Medalist

Episode 7

With how much time in the spotlight Tsukasa got last week, I expected him to take a back seat for a while to shift the focus back to Inori. Instead, we find him at the center of this week's episode, as the story switches from talking about his past regrets to his current ones. Most of those regrets are centered around his self-doubts in his coaching abilities, and while it doesn't lead to anything as dramatic as what we saw last week, it drives home that he's still got about as many mental hurdles to overcome as his student.

After moving back in with the Kagos, Tsukasa focuses his attention on getting Inori ready for her next big competition, the West Japan Championships. Since the competition will feature a bunch of high-level skaters around her age, Inori is determined to start catching up and reveals to Tsukasa that she learned to perform double jumps in her spare time. When she attempts to demonstrate this new skill, however, she ends up face-planting into the ice and feeling down on herself. While Tsukasa opts to take recordings of Inori's jumps and show her where she's going wrong with her timing, this ends up having the reverse effect as she tries too hard to correct her mistakes and keeps failing. As her repeated failures get to her, Tsukasa tries to reassure Inori that her mistakes will help her get better and that she doesn't need to rush things, but he's got his worries too. He sees that Inori's skills are growing faster than he anticipated, and although he's doing his best to keep up, he's afraid that he isn't doing enough to properly advise her.

His doubts continue into the day of Inori's Level One Badge test, as we're introduced to a couple more future rivals for Inori. First, we've got Suzu, an adorable little narcissist who wants the whole world to acknowledge how cute she is and is considered a prodigy around the same level as Hikaru. Then we've got Ema, who seems to be a lot more on the quiet side, and has a lot in common with Inori in her lack of experience for her age and being a bit of an animal magnet as Inori first finds her surrounded by pigeons. Both girls are coached by a man from the countryside named Yudai (to which I'm glad that his voice actor, Kylen Deporter, didn't go too overboard with the southern accent in the dub). When Tsukasa sees how good Yudai is at keeping the girls wrangled in, and how easily Ema passes her badge test, he decides to ask him for advice on how to help Inori improve. Hitomi warns Tsukasa that it's a bad idea to ask other coaches for help since they already have a lot on their own plate, but when Tsukasa tells her that he can't afford to waste any chance that could help Inori, Yudai takes pity on him and agrees to help him out.

As it turns out, though, the advice was largely unnecessary as when Tsukasa points out some flaws in Inori's jumps that he wants advice on, Yudai tells him that the fact that he already knows what needs improving is proof that he's doing his job as a coach. Tsukasa still feels that his background as an ice dancer doesn't make him qualified enough to coach in singles, but Yudai points out to him that if anything, it gives him an edge, as having to keep an eye on his partner meant that he's already used to closely observing other skaters. Ultimately Tsukasa's only real problem as a coach is that he needs to do better about believing in himself. We see from a brief flashback with his former coach that this flaw has been deeply ingrained into him. As such, it's certainly not a problem he can get past overnight, but it's at least good that he seems to take Yudai's words to heart. It's a nice reminder that even some of our most negative experiences can eventually provide us with valuable skills. While Tsukasa might still regret a lot of his past as an ice dancer, those experiences have given him the knowledge he needs to help Inori in the present.

Speaking of Inori, while our awkward little worm girl doesn't get a ton of focus this week, we do see her getting ready for entry in the West Japan championships, and things are off to a rough start. She quickly finds herself running into another pair of new rivals. Seira, who's brimming with confidence, and Ritsuki, who tries a bit too hard to act mature for her age. Neither one makes a particularly good first impression on Inori, but she's got other things to worry about when she prepares to head out on stage only to realize she forgot her skates. It's not the most exciting cliffhanger, but it does make for a nice bit of extra tension, and with how anxious Inori is regularly, we can only hope that she doesn't let this setback get to her.

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Medalist is currently streaming on Hulu.

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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.