Sea Slugs! Anime Blog

Asuna is inspired by Nodoka’s courage, and vows that this year will be the year she confesses to Takahata. Tomorrow is his birthday, and she plans to bake a tasty cake. While Asuna fumbles badly with the preparations, Negi is moping in the living room. Stunned by Nodoka’s confession, Negi doesn’t know what to do. On the one hand, he feels as an English gentleman he must take responsibility, but on the other hand, his sister told him not have a student-teacher relationship.

Trouble is also brewing elsewhere, as Takahata returns to reveal that the Kansai Magic Association is having difficulty containing the Hougan-Ji group. Kyoto, the site of the next class trip, is now unsafe, and so more reconnaissance is needed. Shizuna-sensei does not look too pleased about this.

After some initial nervousness, Asuna and Negi gather up the courage to do what they must do. Negi apologizes to Nodoka for the wait, manages to stop her fall without touching any naughty spots, and tells her that they should start off as friends because he wants to get a chance to make out with all her classmates first. Asuna is not quite so lucky, because it seems that Takahata has left for his “business trip”, and because the fresh cream in the cake will not keep, Negi, Kamo, and Asuna have to engage in some binge-eating get over the incident.

This was a funny episode, and I was happy to see the animation quality return to acceptable levels. Kamo was quite noble in this episode, lying about the cake’s taste, in spite of how he really felt. It was no surprise to see Asuna’s lack of skill in the kitchen, but seafood in cake should only be attempted by experts. The screaming in the background really added to the quality of the cake scenes. It seemed to me that Konoka replaced Asuna’s cake, and yet Asuna didn’t notice that the seafood had been replaced by strawberries? In spite of how the beta cake turned out, I feel that contestants on Iron Chef could have made a seafood cake good enough to make a C-list actor swoon. However, what Asuna lacks in baking skills, she more than makes up in paper-delivery skills. Her and Takahata could totally own a real life version of Paperboy!