Hyakkano – 05 – Human for a Reason

Next girlfriend up: the Cool Beauty, Eiai Nano; the girl who is not only atop the school exam rankings, but got a perfect score; the girl who is rumored to not be a girl at all, but an advanced AI, supported by her distinctive name. But when Nano and Rentarou’s eyes meet in class and the soulmate magic happens, she’s revealed to be as human as his other girlfriends.

However, things are a bit different with Eiai. Unlike Hakari and Karane, who were fighting for his love from the start, or Shizuka, who wasn’t sure she deserved it, Eiai actively tries to suppress the love for Rentarou that’s been bestowed upon her, hiding behind cold logic and efficiency. That said, she also uses those things as an excuse to suck on Rentarou’s finger when he cuts himself during lab.

(While this is happening, Karane takes her tsundere-ness to new heights by declaring “It’s not like I care about looking at some stupid cells or anything, okay?!”, to which Hakari responds by asking her what she’s even fighting against in life. Chef’s kiss.)

When Rentarou thanks Nano later, she gives a logical explanation for an illogical action, and rejects his offer of a thank-you soda. She feels such gestures, and indeed all non-academic activities such as “having fun” to be meaningless and devoid of value. She goes on to define value as something created only by utility and benefits.

But that night, in her completely undecorated room, Nano finds herself preoccupied with thoughts about Rentarou and unable to focus, even when she writes out hundreds of digits of Pi (“Pi is Life”). The next day she decides to ask Rentarou out, but when he heartily accepts, she then rejects, hoping he would decline.

Nano is convinced in this moment that simply drawing a line in the sand and ending her love via rejection will resolve her current emotional upheaval. But Rentarou has been rejected too many times to let one more faze him. He asks Nano for one date to prove to her that romance is more than just a means to matrimony and childbirth … that it has meaning beyond that, unable to be calculated.

Nano agrees, and I believe it’s largely in part because a part of her wants to go on a date with the boy she suddenly loves, even if she’s as cold and skeptical at the theme park as she was at school. Her scathing commentary on the various illogical and absurd contraptions and practices they go through is well worth the price of admission. “Horse simulator” and “human house” were gold!

But something happens when they ride the Ferris Wheel: her acrophobia kicks in, and creates a crack in her calcified armor. Her hand trembles, and Rentarou can tell she’s afraid and sits beside her. When she grabs his sleeve, he places his hand on hers to steady it, and she interlocks her fingers with his. It’s without a doubt something Nano has never experienced, and she cannot hide her enjoyment.

After that vulnerable moment, the two go over the instant camera photos Rentarou had taken throughout the day, and to her surprise, he can discern her emotions in each one, from boredom to genuine enjoyment. Everyone always calls her emotionless, but that’s simply not the case; they just aren’t watching her closely enough.

That said, she continues to insist this day and everything that happened in it was meaningless and a waste of time, and that she gained nothing. Rentarou is happy she was straightforward as always in telling him what she thought about the date, and prepares to light the photos—which have no digital files or negatives—aflame.

But just as one corner of the photos begins to singe, Nano instinctively rips them away from the fire with a look of sheer panic. Rentarou admits he tried to burn them in order to prove to Nano that the times they had weren’t meaningless and that she did gain something. She may not understand what it is, but when she grabbed the photos it proved she didn’t want to lose it. And she can’t lose what she doesn’t have.

There’s a meaning to good times, and enjoying those times makes life meaningful. Realizing that she was too quick to conclude she wasn’t missing out on anything by avoiding fun and romance, Nano again asks Rentarou out. He accepts, and she makes it official with a surprise kiss, afterwards declaring that she intends to fulfill her desires “without fretting about the means.”

All that’s left is to introduce his fourth and newest girlfriend to the ‘cule, which at this point is a mere formality, especially considering the other three are now thick as thieves. We even get a preview of their future interactions together, as Karane chides Nano for “optimizing his death” when she suggested he kill himself with poison rather than seppuku if he doesn’t do right by them all.

