HenSuki – 12 (Fin) – After Much Deliberation…

Keiki wakes up from a nightmare (in which he takes his new wife Sayuki out for a walk, like a dog) to find Mizuha in his bed, reiterating her love for him, kissing him, and essentially urging him to choose her among all his choices. Needless to say, she comes on too strong, and ends up pushing Keiki right out of the damn house.

He ignores Mizuha’s many calls and instead gets in touch with Shouma and Koharu, to tell him his situation and ask for a place to crash. Alas, Shouma’s house is full and he won’t allow Keiki to stay at Koharu’s. He also encounters Mao, fresh off a BL-writing all-nighter, who has bean cakes and milk at the ready for the hungry Keiki.

Mao only lends more evidence for her case as Best Girl by supporting Keiki without judging, while having her own thing going on separate from him. She may not be aware of Mizuha’s romantic love for him, and assumes they had a sibling spat, but she knows in the end the two of them will be fine. She even gets an accidental indirect kiss in!

The episode then widens into an extended montage with both Mizuha and Keiki attempting to text their feelings, but not actually sending any messages to each other. Keiki also called his dad, who confirmed that Mizuha was adopted, and Keiki warmly and immediately welcomed her into the family. It seems very odd he’d forget this.

In any case, even a single day away from home proves too much for Keiki, as he only just manages to get in the front door after getting caught in the rain before passing out, cold and feverish. Mizuha puts aside their present issue and takes care of her brother.

Mizuha calls Sayuki, who rushes to Keiki’s side and jumps in his bed to warm him. Sayuki also texts Yuika, reporting their boy is “defenseless,” but they ultimately can’t put their competition on hold long enough to calm down, so Mizuha kicks them both out so Keiki can get better in peace.

Keiki wakes up in the middle of the night, his condition improved, and once again walks in on a naked Mizuha in the bathroom. They stay on either side of the door trying to talk this thing out, and Mizuha mentions that her love for him began on that day when he welcomed her (which again, he forgot) and only grew from there. She lost her family in an accident, but gained a new one.

Still, Keiki had never viewed Mizuha as anything other than his little sister, and even though things will never quite be the same whether he accepts or rejects her love, he decides to remain that caring brother going forward. It’s a safe, sensible chocie that’s true to the character he’s been thus far.

That being said, he can’t weasel his way out of granting the command of the winner of the confession contest, and Mizuha wants him to be her boyfriend for a day. She concedes that going from brother to permanent boyfriend isn’t like flipping a switch, but seems determined to gradually change his mind.

It doesn’t help her case when he finds out her phone is full of selfies of her in various stages of undress. Turns out she’s a full-on exhibitionist! Looks like “normal” for Keiki was, is, and will always involve attracting women with particular tastes. A girl bereft of said tastes probably isn’t in the cards for him. Might as well go for Mao!

HenSuki – 11 – A Matter of Math

This week’s HenSuki is a pool episode, but the pool trip is only a means with which Keiki intends to expose and confront Cinderella once and for all. And hey, if he gets to see the girls in swimsuits, including one he brought for Mizuha (since the trip is a total surprise for her), that’s just a bonus as far as he’s concerned.

Sayuki and Yuika, whom he’s ruled out as the culprit, get up to their usual antics in fighting over him, while Mao keeps her tsundere schtick going when she gets him to herself. Amidst all the liveliness Mizuha is somewhat shuffled to the side, but Keiki tracks her down and carries her when she gets a cramp, like he used to do when they were both smaller (and about the same size).

When Koharu enlists the girls to participate in a girl confession competition with the audience as the judge, all four girls score 92 or higher, with Mizuha breaking the equipment with her very heartfelt confession of love for her brother.

All of these clues involving Mizuha add up to the revelation in the waiting area that she is Cinderella. Keiki arranged things so that she wouldn’t have a change of underwear except the pair that accompanied the love letter, which she reclaimed and kept in her bag at all times. Koharu’s photo also proves she was where Cinderella would have to be at the time the love letter was planet.

Mizuha accepts that she’s been caught, and appreciates that Keiki went so far to find out it was her, as it meant he had to obsess over her for the duration. That’s because she really is in love with him, and it’s not sibling love. When Keiki tells her he’s flattered but he’s not okay with a brother and sister having romantic feelings, she drops a bombshell: they’re not related by blood.

