Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun Season 2

Episode 3

This week on Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun Season 2, it was almost like Hanako and Nene were occupying different genres. While Nene skips through a rom-com of her design, Hanako-kun mopes through a tragedy that Nene knows nothing about. Their paths converge at the culmination of “Lost and Found,” an afternoon marked with missed connections that reveal a little more about the workings of the 4 o'clock Library. As the love triangle between Hanako, Nene, and Kou heats up, viewers will soon be forced to pick a side. Both boys are despondent over the oblivious Nene's impending doom. Hanako emerged as a clear front-runner for her affections this week as a simple result of being in the right place at the right time, for once in this entire episode.

Hopeless romantic Nene is so over the moon about receiving her first love letter that she comes up with her own song about it! It sounds like voice actor Akari Kitō enjoyed bringing the lyrics of “Romance is a Summer Vegetable” to the screen. The contents of the note are inconsequential; they aren't even revealed to the audience until the very end of the episode. It's the occasion of the note—Nene's very first love letter—that sets up the structure of the episode, and sends Nene on a wild goose chase after her spectral pal all afternoon. Because while it's been a week for viewers, the events of this episode are occurring immediately after the previous one, on the same day. The afternoon sunlight that drenches this episode ought to have been a tipoff, but this show's color palette is always so warm that I didn't realize it. While Nene is pleased enough to tap her toes together, everyone around her has just received perhaps the worst news of their lives.

And news certainly travels fast. Everyone from Yako (of the Misaki Stairs) to Spider-kun, er, Tsuchigomori-sensei of the 4 o'clock Library, has gotten the memo about Nene's shortened lifespan. They're each being soft on her in their own way, humoring her hunt for a friend they each realize is grieving for Nene herself. And thanks to the dramatic irony of our own knowledge, Nene's lovestruck antics don't hit the same way they usually do. The other shoe could drop at any time. Tsuchigomori-sensei showed Kou what would happen in Nene's life today, but would it have hurt him to flip to a page a bit further in the future? We don't know the nature of her upcoming death, so we don't even know what to watch out for. Instead, Kou sets off to address a far less pressing problem that is still no more easily resolved: Hanako and Nene's first kiss. This was a low-stakes way to reveal more about the 4 o'clock Library, mainly that same-day happenings are already set in stone. Surely this is a vital clue toward changing Nene's fate. I went back and watched episode 6 of the first season, which reminded me that Nene's book turned bloody red when she read her own future. Apparently, the same ominous occurrence doesn't happen when it's Kou doing the reading.

Although the episode concludes with Nene melted on the ground in her comical ghost form, bemoaning the reality of the love letter (that it was from Akane to Aoi, of course), our hapless protagonist does not seem to realize she's already in the midst of a love triangle. It's Nene who instigates the kiss with Hanako, seeing it as a good luck charm like Hanako's kiss on her cheek before. (I think the previous kiss was beyond a boundary, and that's why it wasn't recorded in Nene's book as their first kiss.) Meanwhile, Kou's puppy-love crush on his senpai is obvious, but perhaps because he's a year younger than her, Nene doesn't seem to register him as a potential love interest—unlike his big brother Teru, who is her top choice. In Nene's theater of the mind (charmingly decorated with undersea fauna to recall her mermaid characteristics) she holds handmade puppets of herself and Hanako, indicative of the amount of time she's invested in thinking about her apparition bestie. Kou seems to have more drive when it comes to figuring out a way to save Nene, but I'm rooting for Hanako. Everything about the kiss scene was just right, from the sunset's bisexual mood lighting to Hanako's sultry whisper in Nene's ear. (I know his body is 13 but technically he's 55 right?) I can't deny this pair has chemistry. But why do I feel like this will be the last low-intensity episode for a while?

Rating:

Lauren writes about model kits at Gunpla 101. She spends her days teaching her two small Newtypes to bring peace to the space colonies.