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

Episode 20

To be loved is to be changed. Given how gag-driven 100 Girlfriends is, it can be easy to forget that the characters have personalities and arcs alongside their defining gimmicks. It's cool to see, for instance, Hakari and Hahari now getting along well as a mother-daughter team that they're part of the same polycule. And Nano particularly has oh-so-subtly been growing as she's been part of this family. Her friendship with Shizuka has been visible, and she's certainly been more openly and emotionally affectionate with Rentaro and the others compared to her initial efficiency fixation. That wouldn't be apparent to someone who hadn't kept up with her—to someone like Mimimi, Nano is still the embittered bane of her beauteous existence.

The ultimate reveal of Mimimi's deal with Nano is the best part of this episode. It makes sense at the initial outlining, showing how Nano beat Mimimi in a beauty contest without even trying, which of course flies in the face of Mimimi's entire raison d'etre. It's an effective enough reason for her to hold a grudge and declare that Rentaro's polycule isn't big enough for the two of them. Her chosen method of girlfriend-to-girlfriend combat is a fun flip on the idea of beauty contests: testing the participants' perception and understanding of beauty. There are formal standards for this presided over by an association in Christchurch, who knew?

It is fun and cute to see all the other girlfriends blush and gush over the cavalcade of compliments that Nano and Mimimi pay them. But it is also an indicator of just how far we've come. Nano is assured in her desire to fight to stay with the Rentaro Family, whereas her previous persona might have just left without conflict in the name of efficiency, the same way she peace-d out on Mimimi at the end of the beauty contest in the past. This also lets Nano show off how much mind she pays the other girlfriends now. She's become a real team player, as seen in all the other contests she's enthusiastically (by her standards of enthusiasm, anyway) assisted in. Nano even becomes more attentively affectionate in her own way, demonstrated by her calling out Shizuka's cute charm points such that she winds up losing rounds in the contest. This should be the big giveaway to Mimimi that something has changed.

That's what provides the ultimate happy ending to this conflict, alongside Rentaro's absurd anti-beauty gambit to force a draw in the contest. It's not that Nano was won over or suddenly made to sympathize with Mimimi's issues with her. Rather, Nano was already primed to want to properly return Mimimi's desire for friendship thanks to her time spent growing up with the other girlfriends. The reveal that this is all that Mimimi ever wanted, down to being the one who entered Nano in that beauty contest in the first place in a goofy gamble to get to know her, is the adorable triumph of the reveal for this story. It was a resolution that had me squee-ing like a fangirl in support of one more frontier blazed by this show for potential girlfriend yuri.

This episode in general is a pretty strong one for said girlfriend yuri, also allocating some focus to the aforementioned Nano/Shizuka pair and supplying another solid Hakari/Karane smooch. The latter comes about because all that yuri apparently means the show feels a need to counterbalance it with plenty of the girls doing proper girlfriend stuff with Rentaro. It's an absurd train of thought, as Mimimi bringing her beauty tips to the table prompts some seeming pseudoscience factoids about the aesthetic benefits of kissing, and then a new drug from Kusuri later everyone's lining up to lock lips resulting in hot'n'heavy pin-ups of each of them. It's a victory lap in the silly 100 Girlfriends style after the emotional highs of the preceding Mimimi/Nano segment, and it feels earned. Even if it means I must contend with Kusuri's kiss-piss reaction.

Mimimi seemed fun enough when she entered the scene last week, but this episode confirms not just that she's a great addition, but that 100 Girlfriends overall absolutely has the juice to keep things up as the girlfriend count ticks over into the double-digits. Pre-existing connections between past and future girlfriends can be utilized, and character development between them can affect that. The series itself is constantly being changed from all the love within it, growing past just being a farcical gag series. I mean, it is that, but it gets me to respond with genuine emotional investment.

Please take the time to peruse these additional girlfriend review images and make your own evaluations about their beautiful points. I thought Karane was in particularly top form in this episode, her self-aware tsundere narration was truly a thing of beauty.

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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.