The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You Season 2

Episode 19

The 100 Girlfriends anime has been a pretty stellar adaptation so far, judiciously bringing manga material into animation and making it it's own through strong stylization. However, that's necessitated some skipping over of elements, often cheekily noted, in the name of overall pacing. And this week, an unforgivable sacrifice seems to have been made in the name of those priorities. Yes, the anime skips right over Chapter 37, meaning the cowards behind the 100 Girlfriends anime have deprived loyal, loving viewers of seeing how they would adapt this legendary spread of dialogue.

I don't know how the anime could recover from this egregious unforced error, but my duty is to soldier on and see it try.

The anime is aggressively aware of its need to manage pacing and screw with the audience on the way, anyway. The next girlfriend and the possibility of jumping right to meeting her is teased at the beginning, but no, there is a more important point to attend to: karaoke! I imagine that group activities are going to become more prudent as the polycule balloons, so getting a karaoke session in now is good. While the whole family can fit in the booth, Rentaro's will have to start renting out venues as things increase.

Karaoke is also one of those activities that work to let the girls go down their checklists of charm points, reminding the audience that Rentaro loves specific things about each of them equally. Each one has specialties, and it turns out that creating a karaoke cuteness overload is Shizuka's. She had help from some of Kusuri's drugs, natch, but the result regardless is so potent it sends the rest of the cast smashing into walls recreating the legendary Yamcha death pose (truly the Family Guy death pose of anime), and it's funny every time.

This is one of those aforementioned elements that the anime makes work through sheer commitment to going all-out with it. One bit is a deftly animated flourish where Nano automatically counters Iku's baseball-bat-butt-smack, causing her expected excited reaction. That's quick characterization for multiple characters as an aside to this overall scene, and the anime's like this with how it does everything. Just as everyone got a turn to sing characteristic songs, they got a chance to show off their reactions to Shizuka's overpowering adorability—and not for nothing but her little rhythmic bobbing as she sings along is pretty darling. She is trying her best.

This balancing act presumably leads 100 Girlfriends to sadly sacrifice the material it has: reinforcing the appeals of the established girlfriends while dutifully introducing new ones. And so arrives Utsukushisugi Mimimi, asking the burning question, "What if a girl loved herself as much as Rentaro loved her?" The idea of a "beautiful" girlfriend might seem superfluous; All Girlfriends Are Beautiful. But Mimimi's approach is one of earned confidence. Already in this episode, she's out to dispel myths of natural attractiveness and buying beauty. Anybody who knows anybody who makes a living off their looks knows that being hot is work, and Mimimi isn't about to let anyone else undermine her efforts. Well, almost anyone else, but more on that in a bit.

Mimimi's worship at the altar of the good-lookin' grind set sets up plenty of potential future personality plays, but for now, her interaction with Rentaro is finding out how good a guy he is for her. Sure, he dutifully takes a tapioca bullet for her, but he also saves her would-be attacker, as he's driven by nothing else but boyfriend solidarity. This moves Mimimi and shows that her evaluations of beauty extend to the inner variety. She knows she's done everything she can to become aesthetically perfect, but she recognizes that she's still got personal growth to do. This will be on display in something 100 Girlfriends hasn't touched on all that much: inter-girlfriend conflict!

The law of averages states that the more girlfriends Rentaro gathers, the odds of any of them having prior connections with each other must increase. Rentaro even spoils the development for himself (and the audience) by noting that Mimimi's redressing of him indicates she might already have A Type in the aesthetics of Nano. Look, where I come from that's just called "foreshadowing". How could Rentaro apologize to the viewers for that, but not for skipping Chapter 37? Get your priorities straight, 100 Girlfriends!

All that said, I'm pretty interested in seeing where this goes. The idea of actual girlfriend antagonism shows that there's still plenty of rich ground for the series to mine for material. And it's especially compelling to have part of it cast at the feet of Nano, who's otherwise been too efficient to bother battling someone else. She and Mimimi are similar in that respect. Neither has much interest in beefing with others…except, seemingly, each other. That's friggin' juicy, and I look forward to it being elaborated on in the next episode. So long as the anime doesn't skip anything else major again.

The same way I'm not skipping out on delivering additional girlfriend review images of them all singing their hearts out this week.

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The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

Chris has watched at least 100 anime, and really really really really really thought most of them were at least okay. You can peruse his thoughts on those and other subjects over on his blog, or see which cartoon girlfriends he's reposting art of over on his BlueSky.