What They Say:
The swim team is dominating the aqua club meet by using any means necessary. Such tactics have earned the ire of Medaka. What she does next will shock everybody and change the student council.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Medaka Box has continued to do some fun things with the whole special students angle, showing us the way they get the extra treatment but really have to work for it with their uniqueness. With Medaka having decided on the aqua meet to determine which clubs get increased funding, with her throwing some of her own money into the mix, we got some intense battles in the previous episode with the underwater basketball game that was dominated, unsurprisingly, by the swim team. Medaka threw some curveballs into it as it went along, but mostly she’s just working events in her own favor while also getting a feel for what these other special students are like.
The aqua meet events are kind of weird as they go on, but they don’t get anywhere near as dirty as they could, such as when the catch the eels event gets underway. With so many of the kids there and tons and tons of eels, it could go all manner of wrong and fun. But it plays it right, especially with Medaka’s natural personality being like an eel repellant. The swim team does naturally continue to dominate and even Zenkichi is a bit annoyed by them, but mostly because of their excessive focus on the money side of the competition and how much they’re going to win. The first half plays up some cute events and a bit of the rising tension, but it still feels a bit fluffy.
The second half goes for more intensity, which is kind of amusing to say when they’re basically doing the group matches where the guys hold up a girl to attack each other, but it does work as there’s a strong desire to win on the swim team’s part that may be even stronger than what Medaka wants. The swim team’s past does become a bit clearer here, which in the end is what Medaka is doing all of this for in order to get them to really shape up and be a proper part of the school. While she does it though, she does it with a huge amount of awkward fanservice that you feel like you shouldn’t laugh during but just can’t help it as she bounces from place to place and even provides a little girl on girl action that will titillate some. The whole thing is a very elaborate series of events to achieve a particular end for a series that comes across as too light and fluffy to really deal with anything of substance.
In Summary:
Medaka Box once against doesn’t stretch itself all that much and just plays by the ever familiar rules of special schools with elite students who can do most anything they want. It fits in with a place called Sandbox Academy of course and this episode makes it clear again just how elite these kids are in a lot of ways. Thankfully, it does wrap up the whole club budget arc and even has an amusing little nod about how Medaka isn’t allowed to do something like this again, which in turn brings the council a new treasurer that’s going to shake things up a little bit as the threesome now becomes a foursome. But as we’ve felt in the previous episodes, there’s still nothing really compelling about this show that says you must come back to watch more. It’s polished and done well, but the content itself is still bordering between weak and average, just barely holding onto average at times.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
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