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Summary:
It’s summer and that means Mizuho is trying out swimsuits in front of Mariya and Ichiko. The two girls like the one with the pareo, but the main problem is that Mizuho can’t wear the school swimsuit. Mariya’s solution is to have him get out of P.E. class by pretending that he’s having feminine problems. This works for the first day, but by the third day, rumors start spreading that Mizuho is boycotting swimming class. These rumors reach Takako, so she confronts him about it, wondering why someone with his rare athletic ability would do such a thing. Takako has come to the conclusion that Mizuho is lying, which causes Mariya and Mizuho to fear that he’s been exposed. Luckily, Takako only thinks that Mizuho is hiding the fact that he’s a bad swimmer. Mariya harps on the idea and concocts a story on how Mizuho is actually afraid of the water, suffering trauma from an incident when they were young. She adds that everyone has something that they dislike and points out Takako’s fear of frogs. This causes Takako to remember that it was Mariya who hid frogs in her desk a long time ago. Their argument intensifies after Takako says that she won’t allow the Elder to give up without trying and Mariya raises the topic of Takako abandoning her club activities to lead the student government. It eventually leads to them deciding to settle things with a swimming competition.
It is later in Mizuho’s room that Mariya reveals that Takako is a daughter of the Itsukushima Group that rivals Mizuho’s family’s Kaburagi Group. Ichiko gets confused at the Kaburagi name because Mizuho’s family name is Miyanokouji – just like his mother’s. As it turns out, Mizuho is actually using his mother’s maiden name at this school. In any case, Mariya feels that she and Takako are destined to fight each other sooner or later, which she considers to be an unchangeable fate. In the ensuing days, Mariya and Takako start training hard for the match. In class, Mizuho notices how tired Takako is, so he invites her to eat lunch with him. He is worried about her health, but, like Mariya, Takako also considers this confrontation to be fate. She reveals that the track and field team once invited her to join, but at that time there were also the elections for the new student council president. After thinking about it, Takako had turned down the track team’s invitation. Having been on the track team, Mariya hadn’t forgiven her for that and has since treated Takako as a traitor who sold her soul for the student council. Mizuho realizes how Takako decided that it was impossible to handle both club activities and the student government, but Mariya is the one who still doesn’t understand.
Under the rays of the sun, Takako soon faints into Mizuho’s arms, and so he ends up resting her head on his lap. Kimie freaks out when she sees them together, but Mizuho takes charge and orders her to get a wet handkerchief or towel for Takako. Having gotten to know her better, Mizuho decides that he likes her. When the day finally comes for their match, Takako and Mariya find all the girls gathered to cheer them on. Though they are still competing, the presence of everyone else diffuses the tense atmosphere and both girls end up having a lot of fun. It is sometime later in the summer that a vacationing Takako gets a letter and a photo of the girls at the beach from Mizuho saying that she inspired him to start getting used to the water.
I had wondered if they were going to have a swimsuit episode and how they were going to handle that. As it turns out, Mizuho somehow looks amazingly like a girl, in both the chest and the hips. All I can think is that it’s a trap!
Mizuho’s proportions aside, this episode had its share of humorous moments and still managed to be a serious Takako episode. Most of those funny moments were in SD, including Mariya’s hilariously exaggerated story about how Mizuho became afraid of water. The Takako stuff made me dislike Mariya for not giving Takako more of a chance, but I’m sure we’ll get a Mariya episode to make up for that before the series is over. Speaking of which, this episode marks the halfway point of this 12-episode series. Only six more episodes of gender-bending confusion to go! 🙂
