[Kaoru Chujo]

Now that I've watched this episode a couple more times, I have a completely different take on the animation. I think it was particularly good. Not the drawing, which was off-model sometimes, but the animation. There were a number of scenes with interesting movement, such as when Saki was running away down the hillside path. They seem to have decided, as Kaioshin_sama's observation that there were plenty of frames suggests, to spend time/money on movement rather than careful drawing. Worked for me.

As for the bonobos, I mean the students. I thought the situation was generally well presented. There was no real reason to be surprised, since we already knew their society was planned to be this way. The surprise was that our main characters all seemed to be in homosexual relationships, but that could be natural for younger people (if 14 is young), who might be more comfortable relating to their same sex, or at least to their closest childhood friend. In any case, I found the matter-of-fact presentation kind of liberating. The cartoon-gay Kai was a bit of a turn-off...as well as a turn-on, lol. I'm not sure if the relationships are being properly presented, since they seem to slip back and forth between purely physical and really romantic. I hope we learn more about how these people are relating.