School festival time, and but at this school field day and the cultural festival are basically jammed together. The first day are the athletics events, second is the indoors festivals, and the last is open for outdoors visitors. During this, there is a contest that pits dorms together for the grand title. Whoever wins gets exclusive benefits like a specialty meal for the rest of the year, and supposedly a cash prize. So just as you’d expect, the rivalry between the dorms get extra heated during this period. Mizuki and there rest are part of Dorm 2, so their biggest competition is Dorm 1 (Athletics) who very competitive, and worse: They got people who aren’t afraid to play dirty.
And therein lies the problem. Even after everything that had happened at the board house, and despite her peer’s warnings, MIZUKI’S DEFAULT REACTION IS: He seems nice.
GIRL, COME ON~! I’m not saying you should always assume the worse, but if your friend and dorm leader is warning you not to get tangled with them, and mentioned word has it they’ve seriously injured people before, maybe don’t just brush it off completely?! Yes, they are just rumours, and in an ordinary case, yes it’s best not to just judge someone solely on that, but specifically for Mizuki’s case, who has literally no self-preservation for the life of her, think we can all agree she of all people to heed all warnings and take no chances until she can get her shit together. Fair? I think so.
And a perfect example of Mizuki constantly ignoring warnings, is that she’s stubborn to a fault. Izumi repeatedly tries to warn her not to participate in the Chicken Fight. Heck even Dr. Umeba, said: That’s a bad idea. But unlike Izumi, he doesn’t badger her about it. But what they both fail to do is explain to her in one short sentence WHY that is. Even if they did, who are we kidding— she wouldn’t have listened anyways!
Of course it’s only after participating in the said Chicken Fight, which resulted her getting aggressively knocked off by almost getting elbowed in the face by a Dorm 1 member, that Mizuki finally realized her friends weren’t exaggerating. Finally, for the first fucking time, Mizuki started showing some self-awareness… ONLY TO THROW THAT SELF-AWARENESS OUT THE WINDOW, when Shotaro from Dorm 1 calls he out away from the competition. SHE KNEW HE WAS PART OF DORM 1, AND DIDN’T EVEN THINK IT WAS SUSPICIOUS THAT HE WANTED TO PULL HER AWAY FROM THE COMPETITION!? [SCREAMS INTO PILLOW] MIZUKI YOU IDIOT. GAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Ahem, anyhow. There was one thing Mizuki was right about. The culprit behind this wasn’t Kujo, and he’s not this violent bastard that rumours suggest that he is. He’s just a karate nut, who’s always searching for potential peers to join the club. That was why he felt up Nakatsu’s leg (not that it was okay >_>, but you get the point). He was the one who ultimately got Shotaro (who admires him in the same way Mizuki admired Izumi) to talk and lead them to where Mizuki was being harassed. The one to blame ended up being Kitahanada who was doing this shit behind the dorm leader (Tennoji’s) back. In the end, Dorm 2 wins the prize.
Apart from the events of the festival, particularly in episode 11 and 12 revolved around the romance part of things. Episode 11 followed up with the whole sudden reunion of Minami and his ex-girlfriend (also former tutor) who broke up by ghosting him. What’s worse she comes back and tells him she’s getting married– to a guy twice his age? Girl what??????? I feel bad for Minami’s first love to end in such a mess like that, especially since he never got proper closure until now. It’s what made him start acting like a womanizer as a way to cope with his heartbreak. However he did have sound advice for Mizuki, telling her to cherish her feelings she has now, because sure they may fall for someone else, but it’s not going to be the same. Which is true to say the least. But ever since Mizuki had granted him a hug for comfort (though he had brushed it off afterwards that he was just teasing her– but I’m pretty sure he needed it anyhow), he took it as an opportunity to playfully tease her with sudden cuddles.
Izumi of course, having seen them hug and then this happening got moody because of jealousy. But credit where it’s due, sure he lashed out at first, but he was quick to apologize (as he always is– in fact, it does feel like Izumi tends to be the first to initiate apologizes the majority of the time). He’s definitely the more proactive one when it comes to needing to mend things that he knows he unjustly stirred up. But ultimately, he has finally come to realize that he does care for Mizuki more than a friend, but he’s not about to confess just yet– understandably so.
Of all the things in these past three episodes, the sweetest thing we got in episode 12 was when Izumi had noticed Mizuki couldn’t sleep because of her nightmares. So even though he was half asleep at the time, and had no recollection of it in the morning (and even though she must’ve just crawled into bed half-asleep like last time!) he had asked her to join him in bed in attempt to comfort her. And honestly that was super sweet and adorable. Perhaps it’s a good thing he didn’t remember himself doing that because he surely would’ve been so embarrassed with himself if he had.
