Blue Spring Ride focuses on a high school girl named Futaba Yoshioka. During the summer of her first year in junior high, she was in love with a boy named Kou Tanaka. He asks her to go to the summer festival with him, and she accepts. One day at school, she gets annoyed with a boy that’s pestering her and declares that she hates boys. Kou overhears this, and he never shows up to the meeting spot he’d arranged with Futaba. She intended to talk to him after summer break, but when she got back to school, Kou had transferred to a different school.
The series jumps ahead in time three years, and Futaba is finishing up her first year of high school. She’s surprised to discover that Kou has come back, but that he has changed his name to Kou Mabuchi due to his parents’ divorce. Futaba discovers that Kou has changed in the intervening years and that sometimes he’ll be cold to her, while other times he’ll help her out.
At the beginning of Episode Three, Futaba catches up with Kou on the last day of school, and they start to talk. They are interrupted by the arrival of Tanaka-sensei, and it’s revealed that not only is he a teacher at the school, he’s also Kou’s older brother. It turns out I was right when I guessed in the writeup for Episode Two that they were related somehow! Unfortunately, the older Tanaka starts teasing Kou about Futaba being his girlfriend, and Kou creates a scene so he and Futaba can make a run for it.
Futaba tries asking Kou questions about his life, and this annoys Kou. Futaba starts crying and says she has a lot of things she wants to ask him and there’s so much she hasn’t been able to get straight in her mind. A very touching scene happens here, where Kou finally explains what happened on the day he was supposed to meet her for the summer festival back in junior high. As this scene played out, I felt a tear come to my eye… it was due to situations out of Kou’s control that kept him, not the fact he overheard her say that she hates boys. I felt so bad for both Kou and Futaba, because they were ultimately the victims of circumstances rather than the actions of lack of action by one of them.
The episode then moves ahead to the first day of school for Futaba’s second year of high school. She discovers that Makita, Kou, Murao, and the blond-haired boy that hangs around Murao are in her class. Futaba overhears a couple of girls talking about rumors they heard about Makita, so she takes it upon herself to talk to Makita and disprove the rumors. Unfortunately, rumors also spread about Futaba about the fight she had with her two former friends. Futaba feels like a failure for her attempt to start over from scratch, and words from both Kou and his brother tell her otherwise. At the end of the episode, Futaba volunteers herself as the female class representative, much to her own surprise. She ends up pulling in Kou, Makita, Murao, and Murao’s blond-haired male friend to serve as representatives as well.
When Murao and her blond-haired friend appeared briefly in Episode Two, I couldn’t understand why they were being shown. Now that they’re both in Futaba’s new class and will be playing a bigger role in the story, I now understand why they were established in Episode Two. I hope to learn the blond-haired guy’s name soon, because I’m tired of calling him “blond-haired boy,” “blond-haired guy,” and “blond-haired friend.”
During the classroom scene where Futaba decides to take it upon herself to create an atmosphere where Makita won’t be excluded, I nearly cheered when I saw her do that. Futaba really is a good person, and is starting to realize more of who she actually is now that she’s no longer trying to project an image of someone that she’s not.
And does anyone else think that Kou and Futaba look good together? I’m cheering for them to find a way to become a couple before the end of the series. I think Kou’s explanation of the events that happened three years earlier is a step in the right direction.
From the preview for the next episode, it looks like it will focus on the overnight leadership training session for class representatives that’s being run by Kou’s older brother. There could be very interesting things that happen, especially with Kou’s brother in charge and with Futaba and Kou both being at the training. I’m looking forward to seeing how that’s going to turn out.