「紺先輩号泣の夏」 (Kon Senpai Goukyuu no Natsu)
“Kon Senpai’s Summer of Tears”

As Hotori manages to provide all the laughs this show could ever need, I think she’s the funniest when the world is working against her – and this episode was mostly just that. From losing her brand new bathing suit to having remedial math classes, today just wasn’t Hotori’s day. There’s a storm brewing in Hotori’s path (figuratively and literally). Starting her summer break with remedial math classes with Moriaki-sensei, she somehow manages to do badly on her first test and then even worse on the makeup, even though the makeup had the same problems just with different numbers. As Moriaki goes crazy trying to figure out how something like that is even possible he freaks out after Hotori tries to answer him. Given how most of her answers are either blunt or sarcastic, I’m amazed how he can still endure her. After throwing a fit over how Hotori is the enemy of math, he proudly yells out his solution to help Hotori learn math. The answer lying in the least expected place – detective novels. Trying to help her think about math as if it were the same as solving a mystery, Moriaki goes on about how the solution to a math problem is the answer in a case. The more he explains, the more serious his explanation becomes. It’s a shame that Hotori’s basic math skills are such a mess, since even after such a charismatic speech it looks like Hotori still can’t apply herself toward math.

While watching Hotori fail at math is fun, I think it’s even more fun when Futaba decides to play with her – the best part of it being the constant bickering between the two. After hearing “Aho-tori” and “Futa-baka” I had to pause the video from laughing too hard. I can’t tell if Hotori and Futaba are really good friends or two people who are so different from one another that they actually get along well. Going off of the fact that Hotori somehow barged into Futaba’s apartment and used her shower, left a random inner tube lying around, turned the air conditioner on too high, left the water out of the fridge, and left her cat out in the blazing sun, I think it might be a combination of both. Plus I can understand why Futaba feels the need to poke fun at Hotori from time to time. With the convenient Futaba-Anger-Meter, Hotori managed to reach her breaking point within a few minutes. While I personally would never want to piss off Futaba, I wouldn’t mind waking up to this as retribution. That said, I wonder what she really intended to do to Hotori. Besides all the antics the best part of the episode is when Hotori and Futaba finally make it to the beach. Not only does Hotori manage to pop her inner tube and lose her bathing suit to a typhoon within seconds but when Futaba tries to buy her food to cheer her up the beach side restaurant is already closed up for the day. While it was funny watching the scene play through at the beginning of the episode, it was even funnier the second time around knowing that Hotori just couldn’t catch a break.

Throughout the episode there were was a bunch of these little Binbou-kun (Poorman) comic strips. Involving Binbou-kun and Kanemochi-san (Mr. Richman), in some situation where Kanemochi-san leads on Binbou-kun using a play on words. While I didn’t find any of the comics particularly funny, they reminded me of those old cartoons where the rich guy would try to flaunt his wealth as much as possible leading the poor guy to figure out what a jerk the rich guy was. Besides the random comic scenes, Josephine’s normal eyecatches were replaced with actual dialogue on screen! It was a nice change of pace to see Josephine in something other then the transitions. With next week’s episode titled “Sore Machi”, I have no idea what this final episode is going to be about. I just hope it has a lot of Futaba!

 

Preview

28 Comments

  1. JOSEPHINE THE BEST INUKI.
    THE MATH TEACHER. THE BEST MATH TEACHER.
    AHOTORI.
    FUTABAKA.
    EVERYTHING THIS EPISODEEEEEEE was awesome 😀 minus the random comics.
    Futaba-anger-meter! Didn’t reach the top! :O Wonder what happened if it did. Kon Futaba yet again proves why she is the best character.
    Summer Dresses! *A*

    Rei
  2. When this episode started with the typical beach scene I was actually irritated for some reason but then when Hotori fell on her face busted her tube and the weather instantly changed i was all smiles and laughing. What the hell has this show done to me lol. Thanks for introducing it to me Takaii I would neve rhave known about it but for your posts. Dammit that was funny, the dog jokes I totally enjoyed as well having dogs in the family. The Aho-tori, Futabaka…..EPIC!! just epic episode.

    Breedo
  3. We finally get to see the dad! Well… his body anyway.

    I must say, lately when Kon isn’t on screen I tend to lose interest. Some of the Kon-less episodes were ok, but the recent episodes have been rather… meh for me 🙁

    Azuma
  4. I thought the little “poorman” skits had some nice inspiration to do something different, but they were not really funny (slightly amusing at best) and sucked life out of the episode.

    Karmafan
  5. Yes! More Futaba and Hotori ftw! Epic funny episode again! This is truly a gem of a series! Good god, this coming week is going to be sad! Just thinking of Ike Musume and Mawatteiru endings make me cringe!

    Shinjiro
  6. This episode was perfect. The best so far. Every sketch was a killer. I even liked the binbou-kun comics!
    best moments:
    1. When Hotori’s dad said ‘Josephine is my only friend’
    2. Haribara and Futaba making fun of Josephine, and Hotori ordering her to attack them
    3. The arashiyama family watching Hotori through the window, wondering what the heck she’s doing outside with a freak typhon coming
    4. Josephine’s concept of the domestic hierarchy (with dad last) and apparently telling the Arashiyamas apart only by their hair
    5.Futaba’s scary face when Hotori just wouldn’t let go of the idea of adding sugar to the sashimi

    and that’s to say nothing about the now immortal ‘ahotori-futabaka’ nicknames. simply awesome. best 25 minutes of autumn 2010.

    Nadavu

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