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

Episode 21

Comedy cartoon continuity is, naturally, a funny thing. I had previously presumed that Rentaro's radical makeover from the climax of the contest last week was glossed over and reset easily because, hey, funny sight gag. But because 100 Girlfriends is 100 Girlfriends, it turns out they were 100% committed to this bit…for as long as it took to set up another gag. Yes, Rentaro's been wearing a wig and sticking his eyebrows on between the last episode and this one, so the good news is Kusuri's got a drug or two that can set his style back to normal. The bad, but also still good, news is that the drugs prompt this week's plot of absurdly apocalyptic proportions.

Said apocalypse is also rooted in the overarching continuity of 100 Girlfriends. Elements like the out-of-season sakura showing are blamed on an actual solar cooling—so cold of a cold open it's easy to forget about until it's brought back as a resolution at the episode's end. The real focus is on the moment-to-moment madness. Kusuri's hair tonic restores Rentaro's beautifully bushy brows, but it also provides an excuse for all the girls to play with hairstyles. It's a cornucopia of cute remixed girlfriend looks; I'll be thinking about long-haired Iku and short-haired Karane for at least the next week, thank you. And that's just the soft fanservice this episode gets up to.

Hahari was the driving force behind the most actual story that 100 Girlfriends got up to at the end of its first season, but she feels like she's been reduced to more of a gag than usual since. That tone means she's the natural candidate to do a little cocktail-mixing with Kusuri's drugs and be consumed into an all-devouring hair homunculus, and her…tendencies mean she's got the perfect excuse to deliver hair-harnessed tentacle-trapping scenarios to the anime's loyal viewers. Hakari knows her mom and calls it out right before it happens. This is just what we're doing this episode, she makes clear.

If you're not down with seeing cute girls strung up in well-conditioned locks, this episode still has a lot that works alongside all the chaos. The show is good at finding time to give everyone little moments regardless of how big the cast has gotten. So there's an opportunity for a sweet second between Hakari and Karane, or the entertaining aside visual of Iku reveling in being painfully crammed into the backseat of a car. To say nothing of the delightful detail that everyone's rocking alternative hairstyles through all of this on account of the setup device. The action climax of the gang's desperate escape from Hahari's hairpocalypse turns out to be a chance to see how effectively Mimimi and Nano work together in fending off the threat. This too is yuri.

Said action could look a little better, however. 100 Girlfriends has always been an expressive series, but it might be stretching itself to get into full-blown action in an episode like this. The CGI hair looks really rough in some sequences, and animating the whole hoard of girlfriends moving in places looks choppy with all of them. Again, this isn't the reason viewers come to this show (rest assured all those shots of Hahari's hair getting mommy-molesty with the gals are lovingly rendered) but it does throw things off a bit when they're trying to do a properly big, epic episode like this.

What does feel epic enough is Rentaro throwing himself into the nexus of the armageddon to save Hahari, and thus the world, from it all. Hahari's loving maternal instincts are the cause of this but also what allows Rentaro to survive diving in after her is a fun play on the paradoxes driving all the problems of this episode. And it's a hilarious surprise to see Hahari's ghost boyfriend again. I might have preferred a bit more of Hahari grappling with some conflicted character emotions over the issues her overt affections have caused, but I'll settle for Rentaro just having a moment of sweet, genuine affection with her. Before her planet-full of hair is launched into the sun to save the Earth from the onset of a new ice age. 100 Girlfriends has no chill in the grandest of ways.

It's all a very funny episode that only feels like it's straining itself a bit in doing it all. If this is the sort of escalation this series gets up to when it's got 10 of the girlfriends assembled, I'm harrowed to think of what will happen across the acts of the remaining 90. I can only presume the polycule is going to launch itself into space at some point, possibly in search of an alien girlfriend. If anything could broker peace between planets, it would be the power of Rentaro's love.

I could fill up the alternate review image slots with those saucy tentacle tangle shots, but I don't think I should push things that far, content-wise. Instead enjoy some wholesome images of the girlfriends showing off their delightful new 'dos.

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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.