How distracted does a middle schooler have to be to forget his own birthday? For adults, birthdays can get lost in the shuffle of occupational challenges, financial woes, and/or parenthood, but for kids they’re like a second Christmas. The gifts, the attention, the perceived bump in social standing – how could a fifteen year old boy forget such an event? And yet, that’s exactly what Ryou Akai does, only recalling the date when an admiring girl gives him a present before class. Prior to this episode, I’d have said that only his fractured relationship with his brother could have pushed something so special as a birthday from his mind. But Mix steadfastly refuses to shed additional light on their feud, opting instead to bring a new distraction into his life: a newly-minted crush on Otomi Tachibana.
This was definitely a Meisei Middle episode, focusing on the younger half of its cast at the expense of the main battery. The show sometimes benches Souichiro for a week, but I’m not sure Touma has ever received less attention than he did in this one. The change didn’t thrill me, to be honest, but Ryou is one of the show’s more intriguing characters, so pushing him toward the center of the show’s romantic web isn’t a bad choice. Otomi has probably been on his mind for a while, since she’s a friendly presence in what may be an otherwise lonely life – we haven’t seen his parents around, and Tomohito never has a kind word for him. So when Otomi goes diving for an elderly teacher’s keys during swimming class, Ryou is drawn to her kindness. This scene is full of characters focusing on the wrong things, chiefly Arisa, who’s interested only in besting her rival in a swimming contest. The spectators are caught up in comparing the girls to one another, too (especially the male ones). Otomi’s selfless act stands out amidst the ruckus, and so does Ryou for picking up on it.
Mix still has 10 weeks left until Hero Academia S4 takes over its timeslot, but without having read the manga, I don’t know if that’s enough time for the ninth graders to age up and join the Tachibana brothers on the Meisei High baseball team. If and when it happens, will Ryou be one of them? Otomi is a baseball nut, so depending on his level of infatuation, it might be in his best interest to switch sports. As a bonus, most of the guys on the team are head over heels for Haruka, so he won’t have too much competition. The Haruka craze was actually on full display this week, as she became the manager of the baseball team after a blatantly foreshadowed accident. With a pretty girl to show off to, even the previously unnamed members of the team came bursting out of the woodwork. Even Sou wasn’t immune to this phenomenon, despite the way he criticized his teammates for altering their swings in the batting cages. That he fell into the exact same trap was a nice bit of humor to close out a downtempo episode – hopefully we get another one of these before the match against Sankou.