While it’s still somewhat dubious Keiki would be okay with suddenly regarding a girl he’d always treated like a sister (by blood or not) romantically, I’m more shocked that after all these years he never considered it odd that the two of them were only five months apart in age. Seems like a pretty big oversight!

With the central mystery solved and just one episode to go, Keiki has a choice to make: accept Mizuha’s feelings and adjust their relationship accordingly, or reject her and either choose one of the others or choose nobody. Decision time!

HenSuki – 10 – No Looking Away

Thanks to the photo of him rummaging through her underwear, Keiki is suddenly Yuika’s willing and attentive slave…and Sayuki is hurt to see her master brought so low, especially knowing it’s due to treachery. Still, Yuika manages to maximize her time with him, dressing him up in a butler outfit of her own design, then using him as a porter during a shopping spree.

After shopping, Yuika takes a bath, but screams when she sees a spider, making Keiki come running to her rescue. Yuika sentences him to death for seeing her naked, but quickly softens when, after she steps on his head, his stroking of her head reminds her of her late grandma. After she trips onto her bed, Keiki discovers she stole a pair of his boxers, so just like that, the blackmailing ceases.

As Keiki and Shouma lament another summer without girlfriends (clearly due to their lack of effort and nothing else) the focus shifts to Nanjou Mao, who first uses Keiki as a model for her boyfriend in a shoujo one-shot she’s working on, then proposes he become her “boyfriend” for research purposes…if he’s not dating anyone else.

Considering how strong she comes on and all the blushing, I wouldn’t be surprised if she actually does like him, though like him with his whole Cinderella investigation, or Shouma with his lolicon, she’s simply hiding from the truth; in her case, behind manga-related excuses. After a recharging hug and sniff, Ayano even proposes she and Keiki start dating, but he respectfully declines. As I said, if he doesn’t have a girlfriend this summer, it’s all his stinkin’ fault.

Perhaps, with a photo taken by Koharu on the day he received a love letter from Cinderella, he’ll finally crack the case open and learn which one of the girls in his life gave him her underwear…or if it’s someone new entirely.

HenSuki – 09 – Boiling Over

In what must be a dream come true for Sayuki, Keiki takes her on a date to a theme park as his pet, and she must call him “master” and follow his commands. Of course, Keiki’s ulterior motive is to confirm whether Sayuki is Cinderella. The proof he seeks is whether she’s wearing the stolen underwear from his room originally gifted to him by Cinderella.

Sayuki wears a skirt for their date, but it’s long enough that none of the thrilling rides they take cause it to flip up in his field of vision. Like his date with Yuika earlier in the show, it actually goes quite well, aside from the investigation. After “being mean” with scary rides, he lets her decide to go on the Ferris wheel, and then he praises her shodou at an exhibition.

But while the Ferris wheel was definitely the place to do it, Keiki waits until the last second, at the end of the date, to order Sayuki to show him what’s under her skirt. As his dutiful pet she obeys, despite the embarrassment … because she’s not wearing any underwear at all. She went commando for the whole date.

In addition to neither confirming or denying whether Sayuki is Cinderella, Keiki finds that things are awkward at school the next day, with Sayuki not acting like herself. Yuika notices the change too, and the avowed sadist tries to make things worse by flirting with Keiki right in front of her.

Throughout Yuika’s initial attempts, Sayuki continues to write “patience” over and over on a parchment, until she runs off onto the table. By the time Yuika jumps into Keiki’s arms and they’re tumbling to the floor just as Mao enters, Sayuki has seemingly “hit her limit” and flees without a word.

When Keiki comes to them for advice , Ootori and Shouma can’t really say what’s bothering Sayuki, but the fact that it’s bothering Keiki means he must truly care about her, otherwise he wouldn’t be so worried about how she’s feeling.

The next day Keiki confronts Sayuki, and learns that she was acting the way she was because she thought he was playing “hard to get” after not doing anything to her after she lifted her skirt for him. She was hoping for a “healthy spanking,” and took getting nothing instead (and dealing with the rising anticipation) as a form of discipline in and of itself.

