Natsu no Arashi! Akinai-chuu – 11

「ハイスクールララバイ」 (Hai Sukuuru Rarabai)
“High School Lullaby”

The planets magically align and Hajime has a good feeling about the return of the pretty girl maid warrior Yamazaki Kanako. As hilarious as it was seeing Kanako’s reaction to the thought of that, we get another unexpected development — a grown-up, well-endowed Jun in hotpants!

I’ll be quick to admit that I never thought of Jun as a girl either all this time. It doesn’t really help when she masquerades as a guy in front of everyone, with only Kaya and Arashi knowing about her real gender. Her rapid overnight growth changes all that, giving her womanly curves like she’s never had before. Some of the appeal comes from the fact that she was in clothes way too small for her at that point, which highlighted all the right stuff. It’s just a shame that the effect wore off by the end of it all. I think the choice between having Jun pretend to be a guy or an older sister is an easy one.

As silly as all that may sound, this episode had more depth to it than I expected. It focused entirely on Jun, who learned a bit about how everyone felt about her while pretending to be Kamigamo Ryoko. No one really said anything bad about her behind her back, though they were pretty blunt about the little things such as washing cups and skimping on syrup in ice coffee. They were trivial tidbits to learn, but this gave her the opportunity to ask Hajime how he really feels about her. To Jun’s flustered surprise, he nonchalantly defended “him” and claimed he likes his simple-minded personality. Following the retrieval of some wild raspberries and the eventual surprise birthday party everyone held for Jun, it was almost as if she had fallen more for Hajime. Granted, he still doesn’t know she’s a girl, but Jun’s always been dishonest with her true feelings so it’s fun when something gets to her like this.

Other than that, it was amusing seeing Arashi want to toy with Jun since she knew what was up. My only gripe with the whole surprise birthday party was the fact that it involved pie tossing. After seeing School Rumble end with one, I just can’t associate pie tossing in anime with anything good. I enjoyed the character development in Jun (both mentally and physically), but could’ve easily done without the pies.

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