Because of the nature of its premise, Ryman’s Club is in a rather unique niche among sports anime.  Simply put, we haven’t (at least to my knowledge) seen a series about corporate sports – office workers who put up with the drudgery of the job in order to play the game they love.  It could have chosen to ignore than aspect of the story, or portray it as merely an annoyance or even hellish.  But – very wisely I think, because it’s something far more people can relate to than being elite athletes – it’s been given virtually equal footing.

As a result of that, after a sports-only episode we can get a business-only one.  And in the middle of the big tournament, no less.  It’s amusingly exciting, too – the whole presentation/tasting drama is played very much in sports anime style.  There’s a quite deliberate parallel being drawn here between on the court dynamic and off – teamwork and mutual trust is critical here.  As kids (this seems to transcend cultures) we’re told that the lessons we learn in sports can benefit us in “real” life.  Because real life for these dudes is both what your gym teacher was talking about and actual sports, they live out that old saw in particularly interesting fashion.

The current drama for these badarymen is the presentation for the negi ginger ale – immediately following a public tasting event for the various contest winners.  The final elements of the presentation itself are left in Mikoto’s hands (which proves just as unwise as it sounds).  As the newbie he’s also drafted to wear the beaver costume (am I nuts or was that 3-D printed?) though fate will intervene there.  He’s clearly in over his head here, though that’s all part of the learning experience of being a working adult.

I very much enjoy that aspect of the story, in fact.  Mikoto is basically still a child – he’d be like a college sophomore if he attended.  And I assume he has a father since “invite your parents” was used this week and he didn’t flinch.  But I’ve seen no evidence he exists and he wasn’t with Mom at the tasting (unless his father is the iguana).  There’s stuff Dad teaches a guy (or should) but with no dad (or a bad one) it might fall to a big brother or a surrogate one.  That’s the role Tatsu is filling here.  Someone needs to tell Mikoto that it’s not okay to have a curry stain on your suit, and it’s also not okay to only have one suit.  And of course, show him how to shop for one.

The other key emerging figure is Usuyama-san, the ex-badaryman and now QA honcho.  We know he’s eventually going to enter the picture on the sports side (perhaps as Tatsu’s replacement) but for now Usuyama throws a spanner in the works by being a little too vigilant in his duties.  It’s definitely the job of QA to be hard-asses, especially in a food & bev company, but essentially he kills the entire negi jinja campaign over a “just in case” judgment – some extra bags of ingredients being left over in the warehouse.

The part of this that stuck with me was Tatsu and Mikoto being forced to search through a Raiders-style warehouse full of paper receipts for the one which might prove their case.  Before I moved here I might have said that was unrealistic in this age – now I know better.  The extent to which this country remains reliant on paper documents is, frankly, pathetic.  Ironically the receipt doesn’t even show the error they were hoping it would, but Souta’s dash to the warehouse does – and an emergency call by Tatsu to Tomari lands a refrigerated truck to get the product to the event in the nick of time (couldn’t Usuyama have allowed it to be shipped conditionally?).

Pleasingly, Ryman’s Club managed to call back to that seemingly throwaway “imagine them naked” comment from last week.  It’s how Takeda-san managed to get through the presentation despite his performance anxiety – made necessary because Mikoto deleted part of the PowerPoint rather than saving it.  All’s well that ends well, and even if I have a hard time believing green onion ginger ale could be a palate-pleaser (even with apple added) it’s nice to see Mikoto get a little traction on the business side of the ledger.