Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun Season 2

Episode 5

Surely this week, I said in my last review, Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun will treat Nene's life-or-death situation with the gravity it deserves and return to the meat of the plot. I'm not getting work as a fortune-teller anytime soon, because this week was even sillier than before! My mistake has been treating this story like an anime original, expecting the second season to up the ante after the first. I've neglected to consider that Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun is an adaptation of a manga. It's not how I was expecting this season to go, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. This week gave us not one but two silly-sweet stories with loads of visual style.

Nene's school is already crawling with apparitions, so why not add a horde of the undead to the mix? In “Mokke of the Dead,” Teru's Mokke medicine gone wrong results in a school full of candy-ravenous zombies—Hanako himself included. Only Nene, Kou, Teru, and Akane have escaped the scourge, and the quartet must navigate the infested school like the final survivors in a zombie movie. The art direction takes a dramatic risk here by portraying these harrowing scenes in black-and-white with pops of neon for highlights. It's a big change from the show's consistent afternoon light-saturated color palette and yet these brief, warm pockets of color keep it masterfully consistent. However, even the most extreme color shift isn't enough to transition the genre from humor to horror. It's funny and visually interesting, but nothing about this easily rectified zombie mix-up is intense.

When the final four make their James Bond-worthy dive off the rooftop and unleash purifying salt water on the whole zombie horde, Teru makes an interesting statement: he couldn't have done the exorcism without a “special girl” like Nene by his side. What a strange thing to say! There's the possibility that this is related to Nene's proximity to death, but if so, why would he say it in front of her when the group consensus is to keep her in blissful ignorance? Is it related to her mermaid curse (scales visible in this very scene)? Or perhaps a secret third thing that will magically protect her at an upcoming crucial moment when we all think she's doomed? We've already established that I've been doing a lousy job with predictions, but I think this is a pretty safe bet.

The second minisode is all about Mitsuba, the former ghost turned School Wonder for whom Kou has a soft spot. This shrinking violet has found a precarious position in the Broadcasting Club, which we haven't seen since Season One. As a refresher, they're the primary antagonists of the first season and they include Hanako-kun's equally mischievous brother, Tsukasa. That's all water under the bridge now as Mitsuba settles in, conceitedly concerned that his cuteness makes him too unapproachable only to be met with what he perceived as flat-out rejection. But even the “melancholy” advertised by the title is just a prelude to more silliness as Mitsuba attempts to fit in with the other Wonders and is even chased by a horde of armed Mokke before eventually discovering that the Broadcasting Club was only trying to make him leave, in their awkward way, so they could organize Mitsuba a surprise welcoming party. Let's rewind a bit to when Teru friggin' stabs Mitsuba. To Teru, an upright hall monitor type of exorcist, Mitsuba's craving for connection is a red flag—and Teru's philosophy is a clear antithesis to the rest of the show. Luckily, the Broadcasting Club's mysterious Natsuhiko comes to his rescue with a lighthearted but extremely effective plan: loudly shouting that Teru is looking for a date. And thus that brief moment of violence, which left no lasting wounds by the way, was completely eclipsed by this episode's levity.

I wasn't expecting Teru to be such a big part of these two minisodes. This week, he had even more screen time than Hanako or Nene. I can't tell if he'll have a big role moving forward though, because it seems like Tsukasa is about to take center stage instead. What could it mean that he's going to make everyone's wishes come true? Since Tsukasa is mischievous at the best of times and malevolent at his worst, I doubt this means anything good.

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