Anne Happy – 03
Hi, nice to meet you.
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As we thought last week, this week we get the introduction to the other two girls in the OP. So what are they like, and how will they change the dynamic in both the class and the main group? |
Hibiki and Ren
This is a meet-klutz
We’ve known about these two since the beginning of the series, but we haven’t really known about their personalities. This week, we get the answer to how they are, and that answer is not particularly complicated, at least in the case of Hibiki Hagyu. She wants to be #1, she wants to be in the lead. Unfortunately, she can’t figure out which direction to go to get there. And it’s not just that she gets lost, it’s that she doesn’t look where she’s going, leading her to crash into things, repeatedly. Even her introduction to Hibari this episode was doing the same thing she did on the way to the school entrance exam: crash into a pole.
Sadism with a smile
But her savior is Ren Ekoda, who is close to being the cool beauty of the class. Relaxed, soft-spoken, but seemingly always capable, Ren actually gets through this episode without showing much in the way of a weakness. We know that she’s irresistible to animals, in the opposite way that Hanako is, but they don’t really come into play in this episode, which is the first ‘training’ that the school is putting them through. But this giant board game, located in underground Timothy Town, is of rather dubious purpose.
Dice or a gun
One Camera Streaming Away…
… wokka wokka wokka…
This game seemed to me to be made much more for Miss Kodaira and Timothy’s amusement than actually helping the girls learn how to be lucky. Why else would there be cosplay roulette? Perhaps I’m wrong about that, but that’s how it turned out for the girls who actually have faces. Now, it’s possible that everyone else worked hard and found how to get more lucky or happy, because they did actually complete the game, rather than just fail repeatedly. Cause that’s what Hanako, Hibari, and Botan do. You can’t even really say that Hibiki and Ren fail that much, just end up taking a penalty (since Hibiki can’t be honest and say that she loves Ren) and having to spend a lot of time to just get back to the start. In fact, probably the biggest character issue for Hibiki is that she can’t be honest with herself and show her true face to others. Since we’ve been following the show, I think the biggest lesson for Hibari has been to be herself and have friends that support you. But Hibari is a lot less resistant to all outside ideas than Hibiki, so we’ll see if Hibiki is able to make that sort of progress.
It’s a rather squiddly costume, degeso
Hibiki’s fired up to finish last
The game goes through multiple humiliations for the two groups, culminating in a last-place showdown between them (because they’re taking too long, but it’s not their fault there’s an infinite loop in the board game). And even in this, Hibiki lets her pride take her down the wrong path, wanting to finish last rather than second-last, because there’s nothing special about second-last, so she wants to be the best at failing. But even at this she fails, because of the special nature of Hibari’s group: Hanako grabs the booby-trapped bread, and even eats the whole choco-stick. But in the last game, with Hibari forced to say what person she likes, Hanako steps in and, while she loses the game, she saves Hibari’s pride. At least for now, because there’s going to be punishment homework for finishing last.
Hanako takes the bullet
Miss Kodaira seems intent on making Hibari announce her love for the construction sign to the whole world, or at least to the rest of the class. And that does seem a bit cruel to me, although it could be argued that because that’s really the only thing that’s standing between Hibari and being ‘normal’, it could be that Miss Kodaira thinks that if Hibari either 1) falls out of love with the sign or 2) becomes not-embarrassed by it then she will not really qualify for the unhappiness class, and will have been successfully made happy. Perhaps it’s a “tough love” kind of thing (although I’m not a big fan of tough love)? But that doesn’t really explain things like the constant things Botan can’t do, or things like Hanako having to play the Heaven or Hell game, where she either gets a wash basin or attacked by cats and dogs. I guess there’s enough ambiguity in the persons of Miss Kodaira and Timothy to keep us guessing about this for the remainder of the series. But we’ll see how Ren and Hibiki are able to interact with Hibari, Hanako, and Botan from here on.
See you next week!
About Highway
Proving that you don't have to be young to love anime, I enjoy all genres and styles of shows. If it's not hurting anyone else, you should never be ashamed of what you like!
