Series Summary
A group of students on summer vacation find themselves transported to another dimension and granted superpowers to survive there. (IMDB)
Episode Summary
As the castaways swim in a mysterious sinkhole, they seem to be momentarily taken back home. (Hulu)
(Bigfoot Monkey Blue at the pitcher's mound)
(Nagara trying to bat Ace's pitches)
(Nagara warping the class to everywhere but the real world)
(Ms. Aki walking out of the ocean toward the students)
Notes & Thoughts
Glasses Kid ears a burger in the woods near the beach. Probably got fast food from Mizuho.
Nagara stands on a plank over a big hole. Nozomi runs past and jumps off. She lands in some strange liquid darkness where a transparent shimmer of herself bounces on the surface before her real self emerges and goads him to jump in. Other students around her cheer.
Mizuho tells Nagara that Nozomi won’t wait for him forever. Asakuze runs past him and jumps in. He high-fives her. Mizuho tells Nagara that Asakuze beat him to the punch.
Another student kicks Nagara off the plank but he falls too short toward some rocks. Asakuze reaches out to use his telekinetic power and save him but Nozomi stops him and says watch. Just when Nagara is about to hit the rock, he wakes up on the home plate of a baseball field. The other students look around to find themselves at the baseball field with him. Is his power not just finding other worlds but transporting them all too? There’s a blue Bigfoot with a baseball at the pitcher’s plate. Nagara backs away in fear but then him and all the other students get transported back to the black watering hole on the island.
One of the students ask if that was the real world they just visited. The Clubhouse Guy from last episode looks down on them from afar menacingly. I feel like all the “bad guys” on the show are just kids who don’t want to go back and return to the real world.
Nozomi looks happy as if she knew it would happen, because if she didn’t she almost killed Nagara.
Rajdhani, Machi, and Tanigawa have a similar conversation to Nagara and Mizuho’s last episode where they point out that powers equal special treatment, akin to being born rich in the real world. Machi asks if Rajdhani has solved their predicament but he says he needs more time. Tanigawa tells the two not to worry and looks away to say someone will come and save him. We can’t see his face when he says this but I don’t believe he meant that all. He has even more power here than he did in the real world.
A large kid in a red turban cooks fried rice in a pan over a fire. Asakuze tells other students that Nagara might be able to take them home if that baseball field they visited was from their world.
Mizuho points out that it might be a world pretending to look like their own. Nozomi adds that it wasn’t in the direction of the light that she sees the real world through. Nagara mentions the blue Bigfoot but Nozomi just looks at him confused. Maybe he’s the only one who saw it?
Cap shows up with supplies. Asakuze glares at him and then leaves. Probably still pissed about Cap going berserk in episode one’s void world and braining him with the baseball bat. I remember Rajdhani said all their wounds heal in the school—so it’s possible that Cap might’ve killed Asakuze there but the school brought him back.
Mizuho tells Cap that Asakuze is mad at him. Cap says he already apologized but she says it’s not enough. She says he heard he has a special power but Cap says it’s nothing special and asks Nagara to play baseball with him.
Nagara asks Cap why he doesn’t play baseball with Ace but Cap says Ace’s too busy with his girlfriend. Who’s Ace? Who’s Ace’s girlfriend? Clubhouse boy and electric girl?
Cap calls Ace a girl magnet. Mizuho reveals Ace’s power is called Sweetwater which lets him make any water drinkable.
Mizuho, Nozomi, Nagara, and Cap go to a field to play baseball. Nozomi hits a home run that goes into the woods and frightens what sounds like monkeys. Cap says there’s a Monkey Baseball League on the island. He says the Monkey King used to rule the island’s baseball league until a Bigfoot called Monkey Blue dethroned him. Probably what Nagara saw. He says the last Monkey League game was interrupted by a murder. Mizuho and Nozomi ask him where the monkeys are because they want one as a pet but he says they need something to see them.
They go to the clubhouse and ask Clubhouse guy for the Monkey Getter, a flashlight that will show them the monkeys. The electric blonde girl tells him not to give it to them because she doesn’t like Mizuho. As a compromise he says he won’t give it unless they hit one of his pitches. Is he Ace? Also why was Electric Blonde Girl’s subtitles in brackets? Is she speaking another language? He also whispers a secret condition to if he wins and then gives Electric Blonde Girl a strange look.
Clubhouse boy is Ace and apparently he’s so good at baseball that the pros have tried to recruit him. Nagara doesn’t stand a chance.
Rajdhani asks Asakuze why he isn’t helping the others play against Ace. He says because Cap’s there. Rajdhani says the Monkey Getter if it works reveals that they may not be alone in the worlds the school goes to.
Cap helps Nagara and Nozomi practice while Mizuho watches.
The next day, Ace strikes them all out from the pitcher’s mound. Before striking out, Nagara says it wasn’t the monkey dying that killed the game but the death of baseball itself as an honorable sport. Flashback reveals that Ace wants Nagara to return them to the real world because other than being a girl magnet he’s less special and “not appreciated” without the many people of the real world and the hope of playing professional baseball. When he strikes out, Nagara takes everyone to another world for an instant. No idea what the point of this episode is, first one I haven’t liked so far.
The next day everyone gathers at the beach to go home because Ace says Nagara can control his warping ability now. Unfortunately, Nagara discovers he cannot control where he warps them to, and that each place is random except for the island where the school is.
Asakuze calls Nagara useless and then points to a figure walking toward them from the ocean—a large chested woman they recognize as one of their teachers.
Analysis & Criticism
Unlike last episode which was about exclusion and being reintegrated to local groups and personal functionality, I don’t know what this episode was trying to say. There’s something about how playing baseball to get into college ruins love for the sport, blue Bigfoot monkeys, but most importantly—Nagara finally uses his power on purpose. He can transport himself and others to other worlds but can’t send them home or choose which world they go to next. At the end, one of their teachers inexplicably appears. She’s severely large-chested, wears glasses, and tells the students that the fun and games are over. At least we get two new semi-villains on the show, Asakuze because he hates Nagara and I think he has a crush on Nozomi, and Ace a popular guy who wants to return to the real world and all the adoration he received there. Sometimes we watch a thing and slowly or instantly get what type of lesson or moral they’re trying demonstrate or deconstruct … and other times we just get to see a blue Bigfoot play baseball.
What was that black pool at the start of the episode?
Why is one of their teachers suddenly there?
What language is Ace's girlfriend speaking?
Does Mizuho have a crush on Nagara?
Find out on the next episode of Why's this called Sonny Boy.
Thanks for reading see you next time.
Shortshots out.
