Hyakkano – 01 (First Impressions) – The Luckiest Telephone Pole in the Universe

Aijou Rentarou has absolutely no luck in love. From the time he was eight months old to the time he graduates from middle school, he’s been rejected one hundred times by girls he’s confessed to. His Friend, only referred to as “Friend A”, can’t figure why that is, as Rentarou seems to be quite a catch.

The problem isn’t exactly him, but a divine snafu. When he makes an offering and prays at the shrine of the god of love, said god emerges from the offering box to helpfully explain that he will indeed experience the opposite in high school: rather than one hundred rejections, he’ll have one hundred soulmates.

These scenes don’t simply unfold as-is, but with a healthy amount of stylized cutaways, references to popular culture (i.e. Tokyo Ghoul) and lots of lovely, lovely fourth-wall breaking. And that’s key. The rapid-fire dialogue has a satisfying rhythm. More often than not, it’s just funny as hell, and even the rare times it isn’t, it’s fun as hell to watch.

Rentarou’s first day of high school arrives, and when he bumps into two girls, they fall for him the moment they lay eyes on him. One of them, the pink-haired Hanazono Hakari, fakes a twisted ankle so he’ll help her to the nurse’s office. The orange-haired Inda Karane is a lot more stanoffish.

But be they tsundere or yandere, both are now totally smitten with Rentarou, and cling to him like cicadas to a telephone pole. I loved that metaphor, and the visual that accompanied it. I also love how Rentarou becomes the straight man to Hakari and Karane’s lively antics.

Rentarou is obviously quite unaccustomed to girls fawning over him, but he certainly seems to like it! That said, he’s always been a kind and thoughtful sort, so when he sees the girls searching intently for a pink four-leaf clover (per school legend about how finding one leads to true love), he buys them drinks to thank them.

Karane turns out to be a super tsundere, going heavy on hmmphs! and statements that start with “It’s not like ________!” Still, she accepts the drink and is clearly overjoyed to receive it, but runs off in a snit. Hakari also shows off the extent of her obsessive scheming by insisting she can’t drink more than 175ml so she can get an indirect kiss from Rentarou, only to get overexcited and spill the can.

When Rentarou offers her a hanky to wipe the spilled drink off her skirt, Hakari instead takes his hand in hers and confesses, right then and there. She loves him and wants to be his girlfriend. Harane returns (with one of every kind of drink from the vending machine since she wanted to repay him), sees that Hakari stole a march on her, and has no choice but to admit she loves Rentarou and wants to be his girlfriend too. And so, Rentarou must make a choice…so he calls for a commercial break!

He begs them to give him the night to deliberate, and visits the shrine god again for guidance. The god admits that he kinda screwed up Rentarou’s divine paperwork while he was distracted watching Castle in the Sky one night (such a great film). Thus, while virtually everyone else in the world is only fated to have one soulmate (or none), Rentarou has one hundred.

Furthermore, he warns him that if any of his soulmates fail to enter into a loving relationship with him, misfortune will befall them and eventually lead to death. Suffice it to say, his visit to the shrine only further complicated his conundrum.

Rentarou initially decides he’ll simply turn them both down, then meet with each separately to say he only did so to let the other one down gently so he could date them. But again, he’s a good dude, doesn’t feel right decieving them, and knows all too well the sting of rejection.

So instead, he meets with them the next day, caked with dirt, to declare that he loves them both want wants them both to be his girlfriends. While he admits that kinda sounds like two-timing, he promises he’ll be good to them and make them the happiest girlfriends they can be.

As a token of his commitment, he searched the clover bed all night and found not one but two four-leafs for each of them. Hakari takes the lead and accepts being two-timed as preferable to rejection. Being Rentarou’s girlfriend is all that matters. Harane grudgingly concurs, and just like that, he’s in a polycure with two cute, quirky girlfriends. Two down, ninety-eight to go!

Hyakkano pleasantly surprised me both with its effective comedy, charming characters, and Love is War! style visual density and inventiveness. There’s just so much going on, both in what’s thrown on the screen and in everyone’s voices. Throw in the other three girls in the promo art, each with their own distinct traits and quirks, and this looks poised to become even more absurd and fun as it goes.

Sore ga Seiyuu! – 12

Ichigo’s foot is hurt, and though she tries to hide it, both Futaba and Rin know it’s hurt. The success of the concert is in jeopardy, but both of them care more about her health. Ichigo, not wanting to let everyone down, assures her she can do it, and makes the others promise not to tell Kaibara. Her foot, her terms, it would seem.

However, after watching Hocchan on TV and bumping into her at the studio (not recognizing her at first because of her disheveled off-stage appearance), Futaba gets yet another invaluable piece of advice, this time about units: everything is shared amongst everyone, be it happiness, hardship, or pain. That means the foot isn’t just Ichigo’s problem and Ichigo’s call, it’s the unit’s. Rin agrees with Futaba, and Ichigo tells Kaibara, who naturally freaks out.

