The episode opens with Mitsumi approaching the student council room, hoping to ask to join them. Shima has accompanied her, because he's bored and trying to get away from the drama club president. When they get to the room, Mitsumi sees one of her classmates, Kurume, also standing in front of the door. We hear Kurume's thoughts that she doesn't really want to associate with most people in the class, and she's heard rumors that Mitsumi is the secret boss of the school. Because of the rumor, Kurume is skiddish when Mitsumi first approaches her.
After talking with the council and learning that while you can't ask to be part of the council, you can join an organization that helps the council plan various school events. Mitsumi is eager to join, Kurume is unsure, and Shima isn't truly interested. After the meeting, Mitsuki awkwardly asks Kurume to go to Starmax with her and Shima. It's a little awkward at first at Starmax, but Mitsuki manages to ask Kurume for her contact information. By the time they part ways, we see that Kurume seems like she's going to become a new friend for Mitsumi.
Later, Kurume asks Mitsumi to go see a classic movie with her, and it's a film that happens to match what they're reading for their English class. Mitsumi says she wants to go, and Shima overhears and looks at the flyer Kurumi brought. Once Shima has that flyer, it attracts other members of the class who decide they're going to come along as well. Mitsumi also invites Murashige to come along. You have to kind of feel for Kurume here, though. It took her a bit of courage to ask Mitsumi to go to the movie with her, and their plans are hijacked by other people in the class to become a big group outing.
On the day of the film screening, we see Egashira looking down on how plain Mitsumi and Kurume look and thinking about how stylish she looks because of all the fashion magazines she read before school started for the year. When Murashige shows up, she's wearing plain looking clothing and effortlessly looks good. This does deflate Egashira a bit, and she even thinks to herself at one point that Murashige doesn't have to be a tryhard like her. Egashira is always trying to be near Shima, but he just treats her like a friend. Near the end of the episode, when Egashira sees Shima talking with Mitsumi and acting chummy, we hear her uncertainly asking herself if Shima just sees Mitsumi as a friend.
A big focus of this outing, though, is on Kurume and the fact that she doesn't really get along with girls like Murashige. At one point, Murashige tells Kurume that if she doesn't like girls like her that she shouldn't force herself to talk to her. It's at this point when Mitsumi picks up that there could be an issue, and she feels bad that she invited Murashige like she normally would to join the group. Considering that Mitsumi came from a place where she knew all of her classmates, they always invited each other to various activities. Mitsumi realizes that now that she's around a lot more people, she has to start taking these kind of things into consideration. There weren't as many "fish out of water" events in this episode, but this realization, as well as the time at Starmax, fit into that category. At this point, I expect the "fish out of water" theme to pop up every now and then, but it likely won't be as frequent as the first couple of episodes as Mitsumi starts getting to know Tokyo and how things are done there.
Mitsumi decides to take it upon herself to try to act as a bridge between Kurume and Murashige before the film starts. Mitsumi does something that appears to be kind of silly, but it seems to do the trick. While Kurume and Murashige don't seem like they're necessarily close friends by the end of the episode, they will at least talk with each other.
I was glad to see Kurume introduced to the series. We've seen her in the opening credits, as well as in the background in the classroom, but this is the first time she's been truly introduced and been treated as someone who could become a more important character going forward. At this point, I think all the students we see in the friend group that appears in the opening credits have been introduced. If so, Skip And Loafer can work at starting to truly move the story forward, since time won't have to be spent introducing characters for the main friend group.
Shima's secret wasn't touched on or hinted at during this episode, so I hope it's something we'll see again in the series. At this point, though, the primary character development is focusing on Mitsumi, so it does make sense that Shima's secret isn't playing a major role at this point. However, it was refreshing to see that while Mitsumi is an important part of Episode Three, the story allowed Kurume to be more of the focus.
The one thing that frustrates me a little with Skip And Loafer is the fact that there isn't an episode preview, so you have no idea of what to expect for the next episode. While the lack of previews makes it much harder to potentially provide spoilers for the next episode, it also means the viewer is going blind into the story. But I guess the lack of previews can help build the audience's anticipation for what's coming next.
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