Hyakkano – 12 (Fin) – Nothing Like the Real Thing

Turns out Hahari did not invite Rentarou to her bedroom to “deflower” him, though the opening shots and sounds they make together certainly lend that impression. When the other girls enter, they find that she simply wanted to dress him up like a gyaru, which causes a “hurricane of hngh” in the others, who profess their undying gratitude to Hahari for her good works.

Rentarou is so embarrassed that he passes out, but Hahari knows just the trick to wake up a sleeping beauty: a dashing Prince Charming, i.e. Nano in drag. This results in “Droolception,” starting with Hahari and working its way down the line of girls. When Rentarou steps out in a huff to take his bath, Hahari and Hakari prepare to peep on him, and it doesn’t take much for Karane to join them.

Nano and Kusuri are also game; only Shizuka is against such an indecent activity. Nano wraps her up in a sheet like a burrito, but thanks to her determination (and gravity) she actually manages to roll into the bath and (inadvertently) see Rentarou’s little Rentarou first. This is after Kusuri’s first attempt to peep only scared the bejeesus out of Rentarou, but at first mistakes the soaked Shizuka for Sadako.

While everyone is playing cards together, Hahari suddenly reacts as if she remembered something, and excuses herself without explanation. Rentarou goes after her, and learns she went to light incense and pray at the shrine of her first love.

Because she never stopped loving him, she’s struggling with loving Rentarou, but as someone who loves all six of his girlfriends the same, he hugs her and tells her it’s just as okay for her to love two men. They then share their first kiss. It’s a lovely and surprisingly moving scene, helped in no small part by Sumippe’s excellent vocal performance.

That night while everyone’s asleep, Karane initially fumes when Hakari curls up next to Rentarou. But when she tearfully expresses how scared and miserable she was at the prospect of never being with him again (which was this very same night!) and Rentarou comforts her with a kiss and a promise he’ll never leave her, Karane decides to let her have this night.

Later on, Karane and Hakari end up making out in their sleep, each imagining the other as Rentarou. I loved Rentarou’s wholesome reaction to how close the two are.

When Rentarou heads to the bathroom he encounters the ghost of Hakari’s dad in the hall. While he’s ready to take Rentarou to task, he notes that the boy isn’t scared of him. Rentarou explains that from what he knows about Hakari and Hahari, he must have been a kind, warm, and loving guy, so there’s no need to fear him.

Rentarou and Hakari’s father end up shaking hands and vowing to watch over Hakari and Hahari, but Rentarou does such a good job convincing him that they’ll be alright without him, he actually passes on to the afterlife. Rentarou wakes up in the morning on the floor of the hall.

With that, everyone parts ways to get in uniform and head to school—turns out it was a school night!—but there’s one more surprise: Hahari bought the school so she could head up the school board and thus stay close to Rentarou. Rentarou had already hiked to Hahari’s mansion for his lunch break, so he has to hustle back to school.

As he does, he passes by several girls who I’m sure will be his next soulmates once they lock eyes. As he reaches the rooftop to find Shizuka, Hahari, Hakari, Karane, Nano, and Kusuri waiting to eat lunch with him, I couldn’t help but feel excited about what’s to come. A second season has been confirmed, so that rooftop, along with any future mansion sleepovers, are about to get a lot more crowded!

Hyakkano – 11 – Truth and Tummies

In what is perhaps a demonstration of how a full-on adult soulmate is able to function, Hahari actually tables her sudden confession and request to go out with Rentarou, and instead switches back to refusing to let a five-timer anywhere near Hakari. If he truly loves her, he’ll have to prove it with a state-of-the-art rich person’s lie detector chair.

Rentarou wants to ensure the chair works properly, so Karane has to try it out first. This results in her having to admit that she’s an A-cup, but also that it’s a lie to say she just loves Rentarou. Even the titular daidaidaidaidai isn’t enough! She has to declare that she loves Rentarou more than anything in the world.

When Rentarou jumps in the chair to reciprocate his love for Karane, Hahari is so frustrated she’s ready to ditch the chair altogether, resulting in her, Karane, and Rentarou breaking the fourth wall with talk of using up too much runtime and a special end credits sequence that can’t be skipped. (And don’t skip it, it includes a version of Boticelli’s Primavera featuring the cast, including Hahari!)