Keiki decides to ask her straight up if she stole the underwear, and she owns up to it. The only problem is, she didn’t steal Cinderella’s underwear, she stole—and is presently wearing—Keiki’s boxers. If only he’d asked the right question: Did she write him a love letter with the blue underwear?

So the mystery continues, because Keiki is an awful investigator. It’s raining after school, so he walks the umbrella-less Yuika home, but gets cold and wet so she invites him in. Rather than simply ask her directly, he rifles through her underwear drawer while she’s making tea, and gets an incriminating picture of himself snapped for his trouble.

That photo all but ensures he’ll be Yuika’s slave for as long as she has it in her possession. Why he thought the risk of getting caught in her underwear drawer was lower than the risk of alienating her for asking if she’s Cinderella, I have no idea. Keiki just can’t get out of his own way here!

HenSuki – 08 – Fairy Godsister

For all his more kinky potential love interests at school, Keiki’s home life is defined by a healthily affectionate relationship with his imouto, with whom he spends the most time this week. Okay, maybe they’re a bit too close, as her reaction upon him walking in on her is almost too calm, and she seeks advice from him about the color of her underwear, and they have no problem with close physical proximity.

A quiet day at home is punctuated from a visit by Sayuki, who apologizes for jumping him at the clean-up session, but deems it the result of him showing his “pet” inadequate affection. So she has him do dog stuff to her: shaking hands, patting her head…and rubbing her belly. It’s the last thing that Mizuha walks in on.

Immediately after an “emergency family meeting” where he smooths things over, Yuika arrives, also bored, and dresses Kaiki up as a bunny girl before again removing her underwear for him. Mizuha walks in on the middle of that, necessitating another meeting.

Basically, after Keiki dealt with Ayano and Koharu, Sayuki and Yuika reassert themselves as his two primary love interests. Finally, Mao calls him, aware that the other two were planning to visit him, and asks a very cryptic question about what he’d think about her being his girlfriend.

Later, Keiki is shocked to discover Cinderella’s white underwear has vanished from under his bed. He concludes either Sayuki or Yuika took them, which makes them the two prime Cinderella suspects. I for one am not so sure about that, or his further deliberations with Ootori and Shouma.

For one thing, Mizuha could have removed the underwear. For another, either Sayuki or Yuika could have taken them and not be Cinderella. Finally, Mao’s phone call is super-suspicious. Still, Keiki is hell-bent on discovering the culprit once and for all, so he isolates Sayuki and takes her out to a theme park in order to continue his investigation.

HenSuki – 07 – Cupid Can Only Do So Much

HenSuki takes a break from Keiki’s Cinderella investigation to focus on his duties as Designated Cupid for Koharu and Shouma. After Keiki plays the third wheel, a double date is the next phase, with Keiki selecting Sayuki as the girl who’d least interfere with what they’re trying to do (Yuika might entice Shouma; Ayano might like his stink, and Mao won’t accept Shouma going out with a girl).

Everyone has a great time, except for Sayuki, who assumed Koharu would be bad a bowling (she isn’t). Koharu beats everyone, and gets to command Shouma to call her by her given name. Later, with Keiki, Koharu declares their contract complete (she deleted his photo long ago, knowing he’d keep his promise). What’s left to do, only she can do: tell Shouma the truth about her age, and confess her love.

Keiki cheers Koharu on, but as he knows Shouma so well, also has a pretty good idea how it will go. And so it goes: as soon as Koharu shows him that blue ribbon indicating she’s older, he dumps her on the spot, citing his lolicon as a disqualifying factor in dating her. Koharu runs off crying her eyes out, heartbroken.

Later, with Keiki, Shouma admits dumping Koharu broke his heart too, and was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do. Keiki understands that Shouma can date whoever he likes for whatever reason, but still thinks it’s bullshit for him to give such a lame reason for utterly crushing Koharu’s dreams, after she spent a year mustering the courage to even speak to him.

As Koharu is about to start deleting her pics of her and Shouma, Keiki comes in to cheer her up, telling her only Shouma is at fault here for being such a rotten guy beneath his good looks. The Two Minutes Hate is interrupted by a contrite Shouma, who suggests a compromise: between getting over his lolicon and dating her, he needs a “rehab” period.

