This episode of Kodomo no Jikan  begins with the school kids getting ready for their summer break, Mimi is going to visit her father and Kuro going to visit her grand parents, while Rin will be  staying home. Rin soon becomes depressed about being lonely and refuses to reenter the classroom after break. When Daisuke asks her whats wrong she tells him that she will be sad because she won’t be able to see him. Not thinking about how she would take his words he tells her that since he will have pool and playground duties along with training sessions at the school she can visit him at the school at anytime.

      Later, Daisuke argues with Shirai about how to grade and rank his students, she tells him that he really can’t take a students efforts into account only their results. The other teachers also chime in on how they grade their students, it seems that no two teachers grade the same way. Houin seems to have taken a liking to Daisuke because of his passion and caring for his students. The next day Daisuke passes out the report cards to the students and wishes them a good summer break.

     As Daisuke and Houin leave the school that they both agree that when they were students they felt lonely at the end of summer break and now that they are teachers it feels lonely to see their classrooms empty. As summer begins Rin spends time with Mimi and Kuro just goofing off, and eventually they decide to go swimming at the school’s pool so Rin can see Daisuke.

      Soon  both Kuro and Mimi leave for their vacations, and Reiji has to return to work leaving Rin home by herself during the day for the rest of the summer break. She gets lonely but tries to kill the time as best as she can. But Rin gets so lonely that she decides to visit Daisuke at the school, once she arrives at the school she observes Daisuke and Houin getting along nicely while working outside together. She manages to distract Daisuke away from Houin and leads him on a chase through the school.

     Houin is kind of angry about the distraction because she was about to ask Daisuke to go with her to the firework display being held that night, so she attempts to follow Daisuke and Rin. Rin leads Daisuke to the pool where they both end up in the water together, Rin starts hugging Daisuke and they end up watching the fireworks together inside the pool. Later Houin sees Rin with Daisuke in the pool and Rin gives Houin the message I’ve got my man so you get another one.

     Unknown to Rin, both Kuro and Mimi decide to return home early from their vacation trips, both of them were worried about Rin being lonely. Kuro and Mimi put on their Kimono’s and head over to Rin’s house to take her to the fireworks but soon discover that she’s not at home, and they end up watching the fireworks from a park bench. Later the girls decide that since they can’t wear their nice swimsuits to the school’s pool that they will wear their nice suits but hangout just outside the pool area where the rules don’t apply.

 

     Well, with episode we get a little more insight into Rin’s emotional makeup and why she’ll do anything for her friends. Her guardian Reiji seems to try to properly care for Rin but being the bread winner he must go to work to pay the bills, so when he’s not home this leaves Rin with only school and her friends for companions. Once school is out and Reiji is working Rin is basically left with only Kuro and Mimi for companionship so when they both went away we have a very lonely eight year old girl. So, her friends mean everything to her.

     Now to the issue of Rin’s attraction to Daisuke, it’s perfectly normal for school girls and boys to have crushes on younger teachers, and even I once had a crush on a math teacher when I was in sixth grade but I never tried to make sexual advances on her. Looking back at this it would have been ridiculous to think that I could have had anything to offer her in that sort of way.

     So what makes Rin express her affections towards Daisuke in a sexual manner (please no comments about the manga, I’ve read all the chapters of the manga and I’m only commenting on the anime as it occurs), something must be terribly wrong at home, that’s the only possible answer. Rin has no mother at home to properly teach her how a girl/woman should behave herself, she needs guidance, and lacking a mother this duty should fall to her father, but Reiji is a guardian not her father. Reiji is either not doing a good job at teaching her proper behavior or chooses for his own reasons to let her behave in an improper manner.

     I don’t see any reason why this anime is controversial in it’s current form, Daisuke is clearly not a pervert, he just lacks sexual experience. As far as I can tell Rin is in absolutely no danger from him, she’s just a confused eight year old girl, if this was a high school or junior high school situation than it might be different, I could see the possibility of a teacher in his early twenties messing around with a 14-17 year old girl, while it might to be legal or right but that stuff been happening forever. But comparing an eight year old Rin’s charms to Houin’s charm’s it’s no contest.

     While Daisuke might not know what to call his feelings for Rin, I feel the compassion and maybe love he feels for her is what we might call a father’s love for his daughter, and in Rin’s current state of mind what she really needs is a father.