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「Ripple」
“Ripple”
Sumika you animal! You made Ushio cry! I wish I could take that thought and run with it for the rest of the post, but both her and Ushio don’t even know why it happened. Those poor girls don’t even realize their love is already there at some subconscious level.
Or at least that’s what they have me believing all the way through. After starting with a cold open of the incident, we’re taken back to earlier in the day when Sumika’s classmates are wondering if Tomoe and Miyako are lesbian lovers. Hearing their names, the two of them return and Tomoe is quick to openly discuss same sex relationships in the classroom. This gets on Azusa’s nerves and she gets kissed by Tomoe for speaking up. While Miyako’s oddly ecstatic about her girlfriend going on the offensive, Azusa slaps Tomoe in response and later convinces herself that it didn’t count as a first kiss.
Overhearing her soliloquy, Sumika realizes that Azusa is a fan of Ushio’s brother’s novels but is unaware that the person behind the “Orino Masaka” pen name is actually a guy. Unable to burst her bubble, Sumika ends up going along with the pretense that she’s a hardcore fan of Masaka as well, which lands her in Azusa’s “I want you” books. However, one stumbling mishap later with Ushio strolling by and we’re back to the opening scene with Ushio inexplicably tearing up. Unfortunately for Sumika, she doesn’t have time to make head or tails of what happened and is dragged off to the classroom to help decide what everyone should call Tomoe after finding out she’s two years older. Needless to say, she’s not happy about this waste of time and barks out “Hacchii” in disdain, so then end up going with that.
After school, the party changes location to Sumika’s place for a Girls’ Club meeting/study session that has Kiyori taking part too. Things don’t progress very well due to the awkwardness between Sumika and Ushio, so Tomoe “accidentally” splashes them with the drinks to give them some alone time together. While washing their clothes, Ushio convinces herself that she teared up because Sumika came off as a violent man forcing himself upon a hapless girl, much to the latter’s dismay. Before they make any reasonable sense of things, Kiyori bursts in and interrupts with her own spill, followed by Azusa shortly after with her Orino Masaki fan club newsletter. Azusa’s unexpected arrival makes Ushio uncomfortable about her brother’s secret potentially getting out, but Tomoe is impressed by her passionate writing and wants her to join the club. She refuses and takes off, but is disappointed that her plans to talk all things Orino Masaki with Sumika didn’t work.
Later in the evening when everyone finally leaves, the awkwardness between Sumika and Ushio has subsided, but they still don’t know the reason behind the tears. Ushio does deliver a copy of Asuza’s fan club newsletter to her brother though, before landing an unintentional blow about his lack in popularity.
Well that was a cute episode, with Asuza getting actively involved like I suspected. She got kissed, gave a slap, and fell for Sumika all in one episode. Now that’s some fast-forwarded character development! While it was fun seeing her get some screentime, I found the whole Sumika/Ushio crying part of the episode more entertaining. This was mainly because Sumika was literally beating herself up over what happened and unable to comprehend why Ushio was crying. I was happy to see that she realized that this might mean that Ushio actually likes her and was hurt to see her with another girl, but our poor Ushio isn’t even aware of this herself. I was hoping Ushio figured this out at the end when she was leaving, but all she did was give a cute and flustered “bye bye” to Sumika. They really had me going there and anticipating something big to happen, as I could just FEEL her subconscious emotions about to surface. Sadly, it ended up being a dud. The setup was perfect, but there was no finish this week. However, this should allow the two of them to grow closer together, seeing as they’re both thinking about about an illicit yuri relationship with one another. Sumika now has hope, whereas Ushio is starting to see her as a potential candidate.
To round out the excellent melodrama, I don’t know what we’d do without Kiyori and Miyako. A lot of their involvement is pretty subtle and unassuming, but they always make me chuckle. This includes Miyako cheering on Tomoe for sticking her tongue down Azusa’s throat, and calling Azusa an idiot while speaking into a fan, along with Kiyori trying to get a troubled Ushio’s attention, crying about what Tomoe probably spilled on her, and enjoying herself admist everyone’s uneasiness. Gotta leave it up to the short little girls to bring the fun!
Preview
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It just seems a little to easy the way Sumika is hinted of Ushio’s true feelings upon the accident. I was expecting another way but this is just fine.
Kiyori is so fun to watch. They need to give her her own arc or two.
OMFG she’s so cute!
For those interested, I’ve updated MT’s collection of the manga after i binged on it after watching this episode.. (dynasty is going to be pissed at me for not asking them)
Sasameki Koto @ MangaToshokan
the first crack in her i love cute girls armor has appeard.
Ah god i want more ^_^
that inevitable has finally begun!! they’re now traveling the path of no return
Show Spoiler ▼
Its about time Ushio started to lose that bloody fickleness. We all knew she would come around anyway, even though she’s not even at the point where she’s lost yet. Sumika finally found a way into that think skull of her’s. Now all she has to do is propagate it 😛
Guess is the season of banging foreheads to tables. First Kuroko now Sumika :). Not very happy they are going to use Aoi as sacrifice for the sake of Sumika and Ushio relationship.
why not chose sempai instead of hacchii. I didn’t got that joke of changing the name from the blackboards options.
the “hard to say good bye” scene wasn’t in the manga, but was realy cute =)
@Island esper
Hachii is because of her surname, Hachizuka.
I can’t wait for them to touch on the later chapters of the manga hnnnnng…
considering they’ve been doing only 1 chapter per episode, and the show is only supposed to be one season, they might either end up doing an anime original ending for the last few episodes, or do the “life goes on” ending that everybody is oh so fond of</sarcasm>
yea 😛 thats to bad because the storyline starts to really pick up after ch13…..
So can’t they the moment they finish announce the second season…..
that’s entirely possible, i suppose… but it also depends on how popular the series was
Then let’s make it popular! :3
I’m trying! I’m all about giving exposure to the non-mainstream stuff after all.
By the end of the season, Azusa’s going to write a yuri fanfic entitled “Murasame-sama ga Miteru”. Bank on it.
i was waiting for the stairs scene ^^ it was a cute episode i really liked it
need more sumika x ushio! XD