Koharu hits back at him by saying he’s essentially asking for his cake (not “Keiki”) and eating it too; he doesn’t want to be exclusive, but also isn’t willing to cut her loose for good. In other words, he’s the worst! Koharu dials it back, saying she’s just getting back at him for dumping her so harshly.

But then, Shouma wonders why it’s so dark in the club room and turns on the lights, revealing the hundreds of candid photos of him Koharu has collected since falling for him. With that, Shouma has a very good reason for not wanting to date her…such obsessive affection would quickly turn to hate if things ever went south.

Still, I wonder if, like Keiki with all his admirers, Shouma will make good on staying friends with her. She could help him get over his lolicon, and he could help her…stop so aggressively stalking him? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

HenSuki – 06 – The Scent of Destiny

After Keiki rescues her on the stairs, StuCo vice-chair Fujimoto Ayano presents him with a token of her gratitude: some delicious homemade cookies. She also gets very close to Keiki and inhales deeply, which Keiki thinks is a little strange but also pretty cute. He has master stalker Koharu investigate Ayano, and comes up with nothing abnormal aside from a tendency to “gap moe”and of ending up in close-quarters situations with Keiki.

After Yuika accuses Keiki of doing terrible things—in her dream last night—Ayano invites Keiki to a clean-up session in town. Sayuki tags along as his self-appointed dog, and is soon up to mischief when she pounces on him under the bridge. Keiki, remembering what his grandfather said whenever their dog jumped on top of him, rubbing his butt is the way to show the dog who’s boss. It works on Sayuki, who has to withdraw due to overexcitement.

As for Ayano, she seems perfectly nice, neither interested in being Keiki’s slave nor making him her slave, nor writing about him and his best mate getting it on. She’s mostly just…normal. Unfortunately, the other shoe inevitably drops when she invites him to an otherwise empty StuCo office, where she’s adjusted the lighting, music, and accomodations to make Keiki very, very sleepy.

He wakes up to Ayano unzipping his pants, wanting to remove his sweaty underwear. Turns out her fetish is smell; specifically the body odor of boys. All the clues were there with her constant smelling of him and his clothes, but for her to take it to this extreme was still…deflating. Keiki himself imagined he’d finally found someone normal enough to complement his normalcy, after all.

Still, of all of the kinks the girls he’s encountered have had, Ayano’s seems the least egregious. After all, why is it so awful for Keiki if she likes his stink? People who like each other tend to be attracted to each other’s scents anyway. It’s not like she’s asking if she can punish him/if he can punish her. I daresay the ultra-normal girl Keiki says he’s after doesn’t actually exist, at least not at his school. The next best thing, then, is the most tolerable of the “weirdos”.

HenSuki – 05 – Beware the White Rabbit

In an effort to keep “Witch-senpai” from monopolizing Keiki, Yuika joins the Shodou club, even abiding by Sayuki’s directive that she dress as a bunny girl for a day. Mao also joins, but doesn’t have to wear a costume, as Sayuki is already a huge fan of her BL manga.

But Keiki has bigger problems than the three weirdos in his orbit joining forces: a fourth weirdo who took an incriminating picture of him. She intends to blackmail him, but isn’t interested in him, only his friend Shouta.

This fourth girl is Ootori Koharu, who despite being tiny and having a bunny-like aura, is actually older than Keiki, and a third-year. That makes her demand to Keiki difficult, as she’s obsessed with Shouta and wants to meet him, but Keiki knows his best mate only likes younger girls.

Thanks to some inspiration from Mizuha, Keiki crafts a plan: when the summer unis come out, which are all the same color regardless of year, he’ll have Koharu meet Shouta wearing a hoodie concealing the bow that indicates she’s older. She also addresses him as senpai. Shouta falls for it hook, line, and sinker.

Things bode well for Keiki having the photo of him groping Sayuki deleted from Koharu’s phone—though I hasten to note she didn’t actually do it yet. Instead, after another quick check on the shodou club (which is a bit too much concentrated weirdness for Keiki’s taste), he spots the vice-chairperson Fujimoto descending the stairs with a tall stack of printouts.

Predictably, one of the papers ends up under her shoe, and she slips and falls, but Keiki saves her, ending up underneath. In a subversion of cliche, Fujimoto is not mortified by their ensuing amorous position. On the contrary, she’d prefer if they stayed that way a little longer. Could Keiki have finally found his Cinderella?

