Well, it had to happen sooner or later. It’s an anime that’s not a shonen. There must be some sort of law among anime that if you’re not a shonen/dark series, you have to have at least one hot spring or beach episode, regardless of the subject matter. And this show did not get spared from that. However, as hot spring wouldn’t really work for this show, they decided to go to the beach direction. So why are they at the beach? Let’s just start the recap.
So the episode starts up with Haneru being surprised as his friends basically tell him that they’re off to go to the beach for training. (Well, we sure jumped into that fast didn’t we?)
They all arrive at the beach and Mizuki looks crazy hot. She asks Kumo what he thinks, and with a deadpan face tells her that she’s not attractive. I have to admit, I lol’ed.
They all have fun swimming around and shooting each other with water guns (These situations usually ending with Mizuki being the butt of the jokes) when Kumo swims over to an island with a shrine on it.
There he sees a young girl who asks if he’s all right while he’s looking at his toe he injured earlier.
She immediately could tell he’s a dancer and tells him about how another person came along and when he danced, a miracle happened and the ocean glowed. The girl then tells him that she wishes she could she a dance like that again.
Hearing this he goes to tell the gang about it. However, Kumo then sees a picture of the girl on the wall, and the guy running the inn they’re staying at tells them that that was his daughter and she’s been gone for nearly ten years now.
Thinking he knows exactly what’s going on, he asks the gang if they would dance or the girl and they all agree.
They go out that night and dance for her, although the only one who can see her is Kumo out of the corner of his eye. And as they dance, the water shines.
The next morning Yuzuru discovers that the reason the water glowed was because of small fish like creatures that glow when they’re frightened, disappointing the rest except for Kumo who thought it was a miracle.
However, what, to me was very surprising is, that’s when the inn owner’s daughter arrives with her children. It turns out that when he said that she’s been gone for 10 years, he meant that she left to get married.
This leaves Kumo wondering who the girl was, and she vanishes into particles on the island where he met her.
We then cut to underwater, supposedly symbolizing that she was actually the spirit of the ocean all along. And that’s where the episode ends.
Honestly, as far as fillers go, this was a fun one. The first half of the episode definitely has a different feel than the second half, but it worked. The first part was more quirky and fun, while the second half was more serious and dramatic. However, it was nice to see Kumo take on a caring, serious side as opposed to his usual emotional constipation. It showed that beneath his bluster, he really is a good guy and cares for people.
Normally in a show like this when you add a supernatural element, it doesn’t always work, but I think this time it worked very well. The spirit girl part was calm, relaxing, and a nice juxtaposition from the normality of this show.
While this definitely was an obligatory beach episode, it only spent the first few minutes being exactly what the trope of those episodes are. The rest of it really took a turn into something more and I think it did it very nicely. The only thing that I think would have worked better is maybe having that been the ghost of Jey. That would have been cool. I don’t know in this universe if Jey is dead or not, but I’m still interested in this show enough to find out.
The past few episodes have been all about how “Crowd High sucks!” and putting them in a light of “We’re better”, so it was nice to see an episode where it showed their humanity. As far as fillers go, this was a very nice one and I wouldn’t mind seeing more like these.
Episode 8/10
-Hideki