The other girls are a little jealous Rentarou went on a date with Nano, something they haven’t done yet, so Hakari wastes no time suggesting a group date to a pool, which means we’ll be getting the swimsuit episode next week.

Until then, Nano’s intro was fantastic, and her calm deadpan logic hiding an aggressive assertiveness makes for a great new wrinkle to the dynamic that includes Shizuka’s quirkiness and Hakari and Karane’s chaos. I also hasten to add that Rentarou didn’t seek out to change Nano, only to introduce her to a part of life she hadn’t bothered to access, knowing the rewards would far outweigh the inefficiencies.

Hyakkano – 04 – Three Kisses

Hakari and Karane are introduced to Rentarou’s new girlfriend Shizuka and her unique mode of communication. Rentarou breaks the ice by noting one cute quirk that each of the girls have: Shizuka’s animated feet, Hakari’s finger nomming, and Karane’s hair twirling. Each comment turns each girl bright red, but are uniformly touched by how much he care for them.

There’s some friction when Shizuka learns that Rentarou has already kissed the other girls. When asked if she wants to, she states (though the app) that she’s not quite ready. Of course Rentarou is fine taking things slow while being upfront about only wanting to kiss her if and when she’s ready.

Lunch continues with Hakari and Karane competing to see who can stuff the most lunch into Rentarou’s maw, and they start bickering as usual. When Rentarou sees Shizuka being quiet in the corner, he devises a team-building plan: a game of Old Maid in which the winner of each round gets to tickle the loser.

As you’d expect, all three girls are on board with this plan. Rentarou tickles Karane first, resulting in a much steamier situation that he planned. When it’s the extremely ticklish Hakari’s turn, she has to cut the session short before she “ecsta-pees” (her term, not mine!).

Rentarou, looking forward to hearing Shizuka’s laugh, is instead surprised to find that she laughs silently, and has the app report her hearty laugher. And now that they’ve all been tickled, Hakari and Karane get real serious about beating Rentarou so they can tickle him.

But when Shizuka wins and merely gently pokes Rentarou with one finger, the exercise hits another bump. When Rentarou heads off to the bathroom, Karane calls Shizuka out for holding back on her tickling. Sensing she’s intimidated, Hakari has Shizuka’s back..

When Shizuka apologizes, then admits she was indeed holding back out of fear, Karane is upset…is she really that scary? But Shizuka isn’t scared of Karane, she’s scared of rocking the boat and causing Rentarou to compare them. In any such comparison, Shizuka wrongly believes she wouldn’t compare favorably, going on to descrube Hakari and Karane’s positive attributes.

In response to that, Hakari and Karane both make it clear that Shizuka is cute and has plenty of positive qualities herself. Hakari also makes clear that Rentarou loves them far more than they can imagine. Shizuka doens’t need to hold back, and she can call them by their first names, too.

It turns out Rentarou didn’t go to the bathroom. Instead, he saw the friction between the girls, knew that he shouldn’t be the referee, and stepped back, trusting his soulmates to work things out themselves. That’s precisely what happens, and Shizuka immediately takes her fellow girlfriends’ advise and expresses what she truly wants: to kiss Rentarou.

One he does, Shizuka ends up in a blissful daze, and then it’s Hakari’s turn to be upfront about what she wants, so she kisses Rentarou too. Karane is last as expected, but despite her tsundere-ness she doesn’t want a kiss any less than the other two. The buildup to each kiss is gorgeous in its execution, as Rentarou assures the other two that his love for them hasn’t paled in the slightest now that Shizuka is in the group.

Quite the contrary: Rentarou continues to consider all three to be the cutest girlfriends in the world. He also shows remarkable emotional intelligence for a horny high school kid, knowing that the girls would be better served sorting out their issues, as they did.

Karane was never mad at Shizuka for holding back, she was mad for her. No one should feel like they have to hold back what they truly want to say or do. I left this episode amazed by how well everything is going, how compelling this episode was despite never leaving the school rooftop, and super excited for the addition of yet another soulmate to the mix.

