Hourou Musuko, Episode 2 - Kirai, Kirai, Daikirai (Hate, Hate, Despise) ~Cry baby cry~

This is a continuation of my Hourou Musuko review series. You can see all the entries here.

You can watch the episode here.

Spoiler Warning

This episode switches gears and focuses mostly on Saorin. It also gives us a much-needed flashback that provides the backstory on the relationship between Shuuichi, Yoshino, and Saorin.

Near the end of the previous episode, Shuuichi runs out of his house, distressed, after an encounter with his sister.* In his haste, he leaves half-dressed in only an undershirt and a skirt, and runs into Yoshino on a bridge. Yoshino offers her hoodie, commenting that Shuuichi looks like a girl with a hoodie and a skirt on. This marks the reparation of their friendship, which leads us to Saorin.

Saorin, up to this point, has only been seen briefly, and was then depicted as quiet and prone to violent outbursts. In the first episode, she assaulted a classmate who insinuated that Shuuichi and Yoshino had a relationship at one point. In this episode, we learn that she harbors a lot of resentment toward Shuuichi and Yoshino because of a love triangle that imploded. Some time ago, Saorin expressed interest in Shuuichi, only to find that Shuuichi had already expressed interest in Yoshino. Saorin confronted Yoshino about it, and they both ended by expressing hatred for each other. More implicitly, Saorin also seems to feel that she had already been left out because Shuuichi and Yoshino had their trans experiences in common, and had bonded over them until Saorin felt like a third wheel.

Saorin comes across, in this episode, as fundamentally unsympathetic to the viewer. At the beginning of the episode she calls Shuuichi and Yoshino ‘filth’ as she passes them in the hall. She also nearly assaults Chi’s friend Shirai Momoko (Momo), and when Yoshino expresses that they should perhaps set their differences aside, Saorin refuses.

Despite this, the episode ends with Saorin making peace with the rest of the group, after Sasa Kanako (Sasa), who has been trying to remain friends with both Saorin and the others, gets angry at their bickering and refuses to speak to them. So, it requires the coercion of her only remaining friend for her to stop being an asshole to the rest of her former friends.

The premise of the episode seems to be that we should sympathize with Saorin. Ariga Makoto (Ariga) sums it up thus: “She’s got a rough life”. However, compared to the strife the other characters are depicted as facing, Saorin (as portrayed so far, at least) comes across as whiny and privileged by comparison.

So, enough about Saorin, then. We don’t have time for whiny privileged girls who hold grudges. Let’s talk about Ariga, whom we just mentioned for the first time. He plays a slightly more prominent role in this episode, and seems to be Shuuichi’s only (or at least closest) male friend. We also get a suggestion that he is also gender variant; Shuuichi gives him a clover hairpin to match the one he bought in the first episode. In the same scene, they spend time chatting about private matters - about the fact that Shuuichi and Yoshino are not dating, and that Ariga feels he may be attracted to boys. This is the first explicit mention of sexual orientation on the show. Leaving aside gender variance (since all of the gender variant characters are still discovering their identities in this regard), Ariga thinks he might be gay. The line is a throwaway - we don’t dwell on it at all, but rather move on. Presumably, we will return to this later in the series.

There are developments with Shuuichi and Yoshino, the show’s ostensible protagonists, in this episode as well. There is one notable scene at the beginning where Shuuichi and Yoshino each take note of the other smiling. They both seem happy to see the other smile, leading inevitably to the idea that they both do have feelings for each other.

On the subject of Shuuichi and gender, the first relevant moment in this episode comes when Shuuichi is called ‘a little girl’ as an insult by one of his male classmates; his response (unnoticed by everyone except Ariga) is to blush and then smile broadly. A similar scene happens when he takes his lunch to his older sister; one of her classmates says “he looks like a girl”, leading Shuuichi to repeat the phrase, “I look like a girl”, with a happy look on his face.

These scenes, more than anything we’ve seen before, really work to differentiate Shuuichi as being solidly transgender (as opposed to, say, cross-dressing for sexual gratification). His response to being called a girl is joy, and I suspect it is stemming from a sense (not really understood by him yet) that that is the correct thing for him to be called.

On the whole, this episode is much more solidly put together than the first one - it has more cohesion between scenes, and the pacing is better. However, emotionally, it is weaker. The first episode used a effective narrative repetition, with the ‘What are little _ made of’ motif repeated through the episode, and the scene early on where Shuuichi and Yoshino each narrate the phrase ‘I/we have a secret’.** The music and the dialogue are still top notch, but the overall narrative feel of this episode did not have as powerful an impact on me.

* I didn’t discuss that scene or the one before it in my previous review, nor do I discuss it in detail here, because my reaction to it is too personal to write about in a public space.

** The subtitles translate the phrase ‘We have a secret’, but since pronouns don’t indicate number in Japanese, it could potentially be translated ‘I have a secret’ as well. Or ‘I/we have secrets’, for that matter. I certainly think the translators chose well here, though.