Oh my gosh, I totally forgot about what transpires at the Christmas Ball Arc. The event happens every two years between Osaka High School and St. Blossom Academy. Partners will be decided on whim, the boys have to ask the girls, and if the girl approves, it’s locked in, if not well the search goes on. However since St. Blossom Academy has fewer students compared to past years, it had been decided to have some boys join St. Blossom’s ranks to even the numbers out in order to ensure everyone gets a partner. This was a voluntarily event, but the ones who were scouted to participate were the most feminine looking boys, which included Senri and Mizuki. Talk about a crisis! But Mizuki certainly wasn’t treating it as one, instead, she saw this as a huge opportunity that hits two birds with one stone! The first is being able to earn some money so she can buy Izumi a birthday gift, and the second is the arrangement working in her favour that she’d have the opportunity to dance with him.
That sounds great and all, except there’s a catch. St. Blossom Academy Student Council President Hibari is an eccentric one and decided that the boys filling in have to wear a freaking mini skirt in order to coached the steps of the waltz. Way to risk exposing Mizuki’s true gender even more! But hey, at least they are getting paid for filling in… so at least they are getting compensated… I guess? Either way forcing them to have to wear short skirts for it was wholly unnecessary– though they did eventually start practising in long skirts considering they’d be wearing dresses for the party. But I digress.
As per usual, Izumi was rightfully concerned about Mizuki’s secret getting out this way, but he quickly realized that he was not mentally prepared to walk in only to see her her trying on the (VERY SHORT) skirt she and the other boys are assigned to wear for the lessons. And it certainly didn’t help that Mizuki seemed to have forgotten she was wearing a skirt and proceeded to then ask him what he wanted for his birthday! But even after all the trials Mizuki has put him through, Izumi could not keep a cool head over this and was so flustered by he got quite a severe nosebleed. Can’t blame him though, it was uh, quite a picture. If only Mizuki knew how she looked to him in that moment! No doubt she would have been quite flustered and embarrassed about it!
When it finally came down to organizing who’s partnering up with who, Nakatsu beat Izumi to the punch by calling dibs with Mizuki. But I’m not sure who has it worse considering despite Nakatsu calling the shotgun, it was clear Mizuki was not interested in being his partner, but wasn’t sure how to turn him down. So that was awkward for the moment. Though in the end, it didn’t really matter as Nakatsu ended up missing out since he wasn’t even able to participate for the entire party outside of dance practice (which he worked really hard at on his own with Kayashima’s help). He was only able to dance with Mizuki for a little bit at the party itself before he passed out from nosebleed again. Got too distracted by her wearing a dress and was very honed in to her breasts, to which he realized was a grave mistake because as soon as he did that, he became hyper aware of even Hibari’s “bust and that ultimately took him out. Too much blood rushed to the head.
Apart from the blitz of events leading up to the Christmas Party, this was a very fun and enjoyable episode, especially with Izumi choosing not to hold back his feeling by the slightest. He harbours no concerns of what any one else thinks, he just wants to share these precious opportunities with Mizuki whenever he can. He was ecstatic when Mizuki had asked him to dance with her in their dorm, so much so, that he hardly let her finish her sentence. His answer was an immediate yes and pulled her up to her feet. Unfortunately as smooth as that was, they didn’t even make it beyond the first step because they both tripped and fell into the bed, with Izumi funny enough, somehow always landing as the bottom . Mizuki was flustered by the whole thing and fled to her bed, but his has hardly been Izumi’s first rodeo with her. After-all, her sleeping habits has often left her climbing on top of him and snoozing off, this is just another Tuesday for him. Doesn’t make it any less heart-pounding for the guy though!
Since the dance practice didn’t pan out, it was a shame that we didn’t get more of their dancing sequence at the party. In-fact, they really skimmed through the whole Christmas event quite fast. But as rushed as it was, it still managed to make me laugh quite hard when they had at the dancing music box thing pop up (I don’t know what to call it), because they were literally just spinning in circles like someone dialed them up. Still, it is disappointing we didn’t actually see them do more considering how much time was spent preparing for this event. And it wasn’t just them. It also would’ve been fun to see Hibari and Himejima do their dance considering it had been established how these two are fierce rivals with one another, and it probably could’ve been really funny. But it is what it is.
But I will say, Izumi was very swoon-worthy when he gotten the green-light from Rio (who can see these two like each other plain as day) and hurried over to Mizuki and instead of waiting for an answer, just pulled her onto the dance floor (since Nakatsu went out of commission earlier in the party due fainting from the usual), and asked her there if she wanted to dance. He had been waiting for this moment all this time, because he was all in the moment she said so. In-fact he was so locked in, Mizuki was getting incredibly flustered about it. Didn’t take long for the rest of the party to notice these two are practically a couple at this point. There was no debate who was going to win the “Best Couple Reward” for the evening.
Needless to say, it was nice that Mizuki didn’t need to disguise herself for the first time in ages– and by that I mean not having to wear that suffocating chest binder to hide her gender. She realized she couldn’t wear the chest binder because the dress revealed too much of it, so she banked on the padded bras the boys were given to fulfill their role as their female counterparts to give her enough cover to not arose any suspicion. So it gave her the opportunity to just lean into the role without having to worry as much about blowing her cover to her peers. Also worth mentioning this whole arrangement was like striking gold for her! Not only she was able to dance with Izumi in a pretty dress as the girl she is, but she was also able to profit off fulfilling the female counterpart roles on behalf of St. Blossom Academy and make enough money to buy Izumi a birthday gift this year.
