Momoka and Koyuki battle it out for the onsen ticket. It all starts with yet another of Momoka’s schemes to spend quality time with Fuyuki. Her bodyguards rig a lucky draw so that Fuyuki wins four free tickets (Aki, Natsumi, Fuyuki + ?) to an onsen (hot springs) resort.
Her plan to be invited along is quashed when Natsumi passes by and asserts oneechan privileges (what is Fuyuki is also hers) and invites her girlfriend Koyuki along. This seemed rather brusque to me, given how Momoka was brushed aside after helping Fuyuki win teh priz3. However Momoka is also so filthy rich that the siblings probably reasoned that she didn’t need a free onsen ticket.
Momoka fights back by impersonating Koyuki’s voice through another Nishizawa gadget and calls Fuyuki to say that she (Koyuki) can’t join them after all and would like the ticket to be given to Momoka. And arriving at the Hinata household by helicopter to collect the ticket. Except that Koyuki literally drops in and the scam is revealed. I haven’t bought the relevant volume of the manga where this story comes from but my vague memory from browsing it was that in comparison with the anime (which clearly makes Koyuki an innocent and aggrieved party), the manga is more ambiguous with Koyuki being somewhat sneaky and dishonest as well.
Where there is trouble, there is Kururu. The technological genius attaches the spare ticket to a flying device and says that the person who catches it will win the ticket. Momoka’s disadvantage against Koyuki’s ninja skills are ameliorated by her Nishizawa group’s powered suit and a fast moving battle breaks out.
Keroro, who wants to go to the onsen as well, is added to the mix when he catches the device only to be eventually captured by Koyuki. An enraged Momoka activates her incomplete Momoka Impact beam and Keroro is fried in the process. More importantly the spare ticket is destroyed.
Aki arrives to save the day and simply tops up for everyone else who wants to go along. Given that she controls the purse strings of the Hinata household, it’s a great deus ex machina. Koyuki, of course, sticks like a mollusc to Natsum in the hot spring bathes. Much happy squealing from her and embarrassment from Natsumi. <3 Fuyuki tells Keroro that he could have just used his invisibility anti-barrier to come along and didn’t need a ticket in the first place. GAAN. LOL A hugely entertaining first half of the episode - funny and action-packed around a simple premise that was deftly executed in less than 15 minutes!
The second half was Fuyuki and Keroro’s day out on the town. It ends on a peaceful note as depicted above - with Natsumi fangirls again. What did intrigue me was that the normally unflappable Fuyuki showed a clear attraction to a girl in a shop that he used to visit when he was young.
Regarding the Koyuki vs. Momoka Hot-Spring-of-Death story… in the manga:
-Natsumi tells Keroro that he can go to the hot springs if he solves a Rubik’s Cube. He eventually succeeds, but since he peeled the stickers off and re-applied them, he was disqualified.
-Koyuki found out about Momoka’s voice-change trick and decided that, heck, two can play at that game. So Koyuki uses Ninja Copycat to look and sound like Momoka. Then she shows up and attempts to do the “I can’t go, either” schtick. But the real Momoka shows up, and… well, y’know the rest.
-Prior to the battle (and undetected by everyone), Dororo replaced the ticket in Kururu’s device with a fake. He also lectured Koyuki and Momoka (both apologetic). Aki, bless her hot bod… er… generous soul, ponies up for the other ticket so all can go.
-Momoka and Paul themselves were the lottery runners.
-Koyuki’s panties are red in the manga. Yes, I know it isn’t a plot point (or even particularly significant), but since I figured that they weren’t going to show them in the anime at all, one would think that they could at least get the color right. [shrug]
W4, thanks for the comparisons. Which volume of the manga is this story in?
Volume 9. It’s the very first story.
Thanks. Will buy that one next. :)