As the summer season approaches Binan asks us what is the ideal Japanese summer? I pose a even broader question, what is the ideal summer in general? A lot of the episodes answers to this question match up to a lot of my own ideas of the ideal summer.
Going to the beach
Watermelon smashing
Ice cream
Fireworks
Just to name a few things that the episode brings up that I agree with. So the boys of the Earth Defense Club try to figure out how to spend the last day of their Summer vacation. Kyōtarō wants to do nothing but laze around, but Karls will not rest until he’s experienced a real Japanese Summer.
Even when the Monster of the day shows up, he says yeah, they have to make him Happy again…but first they need to experience the ideal summer. Kyōtarō whispers a deal with Karls and then they run through everything on the list of the ideal summer in quick succession, while totally ignoring the Monster. Even though it’s cold and raining, they go to the beach, smash watermelons, eat cold food, go camping. Even giving the Monster some curry after he accidently helps light their camping fire.
They buckle down, beat the Monster and we find that the deal that Kyōtarō made with Karls was to extend summer magically by one more day so he could laze around and do nothing. The boys argue the semantics of what day it technically is, if it’s August 32nd or September 1st the…first time around? It’s a good laugh.
As for the Monster of the week, well, honestly his problem and unhappiness makes absolutely no sense to me. A lot of these guys will get unhappy and turned into Monsters for random and seemingly shallow reasons but you can sort of relate. Like the trouble of making friends that the umbrella monster felt, or the humiliation of having to showcase in front of the entire school that you can’t swim that the kickboard monster felt.
This one was, a guy who for some reason was dead set on doing group Radio Calisthenics for all 31 days of August and refused to graduate from High School until he’s done just that. Yet for some reason, something always screws him up on the 31st.
I think according to the way the student council was talking right before they turned him, the real problem here was an issue of a lack of structure in someones life. It still comes off as more ridiculous then necessary because Radio Calisthenics is something you absolutely don’t need to be in High School to do. Ichiro even points out that his elderly grandfather does them every day without missing a beat. So there is no reason to get hung up on the idea of doing them while in school.
There’s no reason to turn bitter and turn into a work out Monster. So as a result of them pointing out this clearly obvious flaw in his logic the battle is once again extremely short and the guy now happy works out despite the bad weather. Without the group, with Karls sitting right next to him warming up as part of his proper Japanese summer as well.
This once again was one of those totally harmless episodes that really did nothing to push anything forward in the way of plot or character development. Next episode, we’re skipping from summer to the School Festival. Oh, the first season ended on the School festival. Perhaps this is where things will begin picking up and we’ll learn more about the rift between Ata and Kyōtarō.
As we reach the end I ask myself again, is this thing between the princes everything that it seems? Will this show take the ‘reality tv show’ route that the original two seasons had? I am still curious about this seasons end game.