Hyakkano – 03 – Don’t Speak

Yoshimoto Shizuka, the tiny student librarian, has resigned herself to a life of solitude, and yet she still longs for her shining knight. Enter Aijou Rentarou, who happens to reach for the exact same romance novel as her, and we’re off to the lists.

Karane had been my favorite girlfriend so far due to her admirable yet often self-defeating commitment to tsundere values. I never thought she’d be unseated so quickly, and by someone who never utters a single word out loud! Yet Shizuka achieves the feat with ease.

I love how many parallels can be drawn between her favorite fantasy romance novel and her eventual romance with Rentarou. It starts with Rentarou finding out that Shizuka communicates through passages in the novel.

At first she believes this puts him off and she goes to find someone else to help him, but Rentarou never questions why she does this or suggests that she try speaking. He accepts her for who she is. And even when she goes overboard and suggests a hundred books, he’s eager to read them all. After all, romance is his favorite genre!

The only snag is a bureaucratic one: it takes a week to get a library card. So Shizuka gives him her favorite, which isn’t a library book but her personal possession. And it slaps. Rentarou reads all it in one night, and Shizuka brings Volume II the next day, just in case he did.

I cannot stress enough how cute these two are together. Rentarou may be aware that Shizuka is now one of his 100 soulmates after their eyes met, but the fact he must make her happy or she’ll die according to the god of love doesn’t really factor into the equation, because he’s having a blast getting to know this tiny, diligent, charming, romantic girl.

It’s important that Rentarou isn’t laboring to make a connection, the connection is simply there. When he tells her it’s amazing that she knows the novel so well she can instantly pick out passages with which to communicate, he means it. And it is amazing!

The tragic thing is, as amazing as Shizuka is, no one else has ever acknowledged it. She believes her means of communication makes her a “freak.” So when she spots Hakari and Karane flirting in their unique ways with Rentarou, her heart breaks, but she’s not surprised: of course he already has a girlfriend.

Even if he didn’t, she wouldn’t feel worthy. Her classmates called her tendency to speak through the book “creepy”, and her own mother is the one who called her a freak, brutally verbally abusing her until Shizuka is compelled to say a word out loud, but only one: “Sorry.”

While the promo art, OP, and ED serve as minor spoilers because we know she’ll end up with Rentarou, Shizuka doesn’t know that yet, and my heart hurt to see her so discouraged after he had lifted her spirits so high before.

But Rentarou foreshadowed things when he told his other two girlfriends he’d been up late a lot “getting busy”. He felt the odd can of coffee wasn’t sufficient thanks for introducing him to such a wonderful series of novels. He wanted to help Yoshimoto Shizuka in a meaningful, lasting way.

One day after school he comes to the library, and is relieved to find her there. He asks her to download an app, and then import a file to it. When she sees the file, Shizuka is shocked: it’s her favorite novel, in e-book form…but there is no e-book version!

The app turns out to be a text-to-speech program. Rentarou typed the whole damn novel into it over the last few nights. Why? With the speech (which is in her seiyu Naganawa Maria’s voice), those she’s speaking to no longer have to look at the text…they can look at her face while she’s “talking.”

Rentarou makes clear he could never ask Shizuka to speak out loud—at this point it’s part of who she is—but he hopes that this method will help her communicate better with others. When asked to give it a try, Shizuka’s first response in her new e-voice is a confession: I love you.

While she tries to then walk it back (again, using passages from the novel), Rentarou gathers her in his arms and tells her he loves her too. And again, he means it. She isn’t an obligation, nor does he want to be her shining, dragon-slaying knight. He’s simply fallen in love with her. This re-contextualizes the nature of his soulmates.

These three girls aren’t a burden or a duty. Meeting them, getting to know them, and dating them makes his life happier and fuller. And when the inevitable awkward conversation with Karane and Hakari occurs, something interesting happens. Karane initially believe he’s succumbed to brain rot, but Hakari is overjoyed and moved that he isn’t dumping them just because he’s found a new girlfriend.