HenSuki – 04 – The Desired Outcome

Last week, before I endured a week of high-altitude training, I presupposed that Nanjou Mao has a particular interest in Keiki, but considering she was neither a sadist or masochist, the particular peculiar shape that interest took remained up in the air.

Keiki gets a bit of a reprieve this week when both Yuika and Sayuki independently offer their apologies for “going too far” and urge him to “make up” with Mao. When he confronts Mao after class, she asks if he’ll hang out with her and Shouma at the arcade, like they used to.

There, we get the second hint of Mao’s interest—her first was the very characteristic Stressed Mangaka Girl Look (AKA the School Queen/Home Nerd Look popularized by Kare Kano, but I digress). When Keiki slips and is about to fall backwards, he’s caught in an inadvertent wall slam by Shouma, which excites Mao very much.

Later, while walking Mao home, Mao wonders out loud if he wants to be in a couple rather than a trio. Keiki also notices Mao staring intently at a photo of Shouma, and gets the wrong idea that she likes Shouma. But when he pries too deeply and too directly, she runs off on him, even in the pouring rain, leaving him with the rank of Sex Animal Sergeant.

Having made next to no progress, Keiki seeks advice from Mizuha, of all people, who was previously peeping at his porn stash, puts his head in her lap, and hides an annoyed look from her brother when he discusses other girls.

Still, she advises him to go all out, but act naturally, and if it doesn’t work, she’ll surely will be there to comfort him. When Keiki once more confronts a sleepy Mao after class and apologizes profusely for hurting her feelings, and unwisely offers to do “anything” to make things right.

Mao declares she wants Keiki in a relationship…not with her, but with Shouma. That’s right: Mao is a fujoshi, and her Shortcake series uses Shouma and Keiki as her character models. She wasn’t jealous that other girls were coming on to him; she was angry that they were ruining her image of Keiki as a BL model!

If he refuses to date Shouma, she threatens do everything in her power to impede all of his other romantic endeavors. So now all three of the non-sister girls in Keiki’s circle have some quirk he’s not sure he can live with. If that weren’t bad enough, someone leaves an envelope in his shoe locker containing a photo of him groping Sayuki…perhaps an prelude from one of the yet-to-be-introduced other girls?

HenSuki – 03 – The Third Way

With Sayuki and Yuika declaring themselves masochist and sadist and their intent to make Keiki their master/slave respectively, one thing becomes clear: Keiki isn’t that into this. He avoided dating girls because he felt himself to normal and boring, but now he’s having nightmares as a result of Yuika’s “punishment” last week. He doesn’t even want to go to school, but Mizuha makes him, since he’s not really ill.

Things don’t get any easier for Keiki, as he’s greeted by Yuika’s bra in his shoe locker, followed by a photo of him with his shirt open lying with Sayuki, with the implication it will be distributed if he doesn’t meet with her. When he gets there, Sayuki is dressed as a maid and handcuffed; he must fish the key out of her cleavage.

All the while, the third girl in his life (not counting his sister), Nanjou Mao, keeps watching silently from afar, her gentle blushing going completely unnoticed by Keiki. But when he tells his best mate he doesn’t believe Sayuki or Keiki are the Cinderella, that friend points out Mao’s staring, who it’s directed at, and what that entails.

Mao’s passive role thus far becomes more active by necessity when Keiki is once again summoned to the clubroom by Sayuki, but is intercepted by Yuika, who ties him up and orders him to kiss her foot or she’ll steal his first kiss on the lips. Sayuki barges in to put a stop to it, and the girls, who have known about each other’s proclivities since they met, start to bicker, with Keiki in the middle.

Enter Mao, who drags Keiki, chair, rope and all, into the hall, away from the two warring girls. He blames him for being so nice to both of them and indulging them too much, and in the process betrays that she’s been observing his interactions with them very closely (we dohear a camera click when he’s fishing out the handcuff keys…was that Mao?).

When Keiki asks why this concerns her at all, Mao has no choice but to be more direct: she just plain doesn’t like it when he’s with other girls. That could well be because she’s developed feelings for her childhood friend, but it also means a third girl has decided to try and assert control over him. Perhaps not as a formal master or slave, but it’s definitely possessive and unbidden by Keiki.

