Screens:
Summary:
Jun wakes up one morning excited to start another day of school, and picks up a pink PFP as she leaves the house. On her way to school, Jun resolves herself to be the best teacher Keima’s ever had. At school, Keima tries devising a strategy to capture Jun since he’s stumbled onto the teacher route. Keima’s idea is that he has to create an event that isn’t romantic and later make it romantic. Keima decides on a plan to make an impression on Jun by making her mad. The next day Keima tries to implement his plan by continuing his habits of play video games during class in an effort to anger Jun, but rather than getting angry Jun gets fired up to get Keima interested in class. It seems that while Keima planned to get Jun angry, Jun planned to try to get Keima interested in school. At the end of the day Jun challenges Keima to a game. After playing with him Jun comments that games are fun, but there are more important things than games. Jun tells Keima that instead of escaping to games he should live in reality and tells him that she’ll help him.
Keima looks at her and tells her she doesn’t understand anything, and tells her not to judge people using her standards. Keima starts getting heated up, but before he can say anything else, Elcea knocks him unconscious and takes him away. Jun is surprised at Keima’s outburst and starts to get depressed and reminisce of her time in school when the people around her didn’t understand her. On stairway Elcea tells Keima that he got carried away, and Keima apologizes and tells Elcea he’ll accept that he’s on the teacher route. Keima continues and tells Elcea that he has a plan and remarks that he almost forgot about Nikaido-sensei who connects Jun and him.
The next day at Keima is thinking of how to approach Nikaido-sensei because the student-teacher relationship is too hard to get a confession in a short time. So he’ll form a bond with Nikaido-sensei who was Jun’s sempai in school to put him on the same level as Jun. With that Keima goes to the teacher’s room and tries to approach Nikaido-sensei, but is shot down by her. Keima’s attempts are interrupted when he hears Jun having an argument with Kodama-sensei over insulting the students. Kodama defends his actions of calling a student a loser by stating it’s the teachers who are the adults and it’s their job to show the kids some reality. This upsets Jun and she walks away. As Jun is walking outside she passes by same students from before littering again and tells them to toss the thrash in the thrash can, but they call her hot-blooded and tell her to shut up. Jun starts getting depressed and wonders why people call her hot-blooded when she’s only telling people to do the right thing. Back in the teacher’s room, Keima is grading papers for Nikaido-sensei since she’s trading information on Jun to Keima in exchange for work.
Jun is back in the classroom trying to help out the students, but the students think it’s a little troublesome. Jun loses her cool briefly and snaps at the students. She catches herself before she says anything else and leaves the classroom. She overhears the students calling her hot-blooded and comment that they can’t keep up with her. Keima is still helping out Nikaido-sensei, but notices Jun looking down. He asks Elcea what happened, and Elcea tells him that she’s not seeing eye-to-eye with the students. Keima goes back to see Nikaido-sensei and ask her if she’s not telling him everything about Jun because there are some details she doesn’t want to tell him. Nikaido tells him that Jun was always depressed on the basketball court and points to a photo on the wall. The photo is of the Maijima Girls Basketball Club. Nikaido and Jun are in the photo, wearing medals and holding up a trophy with the subtitle of the photo saying “39th National Championships” and Nikaido refers to it as the last moment of glory for the Mai High Basketball Club. Keima checks out the abandoned locker room for the Basketball Club, sees Jun’s old locker and notices that she was the former captain of the club. Keima smiles and comments that things will finally go at his pace now.
Opinions.
This episode faithfully covers chapters 38 and 39 of the manga. Jun’s enthusiasm seems to have her heart in the right place, but she seems to take everything to seriously. When a student told her she hates sports because she lacked stamina, Jun suggested to go jogging with her to help her out. The idea sounds nice, but if you read between the lines you’ll notice the student’s just complaining and letting off steam. There’s nothing wrong about working hard at something you’re bad at, but most people won’t go through the trouble for something they’re not passionate about. I think one of the hardest things for new teachers is to accept that students just aren’t passionate about everything. You go in wanting to change the world, and you settle for average at best.
It seems we’re finally starting touch up on Jun’s past now, and how Nikaido plays a role in that. I’m curious to see if we’ll see more of Jun and Nikaido’s past in the next episode as I think it’d be interesting to see if they explain how Jun and Nikaido are in the present. For example, Nikaido comes off as a hard-ass now but her picture with the Basketball club shows her in a different light. I want to note that Nikaido looks incredibly cute in her high school days. Contrasting that picture, the omake pic for this week is of Nikaido and it gives off a dominatrix vibe.
The State of Happiness 
The basketball team left Nagase and that’s why she’s as pumped as she is? I don’t really get how that experience worked out, but I guess one failure can push someone to the opposite extreme, even if that “enthusiasm” is supposed to be a good thing.
I believe it’s one of those “People don’t understand so I’ll make them understand” kind of things. Jun seems like she was hot-blooded from the very beginning; with the same results she’s getting now. Rather than changing herself she’s trying to change other people. A good example is that student who said they hated sports because they lacked stamina. Jun’s solution to that is to get the student to work out more to build up stamina. I’m sure the student was just looking for a sympathetic ear. Jun doesn’t seem to understand people that well so it’s understandable that she hasn’t figured out that she’s the problem; even if she has valid points.
Yeah, people tend to make passing remarkds like “Aw, this is hard” – but it’s not like they want a lesson most of the time. They just want someone to go, “Yeah, it is, right?”
For being so pretty, Nagase’s got some people skills to brush up on.