However, the Earphones haven’t gotten this far without overcoming hardship (or lack of natural dancing talent, in Futaba’s case.) So Ichigo gets taped up, and both Rin and Futaba will pick up her slack in the dancing department, rearranging choreography to lessen the strain on Ichigo’s foot, doing a slow song while seated, etc. Konno even finds a clever way to conceal Ichigo’s swollen foot: fuzzy leg warmers!…Which at least to me call to mind the soft padding of earphones.

In order to balance out the proportions of their look (with their $5000 outfits…geez Kaibara!), they also go out wearing bunny ears, and while the first tense few moments after they take the stage they worry they’ll be laughed right back off of it, but the full house of nearly 500 (480 to be exact) end up digging the cuteness.

The trio goes out with everything they have, powered by Futaba’s pre-concert motivational speech that was the culmination of everything she’s learned from working with pros like Hocchan, and while Ichigo stumbles, she doesn’t fall, because Futaba and Rin take hold of her and keep her upright. The unit even gets a call for an encore.

It’s an unforgettable night for the Earphones; far more of a success than any of the girls could have hoped for, especially considering the setback with Ichigo’s foot. But they pulled it off with aplomb, and it was immensely rewarding to watch them do so.

Sore ga Seiyuu! – 11

The “most helpful” short review of SgS on MAL describes the show to a T, portraying working life reality without resorting to tropes, with adorable characters with regular human flaws and worries, and situations relatable to viewers of all professions despite the unique seiyu milieu. An apt description of a show that’s remained on my Summer watchlist due to its uniqueness, honesty, and heart.

This week, Futaba neither wants to be left behind nor hold her unit-mates back, so when she gets a “program reg”, a semi-steady bit role in a new anime, she tries her hardest…and ends up trying a little too hard for her precious voice. She’s not the only one who tried to hard, and she isn’t the last in this episode about a very important part of a Seiyu’s job and life: self care.

Shiraishi Ryoko (whom I know best as the lovely Himeko in SKET Dance) gives Hocchan a run for her money as the best cameo on the show to date, because the episode positions her both as another seasoned veteran for Futaba to look up to (and Futaba is struck by her beauty, vocal versatility, and preparation) and as a voice of earnest caution against working to hard at the cost of one’s health.

All jazzed up about her boisterous young boy voice role, Futaba strains her voice, and all the seiyus around her suggest various remedies. Shiraishi gives her honey herb cough drops, but to no avail; the next day Futaba comes down with a cold. Thanks to her manager’s wrangling, she’s still able to record her lines, but must do so separately, losing precious hours amongst her peers in the studio.

She comes back, none the worse for wear, and Shiraishi is there to offer more support, and life advice I presume comes straight from the real Shiraishi’s life. She thinks she was about Futaba’s age when she hurt her throat, but it wasn’t a cold, it was vocal cord nodules, the result of being so excited and busy with her voice work she never gave her throat a chance to rest and heal. As a result, she needed surgery, which no other seiyu she knew had ever undergone.

She was thus understandably worried about the operation, but she had no choice: for Shirashi, then and now, being a seiyu was her life. There was nothing else she wanted to do, and her talent and popularity proved it was the right path. She might’ve over-scared Futaba a bit, but the lesson remains: don’t get too caught up and push too hard too fast. Futaba also wants to life a seiyu’s life, so she has to take care of her voice. That means going at her own pace, even if that pace is slower than Ichigo’s and Rin’s.

The episode’s second half chronicles Earphones’ preparation for their first real concert, a two-hour affair at a 500-seat venue. Only problem is, after one week they’ve only sold twelve tickets, and they only have three songs to their name. So in addition to stepping up their marketing and promotion for the concert in a big way, the unit also has to learn a bunch of cover songs to fill the time.

Ichigo commits to writing up the choreography for those songs, and becomes an idol possessed of a fire that makes Futaba and Rin tremble. After days of hard dancing, Ichigo and Futaba are a lot sorer than Rin, owing to being older…yet still young, they protest!

They make a promotional push by pounding the pavement and distributing flyers at the popular Anitumn Festival (well, outside the festival, anyway) and before long, their venue is around halfway sold out, a great improvement from twelve takers. With Futaba’s newfound devotion to going at her own pace, she remains positive while working to master Ichigo’s dance moves.

Everything is coming together, and the group is in the highest of spirits, which bodes well for the success of the concert, as they’ll be wearing their hearts on their sleeve up on that stage before however many hundreds of people attend. But then Ichigo injures her ankle tripping on a bottle of water. Oh mannn….

Just like that, Earphone’s concert is in serious jeopardy, demonstrating that whatever your profession, even if you do take care of yourself, shit still happens; shit you can’t predict or prepare for. Here’s hoping it’s not a bad sprain, and if it is, the unit doesn’t let the setback douse their spirits.