When guards burst in to report Hakari is preparing to throw herself out a window, Karane puts Hahari in a hold and tells Rentarou to go get their girl. While Karane said she can’t possibly keep loving him while she and the others wait around forever for him to return, she admits she was wrong: she can and will wait forever for him, as long as he and Hakari return.

When Rentarou goes to Hakari, she tells him she can’t live a life where she and her mother are bound to him forever. But no matter what the conditions are, Rentarou can’t imagine anything worse than living life without Hakari. There’s no way she could ever make him unhappy.

When Hakari’s adrenaline wears off and she gets vertigo and slips out the window, Rentarou just manages to grab hold of her, but is unable to pull her up. All he can do is protect her head and kick off the wall so that they fall into the surprisingly deep rich person’s fountain.

Nano, Kusuri and Shizuka jump in after them, with Nano rescuing Rentarou and Hakari while Kusuri rescues Shizuka. Rentarou holds Hakari tight, relieved beyond belief that she’s okay, and letting her know he’ll never let her go.

Karane and Hahari arrive, and Karane rushes to Hakari and slaps her for trying such a reckless stunt before crying right beside her. Hahari, seeing now that Rentarou wasn’t lying about his love for Hakari and proving that he’ll make her happy even if it kills him, prostrates herself and formally gives him her blessing to date her daughter.

Rentarou, moved by Hahari’s own sacrifice (willing to be hated by Hakari if it meant keeping her safe from an unsavory character) has her raise her head, takes her hands in his, and declares that he promises to make both her and Hakari happy. That’s right, he did not forget Hahari declaring her love and asking him out, and he accepts.

While this will surely create some new complications for the polycule, Hahari tries to keep things simple for now, by having everyone spend the night and having a good hot soak with her new co-girlfriends. When Karane makes a tactical retreat from all the bazongas, she encounters Rentarou in the room, and he notices her belly is exposed.

Noting Rentarou’s extreme reaction, she realizes that he must’ve enjoyed their close contact during their climb over the lasers as much as she did (but would never admit unless on that lie detector chair). She decides to get some payback by shoving Rentarou onto the bed, lifting up his shirt, and pressing her cheek into it. This inadvertently puts them in their most hot-and-heavy situation yet, only for it to be doused by the sudden arrival of Kusuri. (I’ve since learned the manga gets even hotter and heavier with this scene, as Karane decided to start licking Rentarou’s navel).

After the bath, Hahari dresses the girls up in pajamas, as Hakari says her mom loves cute things and can’t help the urge to dress them up to look even cuter. The cuteness is so much in fact that Hahari has a nosebleed and gets light-headed, so Rentarou escorts her down the hall to get some water.

That’s when Hahari demonstrates that she’s every bit her daughter’s mother, by using this opportunity to invite Rentarou to her room. Something tells me they’ll be interrupted long before things go too far, as with Rentarou and Karane this week.

It was only a matter of time before sex was brought up. We’ll see if and how Hyakkano handles it in the first season finale of a series I’ve gotta think will get more seasons as the number of soulmates increases.

Hyakkano – 10 – Fight for Your Right to Poly

Once over the fence, the Rentarou Family puts their hands together, ready to rescue their beloved partner Hakari from the clutches of her overbearing, stinking rich mom. Karane delivers the running joke of putting the prefix “rich people’s-” before everything they see.

In addition to being helped out by a fluffy white rich people’s cat who the guards assume is the one sneaking around and tripping alarms, each girl contributes towards achieving the goal of getting to Hakari, starting with Nano firing pebbles at a lock to open it, splitting her nail until it bleeds.

Karane scolds her for taking things so far, but this is more than just Nano wanting to repay Hakari for saving her from bros at the pool. She wants to save Hakari.

Shizuka is the same way, so when a huge rich person’s guard dog confronts them and she’s too paralyzed with fear to escape, she quotes Gandalf (“Fly, you fools!”) and literally lays down to await her fate. However, as Nano explains, the dog’s instinct to protect the weak and cute (e.g. puppies, babies, and Shizuka) overrode its territorial instincts.

Kasuri rolls Shizuka a vial of sleeping drug for the dog, but Shizuka misunderstands and drinks it, passing out instantly. Fortunately, the affectionate dog licks some of the drug that spilled from her lips and passes out as well, allowing everyone to re-enter the house.

