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

Episode 23

Hurtling inevitably towards the end of the season means that 100 Girlfriends must find an ending arc. The writing in this episode references the Hakari Recovery Arc from the end of the previous season and acknowledges that what it brought together can't quite arrive at that level of drama. Nonetheless, it has still arrived, bringing several characters under Hahari and Hakari's massive, fancy roof to "rescue" someone, after a fashion. Except here it's more of a mental battle than a physical one, as the always gimmick-personality-driven 100 Girlfriends explores what happens when one of those personalities is shifted or stripped away.

Or to put it another way: What's a tsundere without the tsun or the dere?

Karane was an early favorite of mine because tsunderes are cute, and I think they're more fun the more stringently, and expertly, they can cover the strict framework of reactions that defines the archetype. It's sort of like watching someone hit all Perfect notes in a rhythm game. Karane not only nailed the sweet-and-sour spot with scientific precision—as she needed to since she was The Tsundere—it let her compliment Hakari's extremely explicit feelings more effectively. It's like the anime rom-com emotion equivalent of using negative space, and it's a small wonder the two of them wound up getting shipped together.

But it is also easy to get in a rut, especially in a series where just the one gimmick is what you have to keep you straight from the rest of the cast. To the credit of 100 Girlfriends the writing doesn't insinuate that Karane's hot-and-cold schtick has gotten stale. Honestly, she's been on fire this season, carrying the straight-man reactions to so many of the escalations, mentoring Kurumi in the tsundere ways on the side, and of course, barely containing her reactions when things "accidentally" get hot'n'heavy between her and Hakari. But Karane herself is seemingly going through a quarter-life personality crisis, wondering if her appreciable inability to be honest with her feelings is keeping her from enjoying other activities with the rest of the Rentaro Family.

Where many people might opt to try talking things out, especially if they've got eleven other affectionate sounding boards at the ready, Karane opts to take mind-altering drugs instead. However it does make me wonder if Kusuri has medicines for neutralizing the other saleable personality quirks of the rest of the characters. Imagine stripping away Shizuka's meekness, Iku's masochism, or Hahari's propensity for doing things that probably ought to land her in prison. We'd miss out on so much. But this opens up avenues for re-exploring the personalities of girlfriends previously established—important as the cast balloons and fans of girlfriends need reminders of why they, and Rentaro, fell in love with them in the first place. To say nothing of what love for a person means in terms of personality.

The material with the de-tsundere-fied Karane is great fun, but as this show so often manages, it's the emotional core that keeps things centered. Among all the hijinks, it becomes clear how different girlfriends have different things they personally loved about Karane as she was, even as some of them do appreciate getting to learn what she always truly thought of them. And not for nothing, but it's pretty amusing how Hakari is now concealing her own feelings, tsundere-style, for how she feels between Karane's old and new personalities. For Rentaro, the real tsundere Karane was the one he fell in love with, and he hates the idea of her despising her old self enough to reject it. It's the old canard of loving someone so much you don't want to hear them down-talking themselves; "Don't talk bad about the person I love." And as 100 Girlfriends has explored earlier this season how being loved can change someone, it now also reinforces how being loved can help you learn to love yourself as you always were.

It's a resonant, heartening lesson, and it's within a show where a horny bisexual MILF nearly bleeds to death trying to spy on her daughter and their mutual sister wife rubbing each other down in the bath. This anime contains almost as many multitudes as it does girlfriends.

So this story is not on the level of last season's climactic storyline, but I don't think it needs to be. The follow-through next week is going to be extremely sweet (and extremely absurd) in working with the ideas 100 Girlfriends has touched on all through this season, to say nothing of its dedication to keeping all the characters in rotation somehow. On top of all that, the subtitles were firing on all cylinders for this episode, even compared to the show's ongoing excellent run. Recreating moments like the "I consent/Isn't there someone you forgot to ask?" meme is inspired, and the phrase "Blood for the blood mom" might take up permanent residence in my brain. It's a whole package of a show I'll miss once it's gone again after this season. Here's hoping it runs for the full 20 seasons it'll need to get through all the girlfriends.

They're likely to get her back next week (maybe Kusuri can be a tsundere donor?) so for now please enjoy some alternate review images of the other girlfriends having fun in their own ways with the un-tsundere'd Karane.

Rating:

---

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.