Maria-sama Ga Miteru 4th season episode 2

It is the day of Lillian’s school festival, many families flock to the entrance gate to visit the festival. Planning to visit their petite sœurs, former students and Yamayuri council members Satou Sei and Mizuno Youko meet at the entrance. Their attention is drawn by a young woman behaving suspiciously, the pair soon catch her red handed when she tries to crawl over the school wall. Introducing herself as Yuko, she claims to be the relative of one of the students and declares she must get inside. Youko remarks that all families should have received admittance tickets to the festival, in case of loss she can gain entry by declaring the student’s name and class number at the entrance. However, Yuko doesn’t seem to know any of this.

Meanwhile Yumi and Yoshino are advertising their class’ festival area with eating booths. There, Yumi spots Kanako, who is hesitantly holding onto several admittance tickets. When questioned, Kanako seems evasive and quickly runs off when Touko interrupts. Not thinking much off it, Yumi carries on and offers some food vouchers to Touko. Declining Touko’s offer to pay for the vouchers, Yumi says they’re tokens of her gratitude which she should simply accept and enjoy.

Heading to Sachiko’s class, Yumi is knocked over by Yuko, who has escaped from Sei and Youko’s side. Yumi soon meets with Sei and Youko, the three head over to Sachiko’s class, only to learn that Sachiko was called away to the nurse’s office. Before they’re able to head over to the nurse’s office, Kanako barges in asking Yumi help in hiding her. Doing so, Yumi notices the girl she had bumped into earlier running by, seemingly searching for someone.

Sachiko then appears in a solemn mood, asking Kanako and Yumi to accompany her to the nurse’s office. On the way, Sachiko explains she had been called there to meet her father. Because her father left for New York the previous day, it couldn’t possibly be him there. However, it seems that Sachiko’s father had passed on his admittance ticket, another man now having used it to gain entry as he absolutely wanted to see his daughter at her school festival. That man is Kanako’s father.
Upon hearing that, Kanako refuses to go. But when Sachiko’s has Kanako believe her father is not well, she rushes into the nurse’s office after all. Of course, Kanako’s father turns out to be in good health, but soon finds himself besieged by Kanako’s insults.

Kanako blames her father for divorcing her mother, using Yuko, ruining their lives. At that time Yuko appears to reveal Kanako’s father is not to blame, she explains that when she had to quit basketball due to an injury, she sought out the coach she knew had gone through the same ordeal and fell in love with him, saying he’s a wonderful man that Kanako shouldn’t hate. In tears, Yuko apologizes to Kanako for making her suffer, causing Kanako to break down too and admit that she knew her parents’ marriage was falling apart for which her father was not to blame.
Kanako’s hatred towards men stemmed from the fact she couldn’t forgive her father for becoming involved with the upperclassmen she so admired.

Having witnessed the happy reunion of Kanako with her family, Yumi heads off to see Touko’s play. Meeting with Touko behind the scenes afterwards, she is swiftly berated by Touko for arriving late, but with Yumi’s never failing enthusiasm, she drags Touko off to enjoy the festival before the time arrives for them to star in the Yamayuri play.
As the festival comes to an end, Sachiko seeks out Yumi who was sitting far off from the bonfire. Taking her to the Maria statue, Sachiko reveals she had not bought any gift or made any special plans for their one year anniversary as sœurs since she doesn’t consider it to be a special day at all. Yumi is soon in tears when Sachiko reveals that the special days to her are all the days to come, since every one of those days she gets to have Yumi as her petite sœur.

I had initially expected this episode to reveal who becomes Yumi’s petite sœur, Kanako or Touko, but it did not. Judging by the preview, the next episode should deal with that.
They did however resolve Kanako’s issues very nicely with a believable background story, no doubt this will lead Kanako to grow and open up more. At the same time they set up Touko more and more as the best candidate to become Yumi’s petite sœur, Yumi being the one who brings out Touko’s dere dere side.

Really liked this episode, it was fun but also held serious moments which all concluded nice or with heart warming scenes. Plus, the scenes between Yumi and Touko had great chemistry, much like those between Yumi and Sachiko always have.

You may be interested to know that an HD 1280×720 resolution version of the first episode is also available, including a fansubbed version. I checked it out and the HD one is excellent, the video quality is significantly better than the original size, definitely worth watching.