Kodomo no Jikan 5, Rin’s lonely summer.

     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. 

 

Kodomo no Jikan 4, a home visit.

  

      This episode begins with Daisuke having his students write an essay about their parents, this is in preparation of his home visits. Some of the older teachers think that the home visits are a waste of time because you can’t really fix home problems. Later, Daisuke is looking over some old school records when he discovers that Rin’s mother is deceased and her father is unknown, and that she is living with a relative.

      The next day when the students turn in their essays, Daisuke notices that Rin wrote a whole paper of lies about her mother still being alive, he than considers the possibility that Rin’s bad behavior might be caused by her lack of parents. Later Rin hurts herself at recess and Daisuke has to patch her up, she makes a comment to him about how he’s kinder than usual, and she even talks him into carrying her back to class. But, as he hands back their papers he screws up by letting everyone know that she has a guardian instead of regular parents.

   The next day, after swimming class, Daisuke tries to apologize to Rin for the other day, but Rin says that she feels stupid for believing that he was being nice to her just to be nice. He tries several times to fix things between them but nothing seems to work, and he eventually goes to her friends Mimi and Kuro for advice. Kuro tell him that Rin is no longer hurt by not having parents, but she’s hurt because she’s fallen in love with him and she felt betrayed by him, and Kuro tells him he’s very dense for not seeing that Rin has fallen in love with him.

     So, that night Daisuke decides to pay a visit to Rin’s house, Rin isn’t home at the moment, but her guardian Reiji is home and he lets him in. They talk about Rin’s current situation, and Reiji kind of makes a suggestion that Daisuke as a teacher is showing too much affection towards Rin, just as Daisuke is about to ask him what he’s inferring, Rin walks in. After Daisuke leaves, Rin asks Reiji what he thinks about Daisuke, and Reiji says it looks like he loves her otherwise he wouldn’t have stopped by, this makes Rin Happy.

 

     The next day at school, Rin confronts Daisuke about the visit to her house and she asks him why he stopped by. Daisuke tells her that he was worried about her because shes precious to him, she asks Daisuke if it’s really true, and he tells her yes. She than tells him not to betray her a second time, and then she gives him a kiss. Back in class, Rin’s back to her old self, and Daisuke realizes that he got his first kiss from a little girl. Well, that’s all for this episode.

      Well, in this episode Daisuke continues to try and deal with his most troubled student Rin, in trying to find out more about her family life he unravels some of mysteries surrounding her. He finds out that her mother died young, and he father is not around, so he assumes that deficiencies in her home life might be leading to her inappropriate sexual behavior.

     But the main problem he has in dealing with Rin is his lack of experience with the opposite sex, when he had to ask Kuro for help with Rin she calls him an idiot for not being able to tell that Rin is in love with him. Daisuke is so inexperienced with women the he can’t even detect that a 9 or 10 year old girl has a crush on him even though it so obvious to most of the kids in his class. At the end of the episode we learn that not only is Daisuke still a virgin at age 24, but that the kiss Rin gave him was his first kiss, for Christ sakes Daisuke you live in Japan, take yourself into town and visit a Soapland and get some experience with a woman.

 

Kodomo no Jikan 3, Mimi’s large problem.

     This episode begins with the girls changing clothes in the classroom and Rin has Kuro that a picture of her with her cell phone, and when Kuro asks why she wants the picture Rin says she sending it to Daisuke, this upsets Kuro greatly and she rushes out of the classroom. Daisuke is talking with another male teacher in the teachers lounge when the other teacher says that he’s glad he teaches first graders so he doesn’t have to deal with the older girls as they grow up so quickly. Later Daisuke notices that Mimi having trouble in physical education class because of her over development for her age, and he doesn’t know how to handle it, he can’t bring himself to tell her you should wear a bra (you would think that Mimi’s mother would notice this issue). In the teachers lounge Daisuke is mumbling to himself about the breast problem and Kyoko overhears him and thinks that he’s talking about her breasts.

      Later Kyoko is leaving the women’s restroom and runs into Mimi, and Mimi asks her how can she have breast as large as hers and Kyoko misunderstands the question, so she tells her to drink milk and they’ll get larger, Mimi gets very upset and runs away from the restroom. Later Mimi tells Rin and Kuro about her problem, Kuro is blunt and tells her to start wearing a bra and that should solve the problem. That evening Mimi buys a bra and wears it to school the next day and her worst fears come true, as soon as she shows up in class the boys spot the bra and start making comments about the bra and her breasts. Just as Mimi runs out of the classroom, Rin sees what happened and attacks the boy who was making the comments.

      Rin and Kuro find Mimi crying in the girl’s restroom where she tells them that the bra hurts her and she never should have worn it, Kuro tells her its the wrong size and type, and Mimi says she didn’t know what to buy, and that her mother just gave her the money to buy the bra (hey, mom that was really a lot of help). After school Kuro takes Mimi and Rin to a upscale clothing shop where she shops at for a proper fitting. After school Kyoko wants to go out drinking with Daisuke (alone) but Daisuke’s fellow teacher muscle’s into the mix pissing off Kyoko. The next day at school Daisuke asks Rin for help with Mimi and she says OK as long as she gets a tight hug, and she hugs Daisuke, but he says she hasn’t helped Mimi yet, but she says it’s already taken care of. Well that’s all for episode 3, below are some screen shots.

     This episode revolves around Mimi’s problems with her over developed body and how those problems affect her in the classroom and hurt her self confidence. Mimi’s problems affect the classroom environment and so become a problem for her teacher Daisuke. Let me say this now, Mimi’s problem is caused my her mother’s lack of attention to her daughter, her mother should have noticed her daughter’s development and did her motherly duty by taking her to the store herself and helping her pick out the correct fitting bra. Rin continues to make improper sexual advances on Daisuke and these advances continue to throw him off balance when dealing with his classroom.

      My feeling is that his lack of experience with women (he all but admitted in a earlier episode that he’s still a virgin) and his embarrassment about talking about any issues dealing with sexuality causes him problems. If he could talk about these issues he would be able to ask Kyoko or another female teacher for advice about Mimi’s problem or his problem with Rin. Also the other male teacher he talks with is married and has a daughter so if he had any sense he could ask him for advice but he too embarrassed to do this.  Also his lack of experience causes him problems with Kyoko, she is clearly attracted to him, and he seems to like her to, and she’s practical is throwing herself at him but he’s too involved with his classroom problems to notice. It is really cute how Kuro continues to pine for Rin’s affection  but in her heart she knows that it really won’t happen but that doesn’t stop her. 

     Daisuke main issue in this series will be trying to figure out how to help Rin work through her issue, Rin’s main problem is that she feels the need to express her affections towards men in a overtly sexual manner, he needs to help her learn the proper ways to express affections towards males. Well this setup is quite amusing so far, as the viewer of this series can tell that her teacher isn’t attracted to her in that way but she might just run into a boy/man that just might take her up on some of her improper offers. The series is heavily edited for it’s Japanese television broadcast, any improper visuals are covered by the placing of blocking objects at the right places, and any improper language in bleeped out or covered with random noises. If your looking for that kind of thing you’ll have to probably have to wait and buy the DVD releases from Japan when they become available, or you can read the manga (the manga available from the usual sources).