Kusuri’s drugs also play a role in the next obstacle: a Mission: Impossible-style laser trap that even Tom Cruise could navigate. She opens a piece of air mail and gives Rentarou some infrared eye drops (which also makes him blind to the rest of the visual spectrum until they wear off).

The others notice that the envelope was addressed to America, and was for her admittance to the dream research job. Nano sacrificed a nail and Shizuka simulated a puppy, and now Kusuri is sacrificing something precious to her because getting Hakari back is more important.

With his creepy-looking infrared eyes, Rentarou notices the lasers only go up to the bottom of the gaudy chandeliers. If it were a narrower corridor, he could shimmy up alone, but this means it’s time for Karane to shine. Thanks to innate strength that, if we’re honest, probably far exceeds Rentarou’s, Nano lashes them together in a not-quite 69 position; let’s call it a 34.5!

It was at this point that the challenge was the two of them being in perfect sync, which called to mind Shinji and Asuka in Eva, but Rentarou doesn’t have any doubt, and sure enough, they do fine traversing the red beams. The only issue that presents itself is when Karane’s shirt rides up and Rentarou’s cheek presses rhythmically into her tummy, making for a far more stimulating trip across the lasers than she had bargained for.

Once they’re across, Rentarou asks Nano, Shizuka and Kusuri to head back outside, stay hidden, and await their return … and he promises he and Karane will return with Hakari. They open the door to find her crying as she’s looking at the family photos they took at the flower park.

Alas, the door to Hakari’s room is rigged with a “Hakari is escaping” alarm, and within moments Rentarou and Karane are surrounded by guards who then give way to their boss: Hanazono Hahari (voiced imperiously by Uesaka Sumire)

Hakari despairs in her bedroom, knowing that Rentarou will never stop trying to make her happy and her mom will never stop trying to stop him. Thus they’ll forever be a millstone around his neck. What she doesn’t realize is that Rentarou wouldn’t have it any other way. He loves her, and won’t let her go, come what may.

That said, with no more physical obstacles to overcome and no more tricks up his sleeve, all that’s left is for Rentarou to try to convince Hahari to give them her blessing with his words. Hahari asks about his eyes, he assures her they’re not Mystic Eyes of Perception. But the fact of the matter is, he can’t see her yet.

Hahari assures him mere words won’t work, for she’s not doing this out of blind rage. When she learned the love of her life was doomed to die young, she underwent artificial insemination and pregnancy at the tender age of 13. Hakari was born healthy, and Hahari doted upon her not just as her daughter but as a “keepsake” of the person she lost. Hakari could never totally replace her first love in her heart.

Hahari knows that her daughter, like her, is one to fall completely head-over-heels in love and become blind to all else—though we know Hakari’s love isn’t just limited to Rentarou, but the rest of the Family. But because her mom thinks they’re the same, she wants to protect her from the pain, grief that will inevitably come if she goes with a “five-timer” like Rentaoru.

Then something happens that neither Hahari nor Karane expect: the story moves him to tears. This comes as no surprise to us, as we know him to be a deeply empathetic person. Tell him a sad story, and he will surely become sad! He cries so much, it washes the infrared drops out of his eyes, and his normal vision is restored.

This happens just in time for him to lock eyes with Hahari and KRRACK!, she’s suddenly head-over-heels in love. Sumippe breaks out a different voice (one more akin to her Nagatoro-san) to express Hahari’s intense love for and desire to go out with Rentarou.

While it remains to be seen how the 29-year-old mother of one of his existing girlfriends fits into the Rentarou Family, whatever comes next, the number of GFs has suddenly but inevitably grown to six, and I have zero doubt Rentaro will love her as much as everyone else.

Hyakkano – 09 – Rentarou Family Values

This week begins with a distressing sight: Hakari being told something by her mother…something clearly not good. Thing brighten up considerably at the Lovezono flower part where Rentarou is on a date with everyone. There’s also an annual bouquet toss, and the winner gets to pose with their sweetheart in wedding attire.

This one of Hakari’s childhood dreams, but ever the schemer, she’s got a plan. First, she ensures her fellow girlfriends aren’t in direct competition for the bouquet. They’ll work together to beat the others, then draw lots afterwards. Everyone agrees, Kusuri scales up, and Shizuka serves as cheerleader.

The bouquet toss is serious business. The one who throws it, the Vice Principal, is a champion shot putter, while the leader of bike gang Gorilla Syndicate uses her soldiers as projectiles.

