For all of her maturity in most other matters, when it comes to Kumiko Reina can be especially childish. Just take her pouting when Kumiko doesn’t immediately discern that Reina wants to go to the pool with her during the last summer break of high school. She even bought them matching swimsuits!
As the band cleans up the practice rooms, they’re visited by two former members: Yoshikawa Yuuko and Nakagawa Natsuki. While they’re now college freshmen, they still bicker like the old friends they are. They are also certain they made the right decision in picking Kumiko and Reina to be the next president and drum major, respectively.
On the first day of summer break, Kumiko decides to accompany Hazuki to a college fair, to try to get a sense of what’s out there. But while Hazuki has chosen to pursue a career as a nursery school teacher, Kumiko’s visit to the fair doesn’t result in any similar epiphanies. She’s as uncommitted as ever to her future path, though Hazuki says she’d make a great teacher too.
Since it’s Bon, Kumiko’s big sister Mamiko is home for a couple days, and both she and their mom agree that Kumiko should do what she wants. It’s not that strange that at eighteen Kumiko still isn’t sure what she wants to do with the rest of her life—there’s so damn much of it left to live! Ultimately, her mom and sister don’t tell her anything she doesn’t already know.
The big pool day arrives, as does the reason this episode gets at least an automatic four stars: Reina and Kumiko not only don matching swimsuits, but swapped the tops and bottoms to make it quite clear to all that they’re thick as thieves. The underclassmen are in awe of their beauty, while even Mayu, whom Kumiko invited out of the blue, loves how close they are.
Kumiko invited Mayu in part to try to get at the heart of why she causes her so much discomfort, despite being so kind and gregarious. When Mayu describes herself as someone with no real preferences, who goes along to get along, it dawns on Kumiko: Mayu is the kind of person she was in middle school. Floating through, fitting in, but lacking the same drive or enthusiasm for … anything that everyone else seems to have.
Not necessarily content but resigned to being the class “Mama”, Mayu doesn’t even like to appear in pictures. Kumiko insists she use the shutter timer and pose with everyone else, but when school starts back up and she distributes the newly developed photos, the only one with her in it just happened to be the one that “didn’t develop correctly”, according to her.
There’s just something not quite right about Kuroe Mayu, and that not-rightness is almost becoming a distraction for Kumiko from being able to properly balance band president duties with figuring something out for her future. There’s also the specter of Mayu making it through the prefectural auditions while Kumiko doesn’t make the cut, and not being able to do the soli with Reina.
That said, even if she’s not in the prefectural final cut, if that version of the concert band advances to the Nationals, the auditions will begin anew, and that’s the one in which Kumiko truly does want to play with Reina. We’ll see if she takes the L in the next round of auditions, or if something else happens that renders Mayu’s current attitude untenable for the band.
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