[bloppyblue]

Well, are we still talking about Season One Ritsu or overall Ritsu altogether? Because the New Years scene didn't happen in S1.

I was referring to the S1 New Years event Right after the training camp, I believe? When Mio wore her nicest clothing and she got a little embarrassed.

I highly doubt Mio would freak. She occurs to me, as of S1, as a very rational character not to be as hysterical as Ritsu. Then again, I'd just sound biased, so let's move on.

The manga you were referring to wouldn't happen to be "Requiem 5 a Dream," would it? 'Coz that is totally unrelated to canon Mio. Even if it's the K-On manga, if the obsession incident happens after the events of S1 (assuming that Kakifly and KyoAni's K-On are chronologically interlinked), then your argument is voided, but I get a feeling the manga Mio and the anime Mio are two mountains apart, once again. So I guess I'll have to hear from you about her obsession then, bloppyblue.

Oh gosh, no. I'm talking about the manga chapter...

Spoiler for manga:

when Mio thought Ritsu got a boyfriend and started to go a little cuckoo about it. She made the rest of the k-on crew follow Ritsu around until they could find out who she kept texting to during club meetings, and who she was in such a rush to see

Maturity, however, is a different thing compared to perceptiveness. Ritsu's levelheadedness didn't really poke its way out until around Ep 13, where we see a more rational Ritsu in the making (and it also unfortunately forewarns the moe-flood of Mio that's to come), but after watching some S1 episodes again, there were definitely signs of Ritsu being more in control than, ahem, Yui is.

Ooh, very true... I'm probably mixing the beginnings of season one with the ends of season one. Either way, the character is still the same character from beginning to end of the series, KyoAni has just decided to highlight different aspects.
And you believe that Mio had more moe in season two than season one?

See, why couldn't they have kept the fire-and-ice relationship between Ritsu and Mio going on all the way till S2? It was working fine, there was no need to truncate it.

I think they did a pretty good job in keeping it up in S2. Just like everything else, everything was less exaggerated in S2, including Mio and Ritsu's relationship (it still developed, it was just kept out of focus since it's already been established in Season one).

I don't like the term, 'putting up an image,' though, because that just suggests Mio to be a hypocrite (which she wasn't portrayed as till S2, at least, haha). I digress.

I don't see anything hypocritical about that... Maybe not "putting up and image" but... Trying hard to remain a role model to the rest of the girls? Perhaps too hard.

I couldn't blame Mio to be fearful of half the things she's scared of in the show, though, and not because I'm biased. I mean, that bathtub full of lobsters made my skin crawl as well. Stage fright? I've had it - and definitely still has it (and if not for Kakifly's itchy fingers, she would had conquered her stage fright... which would have actually been more interesting to see than the moe-blob fest). Those barnacles reminded me of dried bird poop. That's right. Hardened, white, dry bird shat. I've seen them and they sure weren't a view to enjoy. And to top it all off, I'm a guy who's rather squirmish when it comes to macabre stuff, too (hence my lack of interest in guro).

Haha, I guess we've all got that child in us. Although that is one of the reasons why I don't feel that Mio is super extremely mature. She hasn't gotten over some small fears yet and her inner child comes screaming out, haha. I can't really say anything about that since I'm pretty opposite... I found all those antics pretty funny (it's probably due to the fact that I can see myself doing similar things to my friends... Yeah, call me a jerk or whatnot boo).