After valiantly shielding Hakari from one of them, Karane demonstrates how easily she can slip into a Yankee persona and grapples with the gang leader, buying everyone time and making them swoon.

One of the gang’s tactics is to use their flags to create a mini-hurricane, which ends up launching poor Shizuka into the sky. Fortunately, that puts her in perfect position to catch the bouquet. Unfortunately, she lets go of the towel sail keeping her in the sky.

Hakari, Nano, and Kusuri try to catch her, but she bounces off their chests, and Rentarou has to save her with a basebal slide. Victory is theres, and so now comes the drawing of the lots … and Hakari knows which one is the red-tipped one.

Hakari’s grand scheme backfires when Nano says they should all draw at once, but luck is on her side, as she ends up the winner anyway. When Kusuri sobs and protests, Hakari’s expression suddenly falls, and she decides to give her turn up. Kusuri thanks her with a hug, but then rejects Hakari’s offer. She loves Kusuri too and wants her to wear the wedding garb.

She does, and she looks glorious, and even sweeter, all six take the photo together, and look every bit like a “Rentarou Family.” Then as the others go ahead, Hakari thanks Rentarou for making her dream to catch the bouquet come true. She only asks him for one more thing … to break up with her.

To quote Anya from Spy x Family: SHOCK! Well, not entirely. That opening scene that played out in the dark and had Hakari looking distraught did not bode well, and I had me presuming Hakari would ask to be broken up with. I’m not even surprised Hyakkano is suddenly taking a darker turn, since it’s already proven adept at balancing zany comedy and genuine heartfelt drama.

Thanks to Hakari mailing him a sexy photoshoot, Rentarou knows her address, and learns she lives in a palatial estate. He spots Hakari in the window and shouts out, only to barely miss being caught by a security guard. Hakari calls him on the house landline, and tells him it’s over; she “fell out of love” with him, and he should forget about her.

We know full well even if Rentarou wanted to, he can’t; he must make all his soulmates happy. He also doesn’t buy her lie. He wants the truth, so Hakari gives it to him: her overbearing, controlling, ruinously wealthy and powerful mother found out she was in a polycule, rejected it, and is pulling Hakari out.

Her mom interrupts the phone call and cuts it short, warning Rentarou to stay away from her daughter, since she can squash a teenage bug like him anytime. When he protests, the security guard carries him away, telling him there are things in the world he can’t change.

When Hakari’s mother (voiced by Uesaka Sumire) threatens to punish Rentarou by senting him somewhere far, far, away where no one will ever see him—knowing full well he’ll be torn from all who love him and not caring—Hakari prostrates herself, begging her mom for mercy.

Rentarou walks home feeling powerless, useless, and awful. But when he looks down and spots a four-leaf clover, all the good times with Hakari come rushing back, and he realizes he’s giving up way too easily. He may not be able to change anything in the world, but he can change this.

That night he meets with Karane, Shizuka, Nano, and Kusuri, and declares his intention to break into Hakari’s palace, rescue her, and go into hiding. All he can tell them is that someday they’ll come back to the rest of them. Karane calls this what it is: some bullshit.

This isn’t just Rentarou’s fight. They all love Hakari, and she belongs to all of them. Her mother is hurting them too. They all agree that they’ll be accompanying Rentarou to Hakari’s house. No doubt Karane will provide muscle, Shizuka literary persuasion and cuteness, Nano an efficient, logical strategy, and Kusuri All the Drugs.

The ending postcard memory says it all: this family is on a mission to retrieve one of their cherished members, without whom they are not whole. Hakari may believe she and everyone else are powerless against her mom’s whims and yen. But I will never bet against this group when they’re at their best. Money can’t buy you love—the most powerful weapon in the world!

Hyakkano – 07 – Love is the Drug

Rentarou has a horny girlfriend in Hakari, a tsundere in Karane, a shy bookworm in Shizuka, and a logical, cool beauty in Nano. We’ve seen her in the OP and ED, and this week it’s finally time to introduce Soulmate #5: the eccentric chemistry buff, Yakuzan Kusuri. He’s being led down the hall by the others when he and Kusuri happen to lock eyes in passing.

However, their formal introduction isn’t without a few bumps, as he initially made eye contact with a voluptuous beauty, and when he visits the chemistry lab he finds cute tiny girl akin to Shizuka instead. We soon learn that while Kusuri loves Rentaro, drugs are a close second, as evidenced when she has him drink a drug that magnetizes him.

