When Ataru is caught counting votes on who the best looking girl in class is, the Headmaster blows it all out of proportion. He turns it into a school-wide contest for who is Miss Tomobiki, the No. 1 girl in the school, complete with a 150000 Yen prize. When the chicanery between various factions supporting the various candidates gets out of control, the Head decides to put Ataru in charge of the whole thing. So after the preliminary round is completed (and the first half of the episode) the candidates are left as Sakura (who wants the money), Ryuu (who thinks it’s a chance to finally wear female swimwear), Shinobu (who gets convinced to join the race after initially supporting Ryuu), Ran (who we are informed, by the narrator, is mainly supported by pedophiles!) and Lum.
In the second half we are introduced to the other No. 1 girls at the neighbouring schools. Each wants a different girl to win in order to upset the balance of power between them. To do this they each begin to bribe Ataru. At first they are seeking him out, but soon he seems to be chasing down the bribes himself. Then all the different factions at school start to bribe him, and when local businesses start to get behind the girls, the whole neighbourhood gets involved.
However when the finals arrive, Ataru, his bribes and the entrance fees are nowhere to be seen. So the Head has to call it all off, while we cut to Ataru on the train to Osaka with his ill-gotten gains.
Still variable in the animation, mainly visible from some lazily drawn faces in spots and occasional wonky proportions. The finals have a great zoom in from space that looks great though, using some real satellite photographs to interesting effect.
Scriptwise, this episode faces a problem that is the polar opposite to most of the episodes in that it squeezed 5 chapters into one episode rather than stretching one out to the running time. An awful lot got changed in the process, with the original chapters being more of a parody of the popular women’s wrestling scene at the time than the school politics we got here. Shame really, as those chapters have a lot in common with the later Ranma 1/2.
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Screenplay: Kazunori Ito
Storyboards: Motosuke Takahashi
Director: Takashi Anno
Animation Director: Motosuke Takahashi