he has something to say to her (but she doesn’t speak his language, so she doesn’t quite understand what is going on). We end with just Konatsu, Sawa, and Tanaka singing for the beach house owner, and gaining an unexpected musical accompaniment.
So, first story (the recital) over, we move on to the next singing venue, the summer festival contest. Sakai, however, seems to be facing her own personal mystery as an odd foreigner demands to talk to her. At least the pacing was not too fast this time, though it will be interesting to see how long it takes until we get to the shopping district contest. Perhaps the only less than enthralling part to this is how predictably they are telegraphing each development in this show. You can see how things are going to play out miles in advance.
In Summary:
Things are not looking good for Konatsu’s club as almost all the members quit now that the recital is over. Konatsu, however, does not want things to end. Tanaka, who is in the same boat with his under-staffed badminton club, is basically pushed into joining the Konatsu Club along with the new transfer student Wien. At the same time, Sakai appears to be wanting to withdraw, but events prevent her from doing so for the moment. She has, however, greater problems of her own to deal with, in the form of a foreigner who seems rather determined to talk to her.
Grade: B+
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