She drinks the opposite polarity magnet drug and ends up sticking to him, which is when Rentarou learns something else: due to her obsession with experimentation, Kusuri abhors wasting time leaving the lab to use the restroom…so she wears diapers.

When the magnetization wears off, Kusuri shows Rentarou a number of other colorful drugs, then confesses to him and asks to go out with him. When he starts wretching into the sink she’s crestfallen, but he clarifies that he doesn’t want to be under the influence of drugs when he accepts her feelings.

That said, in addition to the magnet drug, his tea contained a love drug, which affects him adversely and causes Bocchi-like convulsions. Thinking fast, Kusuri takes the neutralizing drug into her mouth then administers it to him with a kiss.

He recovers, but to Kusuri’s shock he still seems to be infatuated with her, turning them both beet red. She prostrates herself and again asks to go out with him, but both hair and body start to grow until she take on the busty form of the woman he first saw. Naturally, they’re one and the same.

The neutralization drug also cancelled out the failed immortality drug she takes to shrink to a smaller size, shorter hair, and improves her vision, which makes her lab work easier. Rentaro learns that she’s actually a third-year and thus his senpai. But now that he knows this is the girl he locked eyes with, he officially accepts her as his new girlfriend.

If Kusuri has a problem being one of Rentarou’s five girlfriends, she doesn’t bring it up, and the others are used to this by now, so she’s cordially welcomed. She’s even brought personalized drugs for her new polycule partners. Talk of a bust-enhancing drug angers Karane until she hears how Rentarou described her to Kusuri (slender, beautiful, cute and shy).

When given a “hot stuff” drug, Hakari imagines her already ample bosom and bum growing to absurd size (with visuals akin a similar scenario in the 2000 horror film Faust: Love of the Damned of all things) but instead the drug makes her skin literally hot—so hot it melts off her clothes and underwear. As Kusuri puts it, nothing’s hotter than your birthday suit.

Rentarou comes to the rescue with his used P.E. uniform, the smell of which Hakari enjoys a bit too much (though she still rocks the bell out of it). Thinking of her love of fiction, Kusuri provides Shizuka a drug that gives her fantasy bunny ears that are sensitive in a specific way Rentarou doesn’t fully grasp.

Nano takes a drug that lengthens her hair and make sit prehensile, allowing her to grab Rentarou and draw him close with a kiss. She has other doses, but warns a side effect is baldness. Rentarou will love Nano with or without hair, but admits he loves her hair too, so Nano ditches the extra doses, in an instance of logic giving way to love.

Once all the drugs wear off, the newly-formed sextet some afternoon tea. Kusuri provided to different kinds for Rentarou and the others, but when he insists she go to the bathroom when she has a call of nature, she trusts them not to get them mixed up.

However, while she assumed the girls would consider the slender, “chic” red Thermos their tea, they pick the “utilitarian” blue Thermos because it’s bigger and there are more of them. So when she returns, the other four girls end up sipping tea meant for Rentarou.

This isn’t just a different blend: it’s a potion that was intended to give Rentarou an uncontrollable urge to kiss her. As the girls turn feral one by one, she further explains that it’s not meant for girls, and turns them into vicious “kiss zombies” with superhuman strength and speed.

When all hell starts breaking loose, Kusuri is again crestfallen, thinking it’s happening again … I’m screwing everything up. We see a flashback to everyone in her chem club eventually abandoning her, likely due to her eccentricity. But what she’ll come to learn is that everyone in this group is weird in their own way, and once you’re Rentarou’s girlfriend, he’ll never let you go.

The task before him and Kusuri is to administer the neutralizing drug to all four girls within one hour. If they don’t, they’ll be in this kiss-ravenous frenzy for the rest of their days. The episode ends on a cliffhanger and postcard memory, but I think I already know the solution: Rentarou simply has to have a mouthful of neutralizing drug for when each of the girls inevitably kisses him.

Kusuri marks yet another stretch into heightened reality and absurdity, as her drugs are essentially magic potions. That said, she’s not simply kooky comic relief, as I empathized with her desire to share her passion with others and avoiding loneliness, and her love for Rentarou (and his for her) is as genuine and endearing as everyone else’s.

The question is, will we proceed with just these five girlfriends for the remainder of the cour, or will the show switch up the OP and ED and introduce a sixth, seventh, or more? There are ninety-five soulmates to go, after all!

