Meganebu! - 09

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This episode of Meganebu! follows the upperclassmen on a field trip to Okinawa, leaving Hayato and Mitsuki behind to hang out together.

Because the underclassmen are left behind, we get to see them interacting without the added complications of the upperclassmen (particularly Akira) there.  Still, even though Mitsuki and Hayato are alone in the club room, all Mitsuki seems capable of thinking about is Akira.  He spends virtually the entire day looking through the pictures he has of his senpai (999 of them) while completely ignoring Hayato.

Meanwhile, the upperclassmen all end up stranded on an island because they spend too much time fooling around and end up missing the boat back to the main island of Okinawa.  They have no cell phone service, so they’re literally stranded and forced to rely on some wilderness survival skills.  Unfortunately, none of them are very good at said survival skills.

It’s nice that we get to see some of Hayato’s family in this episode.  We’ve seen members of Akira, Takuma, and Mitsuki’s families (yes, I count Norio as a family member), and in this episode we meet Hayato’s brothers.  Now all that’s left is for Yukiya’s family to get some screen time.

This episode gives me some hope that Mitsuki will begin to be nicer to Hayato.  Hayato’s little speech about what he plans to do after Akira and the others graduate is pretty inspiring, and I like to think it touches Mitsuki, too.  The fact that they spend some time working alone together on the X-Ray Glasses seems to give credence to this assumption, even if Mitsuki then says he shouldn’t have thought better of Hayato even for a minute.

I’d like to take a moment to point out something about the Hima Council (prompted in part by the scene after the credits).  Toru (a.k.a. 3^rd) is the only member of the student council who is fully Japanese.  Hima Council president William Sato is half British, vice president Lorenzo Watanabe is half German, Maximillian Takahashi is half Italian, and Antonio Tanaka is half Brazilian.  I think this is an incredibly interesting collection of international characters.  Even though they fall into stereotypes related to their non-Japanese halves quite often (i.e. Germans being cruel, Italians being artistic/theatrical, Brazilians being easygoing), this international flair is a really nice addition to Meganebu! that may be overlooked by some fans simply interested in the megane characters.

Meganebu! Episode 9 Post-Credits Sequence

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