The older students come back to pick on Fujiwara; they’re still mad that they got disqualified last year. Worse yet, when the vice-principal sees Fujiwara all beaten up (he just fell down the stairs, honest!), he tries to convince the board to abolish the boys basketball team. Fujiwara realizes that all he can do is work on his rehabilitation, because the team is depending on him. He starts to listen to Anzaki, and even agrees to go to the hospital with her to get his knee checked out. Things take a dramatic turn, however, when Mutsumi sees Anzaki and Fujiwara together and talking. Mutsumi gets all depressed, and Coach Himuro is forced to bench Mutsumi and have Moritaka run the point. Without their ace, Mizuho is only barely able to squeak by their first round opponent.
Mutsumi continues to mope around in the rain after the game, when Aikawa runs into her and takes her home with him. This potent soap opera moment is squelched (arg, I was looking forward to a twisted love net), as Aikawa is a true gentleman who just wants Mutsumi to feel better. After Aikawa cheers her up and makes her realize that Fujiwara is trying to rehab to please her, Mutsumi snaps out of her funk. She sits the next game to heal her injured finger, and offers sound zone-breaking advice to Moritaka. Although Moritaka is nowhere near as good a point guard as Mutsumi, all the lovu lovu training she got from Aikawa pays off big time. Moritaka hits 3 long range three-pointahs in the last 4 minutes, allowing Mizuho to just barely crawl into the final round of the preliminaries. All is right with the world as Fujiwara approaches Mutsumi before the start of the final game and gives her a hug, some basketball advice, and a few words of encouragement. When he gives her one of his sweaty wristbands (eww….), Mutsumi is on cloud nine. Oh you silly girl!
With another pair of strong episodes, Dear Boys shows that it’s best when ignoring the basketball side of things. Although the animation during the fast-paced scenes is fairly shoddy, the production values aren’t too bad during the normal everyday life scenes. I was surprised to learn that Mutsumi only picked up basketball to please Fujiwara (OMG, just like Sakuragi Hanamichi from Slam Dunk!). Maybe she is a basketball tensai or something. I only had 2 quibbles with these episodes. Firstly, a potent tangled Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien net of depressing love and heartbreak was avoided when no one saw Aikawa take Mutsumi home. I think that could have been totally awesome, especially if someone cheated on someone else, and then one of the girls on the team had a season-ending injury (and then wrote a children’s book). Secondly, I was disturbed to find that the animation team uses clones in games because they are too lazy to come up with 10 unique character designs. I mean, cripes, the girl’s in the starting lineup for the Mizuho team and she meets her freaking twin in only the second game they play! I’ve heard rumors that similar palette-swaps continuously pop up later on in Dear Boys. The shoddy production values really make me feel like I’m reading a shoujo manga ^^.
BTW, Anzaki reminds me of Ken Robbins in Kaleido Stage. If you can’t compete, you might as well be the ever-helpful-but-unloved manager for your team/troupe, right?
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