Hyakkano – 06 – Uniquely Wonderful

Karane didn’t want to go to a water park, but Hakari suggested it, and she didn’t object. Now she’s looking at cute swimsuits, thinking none of them would look cute. But while she’s pure tsundere outside, unfortunately for the clerk, she chooses one she thinks Rentarou might like her in.

When the big day arrives, Hakari is spilling out in her frilly plaid top, Nano has a sophisticated halter, and Shizuka is wearing the standard school one-piece. Karane is the last to emerge from the changing room, but is donning a long robe, claiming to have caught a chill.

Even Hakari suggests they call off the date if not everyone is up for it, but Karane insists they continue, so they do. Shizuka ends up spinning uncontrollably in her floaty ring and is eventually marooned on an island in the middle of the whirlpool, where no one heeds her text-to-speech calls for help.

That leaves Nano and Hakari with Rentarou, and the latter learns that the former can be as bold or bolder than she is when it comes to efficiently demonstrating her “feminine appeal.” This results in both of them placing his hands on their breasts. When they ask who has the better bust, he’s floating in a pool of noseblood. Both try mouth-to-mouth, but only end up kissing him.

When the two seek help from a lifeguard (a male lifeguard; they’re very clear about that!) they come afoul of three guys who think they’re cute. One of them is convinced that a girl’s upper arm is an ideal way to gauge the suppleness of her breasts, but Nano stops him from grabbing Hakari and gouges his eyes.

This angers the other two, who won’t take no for an answer, so Nano volunteers to hang out with them so Hakari can get the lifeguard for Rentarou. That’s no okay with Hakari. Nano may be better in a fight, but she doesn’t think it’s fair she has to endure the advances of the guys.

When Nano says she knows Rentarou would be sad if Hakari was hurt, Hakari tells her he’d feel the same way about Nano, even if she is his newest girlfriend. Thanks to Karane reviving him quite by accident, Rentarou comes between the guys and his girlfriends, who prove they’re both his by kissing him one after the other.

Just as Hakari said, Rentarou thanks Nano for protecting Hakari, but scolds her for taking such a risk. Nano’s demeanor softens, and she shyly apologizes and thanks Rentarou. Karane joins them, so the only question is, where the heck is Shizuka?

She’s still on that island, unable to swim, with a deflated floaty ring, and a dead phone battery. Her only choice is to cry out with her own voice. At first she doesn’t believe it will ever reach his ears, but she underestimates his love.

So she gives it a try, and sure enough Rentarou’s ears instantly pick up her meager cry, hurries to where she is, and princess carries her back to safety. She’s so happy, she kisses him right there in public. Showing that she can be bold too when she wants to.

The only girlfriend who hasn’t kissed Rentarou to this point is Karane, and after all his running around, he takes a break poolside and asks Karane to join him. When they’re alone, he tells her he noticed her looking at Nano and Hakari’s chests, and tells her she shouldn’t feel self-conscious as they are exceptional for their age.

When Karane responds that unlike Shizuka she’s not tiny and cute but tall, not cute or dainty nor “hot.” Like ripping off a Band-Aid, Rentarou removes her robe in one motion, revealing a white bikini she looks great in. To prove he’s not patronizing her, he draws her into a hug, and she notices his heart is racing even faster than hers.

To Rentarou, it’s not about whose looks are “better or worse”; to him all four of his girlfriends are equally, “uniquely wonderful”. Furthermore, he can’t imagine Karane being any more attractive than she already is. With that, both he and she realize it’s a perfect time to kiss, so they do, all the while thinking about how much they love each other.

With the whole gang back together at last, the pool date can begin in earnest. Nano and Hakari even give Shizuka some swimming lessons! Those dudes who were hitting on Nano and Hakari might call them “freaky” for having the same boyfriend, but while polyamory isn’t for everyone, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong or somehow amoral.

What Rentarou, Karane, Hakari, Shizuka and Nano have together is working for them, so why knock it, except out of jealousy, ignorance, or both? Furthermore, again and again this week Rentarou demonstrated that he’s worthy of having these girlfriends in his life and is dedicated to treating them right, while they’re also looking out for each other.

Just as Rentarou is successfully balancing his four girlfriends, Hyakkano is balancing humor, horniness, and genuine heart. I’d say it’s almost time to introduce the fifth soulmate of this first phase!

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.

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!