Some fans will you that Higehiro isn’t as bad as the story sounds, which is to say A STORY ABOUT A MALE OFFICE-WORKER