S.A - Special A ep.02

April 14, 2008 | 18 Comments

OP Theme: 「Special Days」 by Goto Yuuko - AVI version (32MB) | PSP version (16.9MB)

This three shows in a day is starting to kill me. It's getting really hard to cover all of them at once. Anyway, I'm not as impressed with this episode as I was with the last one. Having said that, it's not completely bad either. To begin with, at least the animation quality is still consistent. That means Kei's character design was fugly last week and still is fugly this week. Everyone else, however, looks quite decent and if you like the double lines that characterizes the character design of Toshokan Sensou, you actually get to see that too here minus the boring military stuff. The opening theme is not that great. I don't understand why Goto Yuuko chooses to employ that voice while singing even though she has her own mature voice to use instead. Story-wise, I am also not happy with the fact that many things in this episode are basically repetition of the first one (ie. character design, story of the week, etc). Although to be fair, Ouran Host Club did the same thing as well week after week. Overall, this episode is not that great but I'm just grateful that the animation stays consistent.

Hikari arrives at the school again and is greeted by Akira who tells her that the exam result should available by now. As they make their way to the announcement board, Hikari once again explains how the school is ranked from A to F and the best 7 students get placed in a class called S.A. Hikari then introduces other characters in the class. Before he can introduce Kei, however, the guy comes out to congratulate her. Hikari quickly runs to the board, thinking that she has finally beaten Kei in the ranking board. Much to her dismay, she's still in second place after Kei as usual. Hikari explains that the reason she enters this school is for the purpose of defeating this guy. That morning, the S.A group enjoys morning tea together but Hikari also uses the time to study hard as well, thinking that if she does this, she can gain advantage over Kei. It doesn't take long because the two get into competition as to who can read the most book while drinking tea. Meanwhile, a little squirrel jumps onto Ryuu's shoulder so Ryuu feeds it some kind of nuts. This causes Jun to become jealous because he wants Ryuu to feed him nuts as well.

Anyway, Tadashi informs the rest of the group that today the President of student council is leaving hospital. Apparently his body is weak so he was admitted to the hospital. Just as he finished saying this the person in question appears with two of his underlings. Apparently he's unhappy that S.A stole his 'back to school' limelight with their presence. Because of this, he has arrived to issue a written challenge. Much to everyone's surprise, Hikari tells them that she loves people who ask for a challenge, inviting ire from a jealous Kei. Because of this, he stands up and accepts the challenge immediately. A few days later, pamphlets are posted all over the school about the upcoming challenge between S.A and the student council. However, instead of fighting on their own, the student council has hired two professional pro-wrestler to represent them. Despite this, Hikari and Kei decide to fight on their own. After seeing Hikari and Kei's serious training, however, the student council people are freaked out.

In order to ensure that Hikari and Kei do not win, they try to put her life in jeopardy by throwing items so it'll hit her, making sure that the floor is slippery, etc. Despite this, Hikari is oblivious and manages to elude every single attack easily. At the same time, Kei has just managed to fend off 4 or so people who tried to beat him with clubs. After finding out that they've been sent by the student council, Kei runs off to find Hikari. Thankfully nothing wrong happened to Hikari. Despite this, Kei doesn't want to take a chance anymore and want to stop the challenge. Hikari, however, refuses to back down so Kei agrees to continue the challenge on the condition that Hikari steps aside. He tells her that if she goes out and fight it'll be bothersome. Hikari is annoyed to hear this and decides to step up her practice but she's mostly annoyed that Kei doesn't consider her to be his partner. Meanwhile, Kei tries to ask Tadashi to be his fighting partner in exchange of Hikari. Tadashi, of course, refuses.

Before the fight happens, Kei and Hikari are visited by a girl who brings flower to them. As it turns out, however, the flower is a trap and just a way to handcuff their hand to one another. Because of this, Kei has no choice but making sure that he's the one who always gets the brunt of the beating by the wrestlers. Despite this, Hikari want Kei to stop asking her to stop the fight because everytime he says it, it makes her sad. Kei, however, snaps when the president of the student council calls Hikari a hindrance. Kei suddenly stops letting himself getting beaten by the wrestler. He stands up and detaches the handcuff on his own. He asks the president who he called as a hindrance. No matter who the person is, Hikari is not one who gives up easily. Because of this Kei invites Hikari into the ring and the two produce to pummel the living hell of the two professional wrestlers. After they defeat the two, Hikari tells Kei to wait because she'll definitely become number one. Later on, however, Kei can't resist but to bait Hikari into remembering that their victory match is 16 vs. 15. That means as usual Kei wins again so he wonders what he'll get for this.

Impression

It's hard to say whether or not Kei made the right decision to stop Hikari from joining him into the fight. On the one side, he had a good intention. Those Lucha libre wrestlers are ridiculously huge. It's kind of ridiculous to see stick figure like Kei and Hikari took them down so easily. On the other hand, as I said before, Hikari can definitely take care of herself and does not need a man to protect her like that. Either way, it wasn't exactly a fun conflict to deal with. At any rate, I realize that I do not enjoy much of Kei and Hikari's interaction in this episode. It was kind of fun to see Kei acting jealous towards the president of student council and starts using his Lelouch voice again though. I do wish that we'll get to see more of the other characters. To me, Akira/Tadashi, and Ryuu/the twins are a lot funnier than Kei/Hikari. I love how the twins get jealous so easily at every single animals that get close to Ryuu. I want to know what happened in the past that made them this possessive towards Ryuu.

Question: Was Kei just being protective towards Hikari or was he being a sexist pig when he stopped her from getting into the fight?

© memento 2003