Prefectural Qualifiers in Full Swing

Key Takeaways

• Chinatsu shows her competitive side after hearing Kagohara High talk down on her.
• Taiki shows improvement in badminton skills and is now more comfortable around Chinatsu.
• Hina makes a playful move on Taiki, prompting possible romantic tension between the trio.

Warning: The following contains spoilers for Blue Box, Episode 7, “Can I Have One?”, now streaming on Netflix.

Blue Box episode 7, “Can I Have One?” shows Eimei High’s different sports teams preparing for and participating in their respective prefectural qualifiers. Some of the action shots look different from usual, possibly because parts of episode 7 were outsourced to Studio Massket. Some of the high-speed movement scenes made some characters, especially Chinatsu, look like different people. It’s a little off from Telecom Animation Film’s usual work, but it isn’t terrible per se and isn’t detrimental to the episode as a whole.

Taiki feels more casual when talking to Chinatsu now, no longer acting shy and insecure around her. He even pulls off some playful roleplay when he spots Chinatsu on the way home by pretending not to know where she lives and helping her carry one of her bags home. There is a noticeable difference in how the two interact now compared to how they were at the beginning of the series, so it’s nice to see some progress between them.

Chinatsu Advances

Eimei High’s Girls Basketball Team Wins Their Qualifiers Match

Blue Box, episode 6, “Wish Me Luck” was where Hina cleared her way through the rhythmic gymnastics prefectural qualifiers, and now it’s Chinatsu’s time for the basketball prefectural qualifiers. They only showed a couple of seconds of the prefectural qualifiers, with Chinatsu’s team winning, but the real drama came after the match. Chinatsu and one of her teammates overheard their rivals from last year, Kagohara High, discussing Eimei High’s performance in the qualifiers. They specifically mentioned Chinatsu and said that her performance hadn’t improved much from last year and that they wouldn’t have a problem guarding her.

Later, Taiki learned of that discussion and told Chinatsu that she should pay them no mind, to which she disagreed. Chinatsu basically said that she’d take their criticism and shove it into their faces after winning their match. This is the first time Blue Box has really shown Chinatsu’s aggressive side, which is good since she can sometimes come off as a flat character, especially since she hasn’t gotten an entire episode from her perspective yet, unlike Hina. Hopefully, Blue Box expands more on that fired-up and mad side of Chinatsu.

“No way, I’m gonna care about it! I’ll care, and then I’ll win. If I perform well in the Kagohara match and we win… they’ll never say something like that again.” -Chinatsu in response to Taiki telling her not to care about what her opponents have to say

Taiki Advances

In Badminton? Sure. In Love? Ehh… A Little Bit

The badminton qualifiers match hasn’t come yet, but Taiki does show significant improvements in his badminton skills. For the first time, Taiki actually managed to beat Haryu in a single set. Sure, it was just during practice, and the match itself was cut short as their coach advised them not to tire themselves out before the qualifiers, but it’s still good progress. Now the audience just has to wait for the next episode/s to see if the improvements are good enough to get him through the qualifiers.

As for his progress with Chinatsu, as mentioned above, he’s now more comfortable around her ever since their aquarium date in episode 5. He also took Chinatsu on a quick trip to a shrine he frequents to pray for their upcoming matches, which was a nice, quiet moment for them.

It’s not all progress though, because near the end of the episode, Taiki has a talk with Kyo about his plans with Chinatsu should he be able to enter the Inter-High competition. It seems that he isn’t sure about officially asking Chinatsu out even if he can get into Inter-High, explaining that if he gets dumped, it would be awkward for the both of them to continue living in the same house. This revelation is a little confusing and feels like a step back, considering that being on the same level as Chinatsu to ask her out is one of Taiki’s main motivations for wanting to get into nationals.

Hina Advances

For Fried Chicken and Love

As mentioned earlier, Hina already won her prefectural qualifiers in Blue Box‘s previous episode, so there’s not much of her in episode 7. She only really appears toward the end as part of a group of girls who spot Taiki’s group hanging out in front of a convenience store.

The episode title stems from Hina making a little move on Taiki, grabbing a piece of his karaage and munching on it right in front of Chinatsu. To think that, just in the last episode, this same Hina was lost and depressed, and now, she’s back to being super close to Taiki. Only now, her friendly teasing has hints of jealousy-inducing flirting.

After Hina leaves, Chinatsu approaches Taiki, asks him “Can I have one?”, and even tells him that Hina made her jealous. She would probably say she was just kidding around, but some jokes are half-meant. This scene might be the first sign of the basketball fangirl having a thing for the badminton fanboy.

Blue Box is now available to stream on Netflix. The release date for Blue Box, episode 8, is set to be November 21, 2024 at 8:30 AM PT.