As tends to be their dynamic, Hakari takes the plunge into acceptance first, and Karane follows suit. Her objections stem from her tsundere personality, but she truly does want to remain with Rentarou and Hakari, and just by being who she is, Hakari lends her the nudge she needs. The two girls complement each other, and keep each other in check.

As such, the Aijou Rentarou polycule grows from three to four with minimal pain. I can’t wait to see how Shizuka fits into and adds to their dynamic … and how eventually adding a fourth and fifth girlfriend will cause the romantic alchemy to evolve and adapt.

Spy x Family – 28 – Little Brother is Watching

In keeping with this season darting around hither and thither, this week’s episode focuses on Yor’s brother Yuri as he serves as a gatherer and reporter of information on suspected threats to Ostania in his role as lieutenant in the SSS. After a successful sting operation, he’s immediately assigned to bring down Franklin Perkins, who has taken to writing and distributing anti-Ostania propaganda.

As Yor’s brother, Yuri has demonstrated he’s a tough cookie, and also puts a great deal of care and detail into his work. As he follows, listens in on, and profiles Perkins, it starts to occur to him that his target could be motivated by concern for his family, just like he primarily does what he does to protect Yor. However, after typing this observation down, he promptly pulls the paper out of the typewriter and discards it.

With that crumpled paper, Yuri puts out of his mind any comparison to himself and his prey. This is a cold war, after all; there has to be an other to villify and bring to justic, and it’s Perkins. That said, after catching him mailing his illegal publication at the post office, he doesn’t storm Perkins’ apartment, which he shares with his frail father.

Instead, Yuri waits outside until Perkins comes out, so his father won’t see how pathetic he is. Perkins’ response cuts deep: “who is more pathetic, someone fighting the government, or a government dog?” Yuri again refuses the comparison: what Perkins did will make his dad sad; Yuri would never do anything to make Yor sad.

For his continued solid work, Yuri gets a pat on the back and promise of a fancy dinner from the Chief himself, but it’s instructive that Yuri needs to stop by Loid and Yor’s just to see his sister. Seeing her, and having his head patted by her, soothes a soul that is twisted into knots every day at his job. Even Anya thinks to comfort him after reading his mind…until his mind becomes full of “Yors” and hearts and she’s grossed out!

That’s it for the episode proper, which only takes up about two-thirds of the standard runtime. The rest is given over to a bonus “flirty” episode of Bondman in which he woos every woman he comes across, friend and foe, until he has a harem of eight women following him along missions.

It’s a random but hilarious little mini-ep, and I dug the retro resolution and palette. There are also three little omakes after this involving Anya and Damian, the highlight of which is Anya hearing all the boys in the pool deciding to pee in it, and swearing off pools forever. I’ll give this SxF this: it didn’t lack for variety!

Hyakkano – 02 – First Kiss Conundrum

On their second day of being throuple, Hakari and Karane get Rentarou to start calling them by their first names and holding hands as they walk to school together going on about how perfect the weather is. They arrive to a harrowing scene: the perverted vice principal chasing down a boy and giving him a deep, sloppy French kiss. When Rentarou states he’s yet to kiss a girl as they’re his first girlfriends, Hakari and Karane enter into a battle for that first kiss.

Their first opportunities come up during lunch on the rooftop. Hakari starts by feeding Rentarou tamagoyaki, and a panciked Karane jams a cookie into his eye. Hakari then produces a box of Pocky (called “Bocky” here) with the hope that sharing one with him will lead to a kiss.

Karane sniffs out Hakari’s intentions and tries to get in there, but ends up poking his other eye. The two then see his two red eyes and think he might be sick, and are desperate to check him for a fever. Whenever Karane gets too close, Hakari bounces her away with her chest.

When Rentarou realizes they’ve both been trying to kiss him, but the core of their conflict is who gets to go first, he devises an extremely convoluted solution involving iPods playing “My First Kiss” on max volume and repeat, blindfolds, and sets of dice which which will sufficiently randomize the order of the kisses.