POWUH: 400-499 with 462 comments
Sensei certainly comes across as a villain to me. Even before the episode was half-finished I’d concluded that the maze was just applied sadism: a place where the teachers could laugh at the unfortunate students. It certainly wasn’t any sort of focused attempt to fix their problems, or they wouldn’t have been putting Botan through what was effectively a death-course (for her, at least).
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
She may come across as a villain from the perspective of the characters we’re seeing, but as I said, there’s a lot of other students there who seemed to do fine with the game, and maybe they got quite a lot out of it. And I still think that there may be a point to her constant attempts to get Hibari to confess who she loves. And perhaps it’s the same thing with Hanako, where Miss Kodaira may realize that part of her unluckiness stems from her active seeking of doggies and kitties and other animals. How many of the situations we’ve seen her get in would have been prevented entirely if she hadn’t gone out of her way to do something with an animal? Chasing the cat into the rice field, grabbing the dog that was for some reason going over a bridge, looking for the pet appreciation society…
Botan’s a bit of a tougher case, but perhaps there’s something there as well.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
I think Botan isn’t as fragile as she let’s on. But she’s conditioned herself to react the way she does for some unknown reason. The reaction shots to her “injuries” are far to exaggerated and never really carry over to the next scenes…
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
There definitely could be something to that. She’s awfully resilient: wrap it up and go, even with supposedly broken shins or toes or wrists.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
..broken teeth one instance, perfectly useful teeth the next…
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
She’s learned how to regrows bones! Every second scene it heals! Truly an amazing skill (otherwise she’d be a crippled mess 1 minute into her life).
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
I think you’re onto to something here. Since her parents run a hospital if as a child she felt they weren’t paying enough attention to her getting injured would be a way to get attention from them. And it has become a habit.
POWUH: Lovely-pyon~ with 261 comments
I had to admit, This show somehow get me amazed, Even the attraction to the west Seem to be so weak. (BTW i ain’t a Western Country Guy, I’am a South East Asian guy)
Let’s see now.. HAH… That Poor Ms. Botan “Calcium Deficient Girl/CRAACK” Kumegawa…I just love to hear her bones get Cracked LOL!!! but i fear that she won’t live for too long…
And,It Seems like the kitties and puppies loves Ms. Ren Ekoda more, but they like to bite Anne Hanakoizumi so it’s something like this
– Pups and kitties love Ren’s Milk
– Pups and kitties love Anne/Hanako’s Flesh
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
…got to keep the cards close to the vest for as long as you can. But by episode three I think most of your instincts about this are correct. A bit of tough love to push them forward. Which is an awkward to to use. Coupled with the humor it makes the whole affair come off as cruel, or at least it could if the humor wasn’t so absurd from start to finish.
…anything that gets my new favorite Hibiki in a bear costume is fine….carry on show, carry on!
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Tough Love plus humor, plus I think there’s a bit of an edge to Miss Kodaira that isn’t too far below the surface. I note that she didn’t turn threatening-looking this episode, like she did in the first episode, but you wonder if that one time was enough to get the point across.
I think it’s also important to realize that they are apparently doing a lot of normal school stuff. From the first episode to this third episode, there were 3 weeks, and that doesn’t include Golden Week which is coming up next episode (if they do anything about it with the punishment homework). How do I know that? Well, they’ve been giving the date of the happenings each episode, and next episode is April 29. But they are just having their first happiness training 3 weeks after school began, so they’ve presumably been doing other things, like normal school.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10997 comments
Miss probably is pretty much the sadist that a bunch of teen-age girls can imagine her as; which is to say, she’s probably perfectly normal. Then again, the whole game this episode is probably an exaggeration, cause that’s what you use animation for…style. So honestly, a lot of the story is probably teen exaggeration. Except for Timothy, the murder rabbot from the future…
Yeah, this show has dates. Haifuri has them. Bakemono has them, too. I usually ignore them…but maybe I shouldn’t?
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
For some reason, Timothy is reminding me of that bunny in Chaos Dragon. Hmmmmm. Bad memories.
omg Botan-san is killing me. When she picked up the skipping rope, I was pretty sure her wrists would break from the motion. Instead it was her ankles D= omg rofl
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
This is appearing more and more like Rokyubuu x Gochuumon…