Suzuka – 05

Short Summary:
Yamato runs into Suzuka talking with an upperclassmate from the track team, Miyamoto Souichi. He gets initially worked up about Suzuka spending time with another guy, but calms down a bit after Miyamoto tells him that they went to the same middle school. He tries to recruit Yamato to the track and field team, but Yamato turns him down.
One night, it’s raining hard and the power goes out. A frightened Suzuka uses Yamato as emotional support, even hugging him tight at one point. But as soon as the lights come on, she separates from him and leaves. The next morning, Suzuka acts as if nothing happened, so everything seems to be back to normal. Yamato wanders into a convenience store and finds a horoscope book. Reading it prompts him to ask Yasunobu and Honoka about confessions during lunch. After school, he admires Suzuka practicing the high jump, then goes home alone thinking about her. Suzuka sees him watching her and runs after him after practice ends early. Yamato almost confesses, but doesn’t, instead affirming to himself his feelings for her.

This episode covers chapters 8 through 10 of the manga. It wasn’t a bad episode, but felt rather bland. The power outage scene in particular lacked the emotion that the manga seeemed to have. I’m not sure if the music didn’t feel dramatic enough or if the animation was a bit lacking (as it was through most of the episode), but the production value of this series is definitely hurting its storytelling.
On the plus side, hearing Hattori sing the opening song at the karaoke place was great. That scene was probably my favorite for this episode since it also had Honoka wondering about an indirect kiss with Yamato since they accidentally drank each other’s juice.
Next episode should finish off volume 2. Hopefully they won’t screw chapters 12 and 13 up. *crosses fingers*