Final Thoughts
Man this is so frustrating. This feels like a total repeat the way Kakuriyo Season 2 ended all over again. This “ended” in a terrible spot, and even worse, we have no idea if there’s actually more coming or not. I’ve looked high and low, and even after this episode there’s been no formal announcements of more to come. The only piece of information that I’ve seen is going around is an unconfirmed leak that claims this series is supposed to get a 36 episodes adaption split across three cours.
If this is true, great! It’s much needed! But I have one thing to say about it: This kind of information really needs to come out right away from the official source. Not everyone knows about this supposed leak, and a lot of people will think that’s it, that’s just how it ended! And that what’s makes it so difficult to score, because I don’t know if it’s true or not!
But my biggest problem of it ending in this spot is that this series is 148 chapters long. Twelve episodes barely made a dent— for context, this only covered 4 volumes! So as result: Hardly any progress was made. And to make matters worse, if this were to go without a continuation, it makes Izumi’s training for the high jump competition– the whole reason Mizuki even came to Japan in the first place, obsolete. See the problem here?
This was Hana-Kimi’s 30th Anniversary, the problem with doing twelve episodes for stories that they are smacked in the middle of, or barely started is that is absolutely messes up the pace and momentum. Coming into this, I thought we would we getting 24-26 episodes minimum. So it’s really discouraging and frustrating for the second time in a row (after Kakuriyo S2 ended abruptly in the middle of an incomplete arc, with no confirmation of more to come), I’m seeing this happen again– and I really don’t like this trend. I just wished they had communicated better what the plans were going to be for this series, especially since it was made for the 30th Anniversary. Ending it here with no certainty for continuation just leaves a real bad taste in my mouth.
Apart from my gripes about the lack of clarity for continuation, I do have other critiques to make. As much as I adored this series when I was younger, let’s be real: For obvious reasons, there were many things that did not age well here. And Mizuki being unfortunately a very dumb and naive heroine doesn’t help the cause. She really tests your patience, and I suspect a lot viewers struggle to really vibe with her when she just acts so recklessly over and over and over again, and this being only twelve episodes, makes it feel like she didn’t learn anything from it.
And it’s especially unfortunate because there are good things in this series, but it just didn’t have the time to really show it. The one thing they did and was able to successfully showcase is how Izumi is a fantastic love interest. Mizuki won the lottery of characters to idolize and fall for. He’s such a sweetheart, and even though he learned her secret early on, he didn’t expose her. And it’s because of that we actually get a lot of sweet and wholesome moments between them. There were good enough crumbs early on for the long haul, and it’s really the only I’d say that salvaged these twelve episodes.
So would I recommend watching this? Well that largely depends on two things: One if you’re willing to read the manga to fill in the rest/gaps if there’s not more coming, and two, if there’s more coming.
Now the reason why I say this is for a simple reason. If not there’s not more coming, and you have no plans to read the manga, and you don’t like 2000s tropes, then I honestly think you should just skip this altogether. This series isn’t for you.
But *if there’s more coming… Then it will depend on your taste and patience, because Mizuki WILL test your patience, and you need to tolerate the popular tropes of the early 2000s. There’s a lot of absurd things that happen in this series, and it most of the time, it’s really not meant to be taken seriously. If you can’t do that, I suspect you’ll have a harder time sticking with this.
This adaption is best described as a love letter to the fans who grew up with this series. The opening theme was cleverly designed to mimic the silliness that we’d often see in the early 2000s anime, slapped with a banger song (Yoasobi never misses) on top of it. It’s what made it nostalgic to watch. However some watching it in this day and age may view it as cringe, weird, and utterly confused what the show is supposed to be about with all the surreal things unfolding. It’s easy to see how they may feel like they’ve been misled with what to expect from the show when Izumi’s return to the sport suddenly became an afterthought.
As for me: Despite my obvious frustration with Mizuki’s stupidity, I still enjoyed this show. It’s full of flaws, there’s many things that didn’t age well, but at the same time, there are parts of it that undoubtedly did (hello Izumi!). It’s dumb but funny, charming and endearing and sure Mizuki makes me want to rip my hair out from her lack of self-preservation, but at the end of the day, it’s nostalgic and I’m happy to see it was at least decently adapted.
So what’s my final score? If there’s more to come: 6/10. Nostalgia and Izumi’s wonderful character were the two reasons why I enjoyed watching these twelve episodes.
Final Score: 6/10
Extra Note: I just want to apologize for how long this took to get out. Last weekend I had a terrible case of brain fog, on top of a god awful migraine that prevented me from even being able to work. I got a lot to catch-up to. With this done, I still have Tamon B-Side to do, and then Journal with Witch. I suspect the later will end up being a double-post at this point, and I’m going to try and be caught up to Tamon by Saturday. I got other things i need to catchup to so I can’t guarantee I’ll be completely caught up tomorrow. At the very least I want to make sure I’m caught up by Sunday!