Considering how uncomfortable the other two girls’ antics have made Keiki, perhaps Mao is the “Goldilocks” answer, but first he has to determine whether her particular kink (stalking?) is more or less manageable.

HenSuki – 02 – Kohai Master

Keiki flatly turns down Sayuki’s request that he make her his pet—he’s just not sure if he’s into S&M, and probably never thought about it. But that doesn’t stop her from hanging around him, even in the library, where she gets too close and draws the ire of their mutual kohai, Koga Yuika. When Keiki admits he took Sayuki out for a parfait and performed a romantic wall slam, she’s angry, but he can cure that anger by taking her on a date.

Keiki does everything right thanks to some pointers from his little sister Mizuha: Arrive early, compliment often, go to a movie she likes, have a relaxed lunch, match her pace, let her shop till she drops. He even has the opportunity to rescue her from some leering mall trolls. Yuika gives Keiki a pat and kiss on the head as thanks and then falls asleep on his shoulder on the train home. All in all, it’s a wonderful first date for the both of them.

Yuika always kept to herself in the library and was hard to approach (which he chalks up to her mixed heritage, which…okaaay), but he was persistent in his friendliness and kindness, and her suspicion and “ice in her eyes” gradually melted away to the point they’re now much closer. But is she “Cinderella” who included a pair of underwear with her love letter? The jury’s still out.

What becomes painfully clear, however, is that Yuika is not like Sayuki, and she does not want to be his pet. In fact, when she asks him to meet her in the library storage room, she reveals that she wants to be his master, and wants him to be her slave. As an incentive, she removes her underwear and offers them to him. When he doesn’t immediately take them, she punishes him by stuffing them into his mouth. Yikes!

Suffice it to say, this development comes as something of a shock to Keiki. He was so enchanted by their conventional date, he would have been content if he died the next day. Instead, he finds himself passed out in a closet with Yuika’s underwear in his mouth, and a commando Yuika sitting astride him. They’re tricky, those tides of fortune!

Hensuki – 01 (First Impressions) – A Short Leash

Kiryuu Keiki gets to hang out with three cute girls in the Shodou Club (four if you count his imouto, which he doesn’t), but he wants a girlfriend. So imagine his shock when he finally receives a love letter from a secret admirer…along with a pair of underwear.

From there, Keiki tries to investigate which of the three girls (excluding his sister) could be the “Cinderella” to his Prince: the cool, mature senpai Sayuki (Taketatsu Ayana), the adorable blonde kohai Yuika (Hidaka Rina) or the approachable classmate Mao (Nomizu Iori).

In his interactions, the girls exhibit what could be construed as signals indicating they are the culprit, in addition to having feelings for Keiki beyond mere friendship, but nothing concrete until Sayuki happily accepts a date offer he accidentally makes when thinking out loud.

When he asks Sayuki straight up if “she has a secret” she’s not telling him about, she flees, and spends the entire next day at school very obviously avoiding him. Mao suggests he employ the “wall slam” tactic (much more effective in anime than IRL), which he does when he spots her walking home.

He tells her he knows her secret (assuming its the note and underwear); when she asks if that means he dislikes her now, he tells her it’s quite the opposite; after the initial shock, he was glad. Mind you, he makes no mention of what he’s talking about.

The next day, Keiki reports to the clubroom as requested, Sayuki makes him close his eyes, and when he opens them, she’s wearing a collar and leash,  exposed her bra, and asking to be Keiki’s pet. That’s when Keiki knows he’s in for something a lot stranger than he bargained for!

Hensuki is another show that would probably benefit from being 12-13 minutes instead of double that; the “investigation” drags on too long even if it’s also meant to introduce the main players. While a decent-looking, this show is utterly by-the-numbers and generic except for the twist at the end, which doesn’t definitively answer the question of who gave him their underwear.

This will be the story of a guy whose female acquaintances each have their own unique kinks, which they’ll reveal to him because he’s a kind and understanding dude. It is notable that the show so far exhibits a particularly soft touch when it comes to its ecchi element. But where this goes from here—and whether and how the premise can be sustained for 12 episodes—very much remains to be seen.