First Impressions / Series Introduction

Summer vacation has finally rolled around – and when summer happens in anime, that usually involves hot weather, leading to a craving of large bodies of water, leading to showcases of various swimsuit styles and breast sizes. (un)Fortunately for us, the girls in this anime are too young to head for the beach on their own, and their breast sizes are inconsequential compared to that of Boin-sensei.

So what’s this ep about, anyways? Rin is feeling pretty down cuz she won’t get to see her darling sensei all summer, but Aoki works his big brother magic and tells her that since he’s a loser teacher, he’s always at school, so she can visit him any time.

So anyways, the girls run off and have a good first couple days of vacation. Naturally, Rin gets bored as hell, so drags everyone to the school pool, where easypickings Aoki is on lifeguard duty. Boin-sensei shows her triple F cups off while Rin continues to get more and more self conscious about how she presents herself to Aoki.

An evening reunion at the school pool reconciles the two jailbirds, under the glow of the fireworks festival. Well, that worked out surprisingly well.

Preview:

As close to filler as this show can get – not really much in the way of plot or character development. But a good excuse to show the girls in their two piece swimsuits, school mizugi, and yukata. Depending on how many episodes this show is gonna be, this is either the “beach ep” or not… either way, we’re still missing an onsen/bathhouse ep, school festival ep, and the imminent flashback eps.


Thoughts

This was an odd ep for me, mainly because the focus wasn’t as clear as the previous ones were. We saw the girls get hyped for summer vacation, then go on vacation, then end up coming back to school to hang out anyways. Aoki gets some quality time in with Boin-sensei, but blows her off at the slightest hint of Rin. I mean, eps before always had a central issue or conflict that everything revolved around, and this one – well, it’s probably a little tougher to identify.

If I were to pick one thing out, it would be that moment in every young relationship that happens when an initial break in everyday contact occurs. Summer vacation is what usually ends up happening in a school setting… at any rate, it serves as a sort of abrupt limbo in a steadily progressing relationship, where nothing really happens. And during this period of no physical contact, the strength of the relationship is really tested – we see here the depth of the relationship between Aoki and Rin as neither are really capable of forgetting about the other for extended periods of time. And what could have ended up as a summer of no contact has Rin forcing her hand and tossing Aoki into a pool, which somehow turns into a romantic star-studded moment between the two ala FFX Tidus x Yuna in some deep ass pond.

I’ll even go as far to say that Kodomo no Jikan has set a new standard for these loli shows to follow. It walks the hair-thin line of fanservice and real drama boldly and seemingly with little falter; 5 episodes in and still going strong. I’m impressed, frankly – the effort behind the production planning is really starting to shine through.

But once again, it’s not for everyone. Depends on how badly you got corrupted by shows like uh… Fairy Musketeer Akazukin and uh… Moetan (but nobody watched that one so it’s hard to say).

Captions up

21 Comments

  1. BEST ANIME EVER FOREVER!

    This ep is very good. Emotional roller coaster. Mixed funny moments, sad moments, romantic moments and ecchi moments (censored, though). Kokonoe’s jealousy is a little hard to watch but it’s interesting.

    It looks like next episode will reveal much more about Reiji’s and Kokonoe’s background.
    I’m looking forward to see it.

    I love the captions!

    fake
    Reply

  2. you know used to not like this show but i read the manga and my form of viewing this show change a lot!! plus the manga is far more ecchi than the anime i hope when the dvd is out they take the censored plus i think i like the anime a little better…………lol

    Kyon
    Reply

  4. I liked the scene in cap 16 (that shot in particular); it seems like the animation studio is getting the feel of the show just right.

    I think the anime is being just as ecchi as the manga, the “only” difference being, of course, that the anime is censored.

    Nemo_N
    Reply

  13. If you wanna know if there will be a festival episode…

    Show Spoiler ▼

    Hudson
    Reply

  14. As for a School sports festival

    Show Spoiler ▼

    Hudson
    Reply

  15. The only reason nobody watched Moetan is cause nobody bothered to sub it properly. The show is vastly underated as a free for all comedy series. It also came out when everybody was focusing on Lucky Star almost exclusively and had a lot of the same Otaku gimmicks (albeit arguably much better executed in Moetan), which didn’t help.

    Kaioshin Sama
    Reply

  16. I like where this series is heading off.

    I don’t know if call ‘love’ to Rin affections towards Aoki just yet, obviously the same goes for him. Now, Aoki is trying to deal with his troubled emotions thanks to Rin’s actions every day. I know one thing for certain; the series will diverge from the manga in some point and one of the key factors will be, if not the most important, Renji’s affection for Rin

    Syaoran Li
    Reply

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