Opening Theme:

Utauyo!! MIRACLE” by Houkago Tea Time

Ending Theme:

“NO, Thank You!” by Houkago Tea Time

Ritsu calls Mio wanting to hang out, she’s at the station by herself. Mio’s studying so refuses and Yui’s also studying. But she sees Mugi on her own and decides to try and surprise her.

As Ritsu follows her down a street, she disappears and then suddenly jumps out from behind her. Ritsu asks if Mugi’s free to hang out and she quickly cancels her shopping trip and hangs out with Ritsu instead.

It seems that this is the first time Ritsu and Mugi are out together. The first place Ritsu takes Mugi is the arcade and wins her a stuffed toy there. And because of spending too much they go to a candy store next, for cheap candy and snacks.

As Ritsu and Mugi are chatting in a café, Mugi suddenly requests to be hit by Ritsu…

Anyway, the next day, summer classes begin. There’s no dress code, but Mio accidently wears her uniform and Mugi looks like she’s going to the beach… apparently Ritsu told her that she’d hit her if there was a reason i.e. Mugi does something stupid, and this was her way of being stupid, except no one hit her. Because Mio and Ritsu, Yui and Azusa seem so close when they hit each other, Mugi’s sorta jealous…

So now starts Ritsu’s attempts at making Mugi looks stupid enough to be hit. But everything fails as Mugi doesn’t do it right and Ritsu doesn’t think Mio would ever hit her anyway.

Next day at school, they have an extra cake slice, so they play a game where the winner gets the cake and the loser gets hit. Mugi is supposed to lose, but she ends up winning instead… Then Mugi remembers that Mio said she hit Ritsu because she stole her strawberry on a cake. So Mugi steals Mio’s strawberry, though Mio just ends up crying instead…

After that Mugi tells them about her request but even still, Mio couldn’t bring herself to hit her.

As Ritsu and Mugi walk out of the school Mugi says that Ritsu’s a nice friend and would be really popular if she was a guy which finally results in Ritsu hitting Mugi.

You’ll notice that there was a new opening and ending sequence. This marks the halfway point of the series and so far it’s been rather slow. Anyway, I’ll give a little of my thoughts on the songs then.

Opening was Yui again, with a very similar sped up voice to GO! GO! MANIAC. However I felt it was less energetic, but still very Yui like with all that dancing around on stage in the clips and the enthusiastic nature of the song. I don’t like it after the first few listens but I was like that with the first op which eventually grew on me, so maybe after hearing this one a few more times I’ll start to like it.

The ending was sung by Mio, and as always it’s much more typical than the opening, and I found it to be a standard rock song and not as in the style of Mio as the first ending. Though the intro was definitely cute enough to be Mio’s style, just not the rest of the song. Though that said, the fashion designs never fail to amuse me, I love their wardrobe.

So, onto the episode itself, which was quite a Mugi focused episode. I’m not complaining, there haven’t been many of these, so I say it’s good to see more characters get fleshed out a bit, especially with the length of the series.

Well now, we all thought Mugi was a little bit Masochist and this proves it, even though she claims it to be wanting skin ship, but I’m sure in most people’s eyes wanting to get hit would put her in the masochist category. An interesting development to say the least, then again we all knew that Mugi has a few screws lose.

Onto the question that seemed to be another theme of the episode, the one about eating the strawberry. I completely agree with Yui, in that it is weird that Nodoka went to eat the strawberry first, I’d usually leave it til last, anyone else think it’s weird, or do most people eat the strawberry first?

Apart from that nothing much happened, oh wait, there was Yui’s hilarious dream of Mugi melting and radishes and protractor eyebrows. Either her imagination’s out of this world, or she’s on a constant high… that’s my conclusion to her hilarious delusions.

Summer’s over for the Houkago Tea Time band, and a new school semester begins it seems. Wonder what’s next then.