I wouldn’t say I’d forgotten what a whiplash-inducing series Blue Box was for me in manga form. But it certainly wasn’t fresh in my mind, and the anime is bringing it all back. This series’ highs and lows are not only extreme, but immediate – it could express polar opposites from chapter to chapter. That was especially true in the early part of the series, and we’re hip deep in that now. It would be hard to overstate how much more appealing this episode was than last week’s.

For me of course that comes down mostly to which characters are on-screen, which is the ultimate YMMV situation. I also really like this series when it’s in sports mode. One of the best things about Ao no Hako is that it balances sports and romance just about as evenly as any manga out there, but I do love the pure sports stuff and it tends to avoid the minefields which it wanders into on the romance side. That balance includes the fact that each half of the series’ duality influences the other, and the dexterity it has with that was very much in evidence this week.

The prefectural qualifiers are coming up in a week. As it happens, so are the prefectural girls’ basketball tournament semis. As such both Chinatsu and Taiki have them game faces on, but their game faces tend to turn towards each other a lot of the time. Taiki is making progress in both his major endeavors in life, it seems. He manages to take a set off Haryuu, and he finesses a chance meeting with Chinatsu on the way home rather deftly. That gambit about pretending not to know each other was very charming, especially in a teenage context, and I think Chinatsu was sort of impressed.

Taiki has his white whale in Haryuu, and even Haryuu has one – a rival from another school and the national champion. As for the Eimei basketball team it’s Kogohara High, who beat them in the finals of the most recent prefectural qualifier. As Eimei progresses through the early rounds, Kogohara is scouting them – which is perfectly normal, and frankly it’s surprising that Eimei wasn’t doing the same to them. Chinatsu and her teammate Nagisa overhearing their rivals dissing their scouting video was unpleasant, but if anything it should be motivating. And despite Chinatsu’s rather tame response (in contrast to Nagisa) it’s fair to say it’s lighting a fire under her.

Kyou quite naturally asks Taiki if he plans to ask Chinatsu out if he makes it to the inter-high. Romance anime is obviously overstocked with characters dithering on this point for no good reason, to the point of irritation. But in Taiki’s case, I think the excuse he offers is a very good one. Indeed, if Chinatsu were to turn him down (and he has no firm basis to assume she won’t) that would make her living situation extremely uncomfortable. Taiki is obviously still a kid but he’s actually very sensitive and perceptive for a guy his age. He’s right to hedge on this basis (even if it’s also a convenient excuse to avoid the risk of being turned down).

In the end, though, Chinatsu is the one who pushes things forward. And Hina again is a sort of catalyst, though her motives are almost certainly contrary to that. Her antics outside the konbini prompt Chinatsu to declare that she’s “jealous” after the karaage exchange. She says it in jest but it’s not the sort of thing one says in that situation for no reason. In effect it’s a confession, albeit one with just enough ambiguity to cause a 15 year-old boy to doubt what his brain is telling him just happened. But the seed has been planted whether Chinatsu intended to or not (in my view it’s pretty clear she did), and Taiki can’t look at her in quite the same way now.