Some sports tragedy this week
Team Hanamiya begins their first major competition with rival schools. The top 20 fastest climbers advance onto the next round. Everyone in the club succeeds…except for Nonoka who falls due to the course being designed for girls with better height/reach than she will ever have. In this case genetics > hard work; her failure hits on a reality that some are blessed with more talent than others in sports, who won’t reach the top no matter how much effort they commit to their craft.
The episode also has a lot of stretching, booty and ab closeups. So there’s that if the story doesn’t matter to you.
It starts with some backstory to how the munchkin met her senpai Sayo.
we then jump back in the present day where Nonoka is still trying her hardest to compete in climbing, a sport she grew to love thanks to the inspiration of Sayo. Several other competitors are also given the spotlight. All cute for one reason or another.
In case it’s unclear, yes this is a panther she morphed into while climbing the obstacle. It’s like her spirit animal, or what she resembles most when climbing. I don’t make the rules.
That is one buff girl. Wouldn’t want to fuck with her.
Konomi does very well in this weeks competition. The progress is evident.
When it’s Nonoka’s turn…things get pretty dramatic as she is clearly lacking in areas that the others don’t have issues with. Namely height and wingspan, though this stitch would lead you to believe she clears six feet.
Feelsbadman. To add insult to injury, the tallest competitor clears the climb without breaking a sweat.
Cool ending shot. Teammates have each others back no matter what. Going to go try to win the competition for their fallen comrade. I didn’t feel any emotional attachment to any of these characters until this episode, where one of them is hurt to the point of tears by a reality that almost every athlete has to face at some point in their sports careers.
Iwa Kakeru is producing way more stitches than gifs as of late. Not that I couldn’t make more gifs, but that the stitches do a much better job of conveying the action of a scene and the nature of climbing lends itself to static shots more so than motion. I don’t mind this as the stitches turn out to be pretty awesome. At the completion of this project, it will probably produce more stitches than anything I’ve completed.