This goes pretty well…if manic hijinks were the intended result. The blindfolded Rentarou has to grope around and ends up in compromising positions with Hakari, while a cat deciding to play with the ribbon on Karane’s panties leads her to think he’s pawing her, so she clobbers him with every attempt. All of this is as hilarious as it is lovingly drawn and animated.

When this strategy fails, Hakari and Karane continue to bicker with one another, until Rentarou runs off, deciding that if the question of who gets to kiss him first causes so much strife, he’ll throw his first kiss in the trash by running in the halls and getting nabbed by the perverted vice principal.

Once again, Harane’s athleticism and wrestling acumen come in handy restraining the vice principal before her blender blade of a tongue can shoot down his gullet. Hakari also helps out by calling for an official from the education board who would get the principal fired for kissing students.

Hakari and Karane may vary differently in a great many things, but they’re alike in their deep love of Rentarou, so rather than letting him be assaulted by the vice principal, they each declare simultaneously that they’d rather the other girl kiss him first. Moved by their selflessness, Rentarou hugs them both.

The ultimate solution ends up being the simplest, and one Rentarou thought up first, but didn’t think would work because the girls were at loggerheads: they’ll simply kiss him at the exact same time. While initially reticent due to the fact they’ll also be kissing each other, Hakari and Karane agree that it’s the best solution, since at no point does either girl doubt how much the other girl loves him.

So the three take each others’ hands and lock lips at the same time, cementing their status as a legit three-person polycule (and possibly summoning a UFO). But it won’t last long in this state, because when the three are in the library, Rentarou reaches for the same book as a petite blue-haired girl. When their eyes meet, she is confirmed to be his third of 100 soul mates. To which I say, Let’s freakin’ go!

Kanojo mo Kanojo – 01 (First Impressions) – Good Faith Violation

Saki and Nagisa seem like nice people and are very cute, coming straight form the Quintessential Quintuplets school character design—not surprising as Tezuka Productions and director Kuwahara Satoshi helmed QQ’s first season. There’s another QQ connecting thread in a lad trying to juggle multiple relationships with very different personalities while also trying to figure out who he is.

The main problem is that our protagonist Naoya is a loud, unpleasant, incurable boob whose hollow-headedness and aw-shucks feigned righteousness aren’t nearly enough to excuse his conduct throughout this episode. Saki is clearly NOT into him dating someone else—Period! End of Story!—but he blows past her boundaries like a rom-com Tazmanian Devil, while also using the improbably keen and willing Nagisa as a cute prop.

In a just world, Saki and Nagisa would go off and be good friends together, leaving Naoya in punitive solitude to reflect on his many, many missteps. Instead the show seems primed to reward him again and again for his despicable behavior. We know from the jump that he mercilessly hassled Saki into agreeing to date him, as if the idea of “good old fashioned persistence” or “not taking no for an answer” were noble qualities in a young man.

To then present to Saki an almost comically ideal second girl he just met and corner her with the cruel ultimatum of “I’m either dating both of you or just her” just screams bad faith. Naoya can go on about being “upfront” and “honest” all he wants; bottom line is he’s a selfish jerk for putting Saki through everything he has. I just plain don’t like the guy, there’s no indication he’s going to become any more palatable. Even if he did, I’d resent the responsibility of nurturing his redemption foisted upon his girlfriends.

A anime that earnestly explores how three young people come to terms with their polyamory and navigate the difficult waters of that practice is an interesting, worthwhile concept. It doesn’t even have to take it super seriously! All I ask is that it approach that concept from a remotely informed angle, and not just freaking wing it. Or heck, at least be fair: have Nagisa or Saki present Naoya with a second boyfriend!

Instead, Girlfriend, Girlfriend, like its pushy MC, noisily demands we accept its non-negotiable, unreasonable, unbalanced, and above all disrespectful terms, for the sake of some kooky fun. I just don’t think I have the patience for it.