The Rhythmic Gymnastics Fangirl and Badminton Fanboy

summary

• Summer training for Taiki intensifies, leading to unexpected encounters and valuable competitor insight.
• Hina takes the lead in setting up a romantic scenario at the fireworks festival and creates new opportunities.
• Taiki and Hina's dynamic becomes more intimate, potentially complicating their friendship in later episodes.

Warning: The following contains spoilers for Blue Box, Episode 11, “Uncool!” is now streaming on Netflix.

blue box Episode 11, “Uncool,” brings the series squarely into summer vacation after its opening in the previous episode. If you're a fan of school anime, you probably already have expectations of what might happen in this episode. Taiki, Chinatsu, Hina, and the rest of their friends spend this and probably the next few episodes participating in summer training, festivals, completing homework, and many other popular tropes in summer anime.

The big bomb dropped at the end blue box Episode 10, “It's Not a Good Thing”, where Chinatsu is basically the area's friendly Taiki, plays a big part in this episode. Taiki is still in shock, but Chinatsu acts like nothing happened and acts like he's always been with Taiki.

Summer Taiki practice

The Grind never stops

As revealed in the previous episode, Taiki will still go to school to continue training at the badminton club. It's not all just normal training with their team, as Haryu invites Taiki to the college where his eldest attends for a training session. To Taiki's surprise, the person who defeated him and Haryu in the provincial preliminaries was also Hyoudo at that training session. Surprisingly, Hyoudo was a very nice guy. He even mentioned Taiki Chand to have a better chance against Yusa next year. In an internal monologue, Hyoudou even mentions that he loves watching the underdog win. It's nice to see a character who doesn't always want to win for his team and help the opposing team's players. Although to be fair, Hyoudou is graduating, so he won't have to face Taiki at all next year.

Leading up to the fireworks festival

Henna makes her move

As some viewers may have already predicted, yes, this episode blue box Includes a visit to the summer fireworks festival. Not only does it have a festival, but the festival is what the whole episode led to. It started with Taiki and Hina hearing about going to a fireworks festival, which led to an adorable flashback that showed how Taiki and Hina's friendship began. Their middle school class had all planned to go to the fireworks festival together, but Hanna was really late because of her rhythmic gymnastics practice. The big thing she was looking forward to at the festival was the candy apples they were selling, but by the time she arrived, her stand was sold out. Luckily for her, Taiki had heard her say she wanted to go back to school and saved an apple just for her. Since then, they have become close friends and now they are on the verge of something more.

After remembering their first festival, Hina steels her nerves and manages to invite Taiki to the next festival. Unfortunately, Taiki assumes that they will go as a group with their other friends. After confronting him about who else should go, Hanna quickly rushes to invite her friends, but they all already have plans. Taiki manages to invite Kyo, but Kyo quickly realizes that Hina probably wants to celebrate the festival alone with Taiki for a while. There's a funny scene with Q as a wingman for Hina, pretending to be sick and saying she can't go to the festival, ensuring it's just the two of them.

Hina is almost self-sabotaging (though it may still lead to it)

Oddly enough, Hina seems to handle romance the same way a typical sports anime hero would handle their sport. He wants to win, but he wants his opponent to be at their strongest and help them out, even if it means he's only making things harder for himself. During the episode, he kept inquiring about Taiki's situation with Chinatsu, asking if he was going to invite her to the festival. Hina even encourages Taiki not to give up on Chinatsu because the Taiki she has fallen in love with is someone who doesn't back down that easily. While he's not doing anything about it now, his encouragement might just come back to bite him in the future blue box Parts

“That's not like you! I don't want you to get in trouble or ruin your relationship. I realize these things are scary and make it hard to act. But even if you're scared, I want you to value yourself. The same way you do others. You know, being able to stay positive is what makes you cool.” – Hina to Taiki about her doubt with Chinatsu

The beginning of Henna and Taiki's first date

Although only one of them knows it's even a date

After training with Haryu, Hyoudo, and their college acquaintances, Taiki heads straight to the fireworks festival to meet Hina. He came first and bought her some sweet apples in advance, just like in middle school. The episode ends with Hina in a yukata to finally start her date.

Taiki dropped suspicious hints a few times in the episode that somehow seemed like he was developing a crush on Hina. When Kyu said that he can't come and it's just him and Hina, he felt confused. He seemed aware that this was a date, even though they were just friends. This happened again when he was shocked to see Hana in a yukata. As if it was the first time he realized how beautiful she looked, he avoided eye contact with her.

See, even henna fans get it. In the long run, Taiki will most likely still be Chinatsu's fan, because that's exactly how shows like this are done, but these brief moments that make you think Hina has a chance are so well done that you can't help but wonder what Something if it looks like the next episode is still going to show more of their relationship, but things might be put on hold because earlier in the episode, Chinatsu and the girls' basketball team also made plans to go to the festival. A clash may be inevitable, so how will Chinatsu react to seeing Hina and Taiki together in next week's episode? blue box?

Blue Box is now available to stream on Netflix. Blue Box Episode 12 is set for release on December 19, 2024 at 8:30 AM PT.