Every club needs a trip and the beach certainly seems like the best way to go if you have the choice.
What They Say:
Manaka persuades Tojo that he really wants to make a movie with her. She is moved by what he says, and agrees to join the Film Study Club.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After a bit of time apart to go to their own schools, Nishino returns into the scene and she ends up providing a lot of encouragement for Manaka to go forward with his movie plans. This comes after the issues he had with Kitaoji in the previous episode where she got ticked off by him and threw his camcorder in the lake and then eventually realized that she likes him a fair bit after being in his class. His prospects for making a movie got even more awkward when Tojo revealed that she had joined the literature club and it meant that she was likely to not participate in the film club since she’d be busy there. Part of that was because she was threatened by Kitaoji on some level and ran away from what Manaka was involved in.
This all gets cleaned up a bit and Tojo decides to participate in the film club, though her primary focus will still be the literature club. The two try to solidify their relationship a bit more and she ends up nudging him into letting her visit his house, which he had to spend a lot of time cleaning up. Manaka’s teenage hormones are on full alert here since he’s almost always seen her in school uniforms. Having her in casual clothes, such as a short denim skirt and a strappy top, is almost too much for him to bear. Amusingly, he gets caught up in the movie they watch for a bit but then finds himself far more attracted to her because she’s so involved in the film herself. They definitely have a fun little teenage romance thing going on here in a way most other series never really manage to get to since it’s all about the overall competition among the harem members or the will they or won’t they reveal their feelings. Here, there’s already that revelation, which complicates the competition.
Of course, their plans for a movie viewing go poorly once it gets underway as it seems like everyone shows up at Manaka’s house. So the best thing to do at that point is to… go to the beach! Why not, right? With Nishino staying out of this adventure, Kitaoji and a few of the guys showing up as well, it makes for a decent crowd and overall experience as they go and get a few rooms as well so they can make a real trip out of things. This whole adventure is pretty contrived but it fills the fanservice quota that’s required of the series at times. A lot of the time it plays things rather well, but with it being the obvious harem series that it is, taking the girls to the beach to show off their goods is not a surprise at all. What’s strange is the way Kitaoji is so obvious about her trying to win over Manaka from Tojo. It just seems crass and not the way she would work.
In Summary:
One of the downsides to this episode involved the teacher who is responsible for the film club. She’s a compulsive breast grabber and comparer which is really annoying for a show that generally plays things fairly well. As much as I like the overall cast of characters, when the show focuses on just Manaka and Tojo together, it really shines. The time spent in his room watching the movie was priceless and the forward nature of Tojo during the trip shows a certain boldness from the character that this particular “type” rarely exhibits, especially this early in the series. It’s just a lot of fun and it has a certain level of emotion to it and a kind of very mild maturity that many series never achieve at all.
Grade: B
Originally Streamed By: Hulu
