Mou Ippon! Episode 4: To Settle the Score

It’s our heroines’ first competition since retiring post middle school. Let’s see how they did.

We began with a demonstration of Team Erika’s impressive power as they not only scored a perfect round but won each match with an Ippon, basically a flawless victory.

Next was Team Michi with Sanae up first. While Michi’s pumped Sanae’s so terrified she got cold feet worried about losing and possibly seeing Michi get depressed again. Luckily Michi gave her a good pep spank in the toosh and assured her it wasn’t like last time because now they had Towa and Hot Coach on their side and were more focused. She even joked about Sanae losing the first round so she could come in at the end and save the day.

During her match she’s grateful to Michi for her support but she wanted to win and make a strong impression back in the ring, which she did in a hard fought contest. Towa won hers in grand fashion while Michi got a draw. Still it’s two wins in a three match round so they advanced. Michi hoped she could pull off a super cool shonen sports anime Ippon at least once but knew it’s too good to be true. Would be awesome if we got to see her nail one though.

During Team Michi’s first round matches Team Erika paid close attention to them, especially Erika toward Towa. Oh was she paying attention…I noticed how she looked at Towa’s photo. As they prepared for the second round against Team Michi we learned it’s thanks to Erika their judo club was saved. Her teammates greatly admired her. The big girl thanked her for helping her grow stronger. She planned to go out in style then retire afterward. Erika thought it wasn’t a big deal as she had a personal motivation for reinvigorating the girls’ judo club. Even so she told big girl to save the retirement talk because they had a long campaign ahead of them with many tournaments to win. Big girl got the message and would keep going for a while longer.

The first match was between Sanae and Seno. The little one went for the power game early hoping to take down Sanae quick by going at max power from the start. It worked. Seno being an adorable Erika fangirl was adorable.

Next up was the destined rematch. Because it’s an important battle the animators went all out with this one. As the intense bout raged on we got a flashback showing Towa’s side of the story. As we already know Erika’s a very shy girl. During a search for which club to join she’s captivated by Erika’s intense training regimen. After seeing enough she’s about to leave when Erika invited her to join the club. She refused at first but Erika said it’s the perfect sport to help her overcome her shyness. It was her who introduced the “judogi of courage” mantra. Basically it’s thanks to Erika Towa took her first step into the judo world.

When Towa found an opening she was close to scoring a point but at that moment she remembered that fateful moment in their first encounter and lost focus. Erika took advantage but she could tell Towa briefly lost focus and was both concerned and upset. She didn’t want revenge for “that day” as we would soon see. After Michi and Sanae helped Towa get back in the game the two raivarus had the same goal, patching things up the one way they knew best, in the ring. We’ll find out next time how it all goes down because the episode ended at the last ten seconds of the match.

Good stuff yet again.