I've added Konata's dad to the
characters and seiyuus page. The first bit was funny. When she saw him on TV saying he was out to support his daughter, she said, sitting at home: "So where's your daughter, dad?"
Miyuki's win by unfair advantage, hackneyed as the idea is, was done very well, I thought. And I liked the determined way she ran. The whole relay race was indeed well put together. I also liked Tsukasa's Manabi moment, when she went chipmunk-cheeked and droop-lipped trying to play the recorder.
I liked some of the little visual tricks, I guess from the storyboard: the long direct view of the top of Konata's head at the start of the race, and the heads of KKandT at the bottom of the frame as they walked down the school hallway. Episode direction and storyboard by
Takao Touko, a KyoAni key animator (name sounds female) who has directed/storyboarded episodes of Kanon (#17) and this show (#2).
I thought "Kyonani" worked well for "Konami" in the game. I liked it that on the board, Konata was listed for the 100 metres and Shiraishi for the 5 metre dash. The cool things about the Shuffle! comic were that she found she already had it (sound familiar?), and then that she realized happily she could use it to spread the word. She's such a happy, optimistic soul.