Anime Reviews: Medaka Box Episode 05 – Win Your Earnings!

With too many clubs requesting budget increases, the Sandbox Academy Student Council finds itself in a bind with which clubs they should give money to. In order to better
handle their money, the Student Council realize that they need a treasurer. As Akune suggests using a social event to better distribute the money to a single club, Zenkichi brings up a request asking for the new school pool that was built to be used.
Medaka decides to use the school pool to host a aqua club meet so that one of
the participating clubs have a chance to earn prize money for their
club.

You sure didn’t mind going to a lot of them a while ago.

While preparing for the Inter-Club Aquatic Meet, Zenkichi speaks with Shiranui
regarding three students in Team Special from the swim team who care only about earning prize
money. The meet goes off without a hitch but Zenkichi remembers about
the swim team that Shiranui told him about who have yet to show up.

The first event
is underwater ball-basket in which the participants must all dive down to to the bottom of the pool to get as many of balls as they can into their club’s respective basket. To make the event more
fun, Medaka makes the Student Council join in and declares that the one club
that is able to place highest than the Student Council will earn triple the earnings. This
makes all of the clubs present even more willing to participate.

The clubs all soon realize
that despite all the simple rules, they forgot to take into account how deep
the pool was. Medaka stuns all of the club members with her impeccable skills.
At the end, there are a number of clubs tied for highest. However, the true
winners were the swim team as they were able to finish first before even the Student Council. Medaka realizes that they had won through risking their own
lives, all for the prize money.

My Opinion

There is
one thing I learned from this episode that I should have been mindful of from
the start: Always expect something more amazing out of Medaka. 

It did look like
the first event would be simple enough but then I had been too invested in the
episode to notice that it was far more than it was. Which would mean that
the episode was entertaining enough to watch.

Should have seen this coming…

Like Medaka, I also felt bothered about how the three members of
the swim team, Yakushima, Tanegashima, and Kikaijima were all too willing to
risk their lives over winning the prize money. But in a way, I have to somewhat
admire their selfishness. To be able to put out enough even to harm themselves
to get what they want is something I could never do.

All for one yen.

It has already been five episodes and I would like to point out
that Medaka has gone through a total of six different outfits, her initial Student
Council uniform included. Not to mention the sound effects put into the
movements of her upper and lower body. I should remind myself that this is
Gainax animating and adapting the series but they appear to be having quite a
bit of fun with this. I wonder if the mangakas of the original series may be
involved with this as well?

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