This is your usual pool episode, except that it’s not quite your usual pool episode. The pool activities and the peeping Tom operation serve as a surface for some subtler scheming, and set the conflicts from Class D to other classes into motion. I’m glad that Youkoso realizes the stupid nature of the “Operation: Peep on the Girls’ Dressing Room”. They would play up the absurdness of the operation, make it overly-dramatized with several “missions”, codenames, communicating in codes. My favorite moment has to be when Iku cries his manly tears for nearly abandoned his hope of a successful operation. If only they could give their all in academic pursuit as well. Another intentional but quite questionable approach, is the “male’s gaze” perspective that keep scanning on girls’ chests and their bikini for wayyy too long. Normally this is just an excuse for lazy fanservice but in this context, it has its merits because it fits really well to the peeping operation and their hormonal operators. This is one of the rare cases when I can argue that anime uses fan-service elements successfully, the kind of fanservice that fits to its theme and has deeper implications.
This episode also serves as a base to re-establish the tension between different classes, as in somewhat convenient fashion, all of the important figures from each class, and the student council president himself, appear all in one place – in a pool; or to be more exact, in front of the pool’s public bathrooms. The tension between Class-A and Class-C has been well hinted in previous episodes, and this time Class-D member (Sudo, of course) finds himself stuck in the middle of this whole conflict, both literally and figuratively. Horikita’s announcement in the diving board (I thought she would jump for sure) serves as the final declaration of how Class-D is willing to climb up rank, and force the others to take them seriously. At the moment Class-B has a friendly term with Class-D, but really what is Ichinose’s real motive?
But Horikita’s little event in that diving board is only in a service of distracting the other classes to save those stupid boys from getting caught, as Ayanokouji has pulled all the strings on a backstage to let the boys do what they want, but eliminate all the consequences in the process. It’s the only real reason that the anti-social Horikita decided to join them for a day in a pool after all. Amusing that this episode is the first time that we get to hear her voice over – to know her inner voice and the way she sees the world. While this girl Horikita is as dry as the Sahara Desert, it’s good to understand her inside a little bit more because unless we can identify the main cast as real people, we’d have a hard time rooting for them when conflict arises. Ultimately, this episode is exactly how a pool episode function: main characters gather around and have fun times together, splashing waters at each other (ohh, you poor thing, Sakura…) and at the end of the day, having a fond memory together as friends, something that both Horikita and Ayanokouji rarely aware of.
