Suzuka continues to roll along. I'm trying to figure out how many episodes are in this series (season?), because the manga is REALLY long. To the summary!

Summary:
Before the school day, we notice Suzuka looking at a picture in her room of herself and some sprinter guy (IMPORTANT). Today, the school is having its athletic testing (think PE in the States). Yamato is convinced that since he was #1 in his old school, he'll be good here and able to impress Suzuka. Hearing this, Yasu convinces Honoka and Suzuka to team up with them to go station to station. Yamato does well for someone at a normal school, but since this is a school with a lot of athletes, his results are average. Coming to the last "station", which is the 50m sprint, he admits that when he did a 50m relay team in 7th grade, his team came in last, so he was convinced he sucked at it and never tried again. As he lines up, Suzuka thinks he'll fail here because he's against a known sprinter, but Yasu says he might surprise them. Yamato lines up in a rocket start (both feet together), which surprises Suzuka for some reason. In the race, Yamato flies out in front and we get a flashback to the picture Suzuka was looking at. Yamato wins handily, and everyone is impressed except Yasu, who tells Suzuka that Yamato was pretty fast and that the results from the relay team were probably the other members' fault. Suzuka acts unimpressed, but Yasu tells Yamato he earned brownie points. At the end of the day, Suzuka goes to practice while Yamato notices it is raining (and he forgot an umbrella). Honoka offers to walk him home with her umbrella, but Yasu intercepts her and makes her go with him. Yamato hangs around, waiting on Suzuka, who offers to share her umbrella. Along the way, there is little conversation, but as a car hits a nearby puddle, Suzuka jumps to avoid the splash, she grabs onto him and they stay that way for a moment, but she jerks away later.

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This was an interesting episode, because I was beginning to wonder how Yamato was going to fit into the track team with no obvious athletic skills. As it turns out, he's a fast sprinter, and it seems obvious that those skills will somehow have him join the track team, which will result in more interaction with Suzuka.

The rain scene was interesting in that it allowed us to get a sort of relationship triangle with Yamato, Honoka, and Suzuka, ie Honoka likes Yamato who likes Suzuka, who may or may not like Yamato (yes, I'm aware that's not exactly a triangle). Obviously there is conflict coming here, and I'm not sure what direction it will take. It seems obvious to me from the title that Suzuka will win out, but it may take some time. Meanwhile, Yasu continues to play the "experienced sage" role in terms of relationships, running interference for Yamato in ensuring that Honoka doesn't get in the way of him meeting up with Suzuka.

The ending jump wasn't all that interesting, as I expect these things from anime with relationship angles. The lingering was a bit odd, because we don't know what role the picture of the sprinter guy means. He looks oddly like Yamato, yet different. Is it some guy she knows? Is he at the school? Is it a past boyfriend? Obviously, the anime has some work ahead of it.

Once again, I didn't notice any bad animation (except a few repeat animations for opening door sequences), but I've seen some people complaining about lazy animators. Cmon! This isn't exactly Gundam SEED Destiny here... now THAT show was lazy. I continue to enjoy watching where this series goes. Of course, judging by the closing credits, I expect a lot more characters to be thrown into the fray.