I’m not sure what Izumi was expecting, but it was anything but whatever he had imagined! Hilariously, Mizuki gifted him an ultrasonic massage device. Not exactly the most uh, romantic thing, but it is practical given he’s an athlete and undoubtedly has muscle soreness. Mizuki has become a fan of it as well, which is pretty funny given it was the gift she bought for him and here she is using it— not that he minds, haha!
That being said, it goes without saying that Izumi’s at a place now here he’s being very direct and proactive with his feelings towards Mizuki. It has evolved beyond tender hugs to, behaving as though he and Mizuki are already an established couple. Both in private and public, Izumi’s doing everything from doting cuddles and head to shoulder nuzzles, holding hands together in the open like at the skating rink, or the way he touches her face when practically flirting with her at the Christmas ball. He’s practically doing everything you would expect of a devoted lover just short of kissing her. (But even then, he has already given her a kiss on the cheek when she was asleep.) So we’re been fed really well this season with the sheer amount of skin-ship and romantic moments these two have had! Actually you could even say he might as well have proposed to Mizuki in when he answered her question about “his type of girl” with: Someone who he wants to be with all the time-–that being her of course!
Better yet as Mizuki has finally come to terms with her own feelings for Izumi, by the end of his event she too has finally decided to just embrace her feelings. There’s less hesitation about hiding her gender and isn’t afraid of initiating cuddles in return. It’s adorable, wholesome and just precious to watch!
But boy, did episode 13 feel incredibly rushed! They were really trying to cram everything into this episode to finish up this arc so the next cour is set clear to start the next one. For that reason I kind of wished this one had fourteen episodes, but at the same time, there probably just wasn’t enough stuff post-Christmas party to really fill up an entire episode. So they had to make it fit within 23 minutes of the episode. Though now that I think about it, I think if they had just had left out the ED Theme sequence, they probably would have had enough time to give Izumi and Mizuki a longer dance sequence at the ball if they really wanted to.
Most notably, with how rushed this whole event was, it made me wonder what was even the point of highlighting Juri. Rather than being an antagonist she was seemingly set up to being, she basically had no real impact on the party whatsoever. Sure she picked on the boys a bit, and stained Mizuki’s dress. But that wasn’t even an issue since all they had to do was cut off the stained, and Mizuki could return to the party in short notice. Needless to say her trivial efforts were all in vain. Minami won the King title, Hibari won the Queen title, and due to their plainly obvious love for each other, Izumi and Mizuki had won the Best Couple reward. (Funny enough they weren’t there to hear it since they ditched the party together.)
Overall the second cour was a lot of fun to watch and I’d say even better than the first. At this point you have to accept that Mizuki’s never going to stop being insanely oblivious and naive to too many counts. You’d think she’d be a alot smarter after past lessons, but unfortunately not much growth in that regard. Izumi as usual was a treat to watch. He’s such a great character, and it really does help that because he has known about Mizuki’s secret day 1 that there’s no extra confusion like Nakatsu has been going through.
Actually speaking of Nakatsu, though he’s the gag-character of the series, we do have to hand it to him. Since the first cour he’s been crushing hard on Mizuki, and in this one he realized that he had fallen in love. But he doesn’t know that she’s a girl, so he was confused for a long time about having feelings for a boy. Eventually it came to the point where Nakatsu realized that he couldn’t ignore his feelings and wholly embraced the notion of having feelings for someone he thinks is a guy. In-fact you have to give him credit for how public he was about it, given that he made quite a scene when he decided to confess to Mizuki. So credit where it’s due! The only problem though was after the fact, he did start to get a bit on the annoying side (but thankfully not to the point I dislike him) especially since it was clear that Mizuki was not reciprocating his feelings and he really kept on trying to win her heart, albeit not in a very productive manner.
And then we have Senri and Minami. We witnessed them both being at the brunt of bearing unrequited feelings, Senri towards Minami and Minami towards Julia (who has since returned home from her short exchange trip). Senri has wholly dialed up his aggression when it comes to trying to stake his claim on Minami and win him over. His methods has evolved from rather hostile to ultimately figuring out that best way to fend off his rivals is to act all sweet around Minami as though they are already dating. Minami’s not to crazy about that though. He on the other-hand, has been left to deal with this one-sided crush on Julia is doomed to go nowhere as she has little interest in giving him any time of the day. Just his presence alone is enough to hang-up on a face-time call. Goes to show he stands no chance with her.
Other characters that were more prominently featured this cour were Rio and Minami’s family. The two of them have been desperately trying to keep their family relationship under wraps, but it really didn’t help when they got to do the dance demonstration for the lessons. Unfortunately for them though, their crazy family secret finally got out no thanks to the freaking GRANDPARENTS, showing up at the skating rink. How mortifying for Rio to be known as Minami’s aunt, and vice versa. Their family tree is just pure chaos, I’m not even going to bother trying to break it down. It’s too crazy to explain! It’s still wild to me how this insane family comedy came to be!
Rio herself however deserves special points and recognition for being the absolute best wingwoman at the Christmas Ball for Izumi and Mizuki. She could tell clear as day these two are in love with each other, so she made sure they were able to dance together despite being assigned to Izumi for the event.
In the end, I do believe this cour deserves a solid 8/10. I think one of the few drawbacks to this season was how Izumi’s training for his tournaments became an afterthought and so many other crazy events came up that really were interrupting his schedule in more ways than one. So the sports aspect of the story, and the reason why Mizuki came all the way to Japan in the first place felt entirely forgotten. The only exception really was the brief period where we got Izumi’s backstory on the strained relationship with his father (who was his former coach) and little brother. But even that, that was scarcely covering it.
According to rumours, the next cour is supposed to be the last one, so with the upcoming tournament that Izumi has been training hard at behind the scenes coming up, it will finally be coming back into the picture! And naturally, I’ll definitely be covering it!
Final Verdict: 8/10
