In Greek mythology, there was a man named Narcissus. He fell in love with himself when he saw his reflection. Many people admired his beauty; however, he was self-absorbed and hideous on the inside.
HigeHiro is an unintentional retelling of Narcissus: The main character is perfect, despite being utterly mediocre. He is loved and praised without deserving it. He is the ideal mentor without giving helpful advice. He can change minds with a wise speech, but it's always bullshit.
One night while walking home from work, Yoshida, a 26-year-old salaryman, stumbled upon a young girl sitting under a lamp post. Earlier that night, his crush rejected him. In a drunken state, he offered to let the girl stay with him for a night. She flirted with him constantly and even offered him sex, though he rejected her every time. She's not his type, you see. Not because it would be immoral and a crime, but because he's not into her. He won't fall in love with her because she's "A little kid," he told himself… then, moments later, he considers her sexy. The teenage girl, named Sayu, is a runaway who's been trading sexual favors for a place to stay. Yoshida is a nice guy™, so he chooses not to coerce and have sex with a minor but instead makes her his live-in maid. She cooks, cleans, does the laundry, and occasionally offers sex again. While living with her, Yoshida improves his eating habits, sleeps better, and shaves every day. He changed his habits to become a father figure to his new roommate/maid/love interest.
That's the premise of HigeHiro or, "After Being Rejected, I Shaved and Took in a High School Runaway", if you prefer. The story progression involves Sayu confronting her dark past and Yoshida learning to become her supportive guardian. Though the premise is challenging, the execution could have subverted our expectations. Rather than walking the tightrope, HigeHiro indulges in cliches and disregards any problematic pitfalls.
WARNING: Mild spoilers. Discussion of pedophilia and sexual assault below.
At the center of every problem with HigeHiro's story and characters is Yoshida. He engineered to be relatable for the anime's target audience: An average joe protagonist: dark hair, deadpan personality, average height and build. Like most male light novel protagonists, he is self-deprecating, but that does not make him self-aware or reflect on his mistakes. Lacking a backstory, you can easily project yourself onto him. He's a modest man, but deep down, he is a kind and intelligent guy. He's a man of few words, but he knows just what to say when the time comes. In reality, he's kind of a creepy pervert, all of his preachy wisdom is bullshit, and he's not as heroic as the show makes him out to be. Yoshida is (supposedly) a very, very kind man who takes in a teenage girl and doesn't have sex with her! What a great guy. Sayu even says he's "nicer than anybody I've ever met." For some reason, this small act of basic human decency is enough to impress his coworkers and friends. The anime does its damndest to make us believe that Yoshida is a fantastic guy: Sayu is constantly in danger through contrived scenarios, allowing him to save her every time. Afterward, they return to their bizarre relationship steeped in romantic and sexual tension.
These conflicts are nothing but a way to distract us from the real issues baked into their relationship: Sayu is deeply unwell. She has PTSD after being taken advantage of repeatedly. The responsible thing for Yoshida to do would be to get her help. Yet, that's not how the show sees it. All it takes to fix years of trauma is a preachy speech from Yoshida, viola. He cured her! In real life, it takes years of cognitive-behavioral therapy to cope with trauma healthily--not by finding someone who will say STOP BEING DEPRESSED. HigeHiro is not concerned with what is realistic, moral, or even legal. Yoshida always knows the truth. His words are absolute. Whether or not they believably portray Sayu's mental illness is irrelevant to HigeHiro.
Regardless if there’s a serious tone to the scene, there will be some sort of raunchy fanservice. When Sayu opens up about her sexual assault, the show's creators used the opportunity to objectify her. At one point, she is in lingerie while talking past assaults. Even during a flashback to one of those assaults, they framed it as they would fanservice. The camera focuses on her cleavage and butt, as it so often does despite reminding us, "She's just a kid!". The directing of all these scenes made it even worse with the perverted sexual objectification. That scene is just one of many problems with the incompetent production: Excessive panning shots, primarily still images, and the character designs become increasingly distorted as time goes on. It gives you nothing remarkable to look at while suffering through the mundane episodes. It has calming royalty-free elevator music playing throughout scenes, reminding you of how every aspect of this anime lacks creativity. The opening is possibly the worst one of the season; it is devoid of substance and the song is painfully generic.
HigeHiro condemns men who used Sayu for sex and took advantage of an underage girl, yet it hypocritically uses her as a fanservice object. Unsurprisingly, a loud minority of viewers despised her for sleeping with men for a place to live. If your only alternative to homelessness is having sex with the person offering you a roof, that is not consensual. It is coercion. The anime holds its abusers accountable, but not itself. After all, this is about Yoshida. Which girl in his harem will he choose to marry?!
Although this is not a harem anime, three women are perceivably in love with the central man: Yoshida's boss. He decides her value by her cup size. A female coworker with no distinctive characteristics. And an underage girl. I'll leave you to guess who he ends up with. The first two women are comparable to robots who remind Yoshida that he is friendly, kind, and loved. None of them get a fair chance because it is inevitable to be with him, even though the adaptation is incomplete. Had this anime been more self-aware, the only adult women could've given Sayu shelter or advice, rather than making them competitors for Yoshida. They repeatedly told him 'not to have sex with the teenager.' If you're worried, why would you let her live there? Despite having reasonable doubt, everyone trusts Yoshida and does not intervene—meanwhile, what he's doing is a crime. Their 'romance' has more similarities to child grooming than love.
Spoilers complete
Until the final stretch, Sayu's mysterious past is unexplored. A sequence of contrived conflicts involving an insultingly shallow portrayal of mental illness and abuse, then an abundance of forced drama ruined any chances of taking Sayu seriously. Without delving into spoilers, nothing is grounded in the third act. The anime loses all sense of logic by attempting to excuse how morally reprehensible Sayu and Yoshida's relationship is. Again, Yoshida preaches to everyone, including the viewer, why he is right. Sayu's vulnerability is used as a shortcut to make Yoshida seem heroic.
The story of Narcissus ends with him falling into despair. Once he realized he could never love himself beyond his reflection, he died. HigeHiro isn't only poor fiction because it portrays a fantasy romance that could never happily exist in real life. It is terrible because it is preachy, pretentious, hypocritical, manipulative, and unbelievable. It does everything it can to convince you the main character is faultless, that Sayu desperately needs a hero, and that it’s not creepy as fuck for an adult man to live with a random teenage girl who wants to have sex with him. If it had self-awareness like Narcissus, it too would simply not exist.
78 out of 105 users liked this review
