What is a rom-com anime really without its trademark beach episode? Wait, I just heard that we can’t afford a beach episode so we’re getting a pool episode instead. Well, that’s fine, what’s a rom-com without a pool episode after all? With that in mind, we begin the episode as Joro wakes up in the morning and wanders down for breakfast, here we get our introduction to Joro’s mother and her relationship with Joro’s stalker, er I mean, Sumireko. Apparently, they’d met before at the bookstore and made fast friends, so when Pansy was stalking the house earlier in the morning Joro’s mom let her in and thus, he ends up having breakfast with her. We also learn that the group is heading to the pool today.
Thus the group heads to the pool.
Things go decently enough at first, they all play together and have fun. Joro loses the rock paper scissors contest on who’s going to get them all drinks and thus he ends up in line at the snack hut. As he’s there, he meets with that red/pink-haired girl from his class but because her hair is in a different style he doesn’t recognize her. She asks him a bunch of ‘hypothetical’ questions about how to apologize to a guy she may (or in this case ‘her friend’) have treated horribly.
He gives her advice and also tells her that he prefers girls with black hair to girls with dyed hair. I feel like the hardest part of this scene to me to believe is that he doesn’t recognize her at all, like, first off hair dye of that color can’t be that common. He sits next to her in class for crying out loud, he should at least maybe recognize her voice if nothing else. Whatever though, kind of charming scene is kind of charming.
Then the hijinks begin.
As he returns from getting the drinks and then suddenly all three girls want to ask him to do something. Then, somehow, it becomes a competition to see which one of them Joro will have the most fun with. Himawari wants to take him on the water slide, Cosmos wants to ride on the dolphin with her and Pansy wants to relax in the hot tub with him. Well, you know what they say, what can go wrong will go wrong. So as they are going down the water slide, Joro loses his trousers and is there in his birthday suit. In comes, Sun-chan for the rescue, diving into the water to protect Joro’s innocence.
Then with the Dolphin, as Joro climbs on and waits for Cosmos to join her. Some kids tease them, embarrassing Cosmos and leaving Joro alone on the Dolphin to look like he got dumped. Pathetic and alone, until his savior, Sun-chan comes to the rescue!
High school boys really are the best.
Then is the hot springs with Pansy, honestly, something pretty hard to mess up with hijinks. So it goes pretty normally for a while before Pansy lets on information she couldn’t know without having snuck into his room when he wasn’t home. Of course, Sun-chan bails him out of this situation as well, though in a much less dramatic way than the last two times which involved him diving off some high place like a hero. So when it comes down to Joro to vote for who he had the most fun with, obviously he picks Sun-chan. God, I love Joro/Pansy as a pairing, I really do. However, if this entire series ends with Joro snubbing all of the girls and riding off dramatically into the night with Sun-chan I will not stop laughing for at least a half-hour after the show is over.
With the pool trip over it’s time to return to school. A newspaper comes out revealing that the entire article from before was a lie and the girls in his class that were harassing him are quick to apologize. Including the previous pink/red-haired girl. God, I know the show mentioned her name but I honestly can’t remember it for the life of me. Well perhaps now, with her black hair and less abrasive demeanor she’ll become more important to the plot and i’ll learn her name. Unfortunately, just as I think this there is a transfer student who knows Joro and immediately gets down and swears herself to him. So many girls, so little memory space!
What’s next for our dear Joro? Two new girls enter the field, I am still strongly team Pansy but I won’t mind if in the end, he gets with Sun-chan. I really won’t.