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.

Talentless Nana – 08 – Another Long Day

Nana may be rid of Yuuka, but her troubles are far from over. Shinji’s desiccated corpse and all of Yuuka’s zombies remain out in the open, and Nana will have been suspiciously absent from class when two more classmates died. Kyouya is the only one whose suspicions of her she must clear, so she devises a plan, using the class gyarus as pawns.

The tan Habu just happens to be out hunting frogs and snakes to eat in order to survive (her Talent is poisonous saliva), but Habu and her friend Kaori have had a falling out due to the latter’s missing blue contacts. Step One: Nana poisons Habu, gets her phone password, then deposits Habu’s body among the zombies.

Step Two: Nana informs Kyouya, Michiru, Moguo and Seiya that Yuuka is dead and explains the circumstances: Yuuka was the true necromancer, and an EoH possessed her to chase Nana with an army of zombies. Nana used Shinji’s thoughts to convince her to stand down, and she threw herself off the cliff. She uses Moguo’s fire Talent to burn Shinji’s body and the group of zombies—among which happens to be Habu’s body.

Kyouya lets the corpse-burning happen as a practical matter, but he’s not letting Nana out of his sight the rest of the day (hence the day’s longness for Nana). When he brings up the very fair point that Nana is always missing when someone ends up dead, suddenly there’s a scream from the dorms: Kaori has been found dead.

While this would seem to clear Nana as she was by Kyouya’s side, it’s clear Kaori died while clawing at her eye. He tastes the contact solution and detects poison (which doesn’t kill him, but isn’t pleasant either), meaning her murderer could have poisoned the solution at any time. Kyouya isn’t moved by Michiru’s constant pleas for him to lay off Nana.

When he searches the room again, he discovers the odd state of the window, which can only open one way, and recalls that when he was suffering the effects of the poison, Nana opened it without any trouble, as if she’d opened it before—which of course she did. It’s a major slip-up on Nana’s part, and no doubt the result of a lack of sleep and proper time to plan her murders of late.

When the ever-loyal-to-Nana Michiru produces Kaori’s phone (unlocked with Kaori’s fingerprint), she discovers a text sent while all of them were out with Nana as she told them about Yuuka and Shinji. But seeing the phone switches on a light bulb in Sherlock’s brain: he thinks he’s finally figured it out, and warns Michiru to get away from Nana.

First of all, he realizes that Nana had Muguo burn all of the zombie corpses because Habu was among them. Nana messed up her face and put her in a boy’s uniform so she wasn’t instantly recognizable, but it was Habu. Then he posits that Nana took Habu’s phone and used it to text an apology to Kaori, so she’d use the contacts Nana poisoned.

Nana’s last line of defense is the phone’s passcode; even with her mind-reading Talent she can’t ask “specific questions”. Kyouya swats that away easily: she just used the finger of Habu’s corpse to unlock her phone. Since he’s been watching her all day, he suspects she still has the phone in her pocket, which is how she sent the pre-written text while they were away from the dorms.

After Yuuka’s status as a worthy adversary fell apart due to her emotional attachments and general mental instability, Kyouya continues to possess unflappable physical and mental fortitude. It all comes down to what’s in Nana’s pockets.

Was she able to toss Habu’s phone—and/or her poison needles—in the odd moment Kyouya didn’t have his eyes on her; say, when he first started reacting to the contact poison? With Michiru and five other classmates present for the search of her pockets, she’d better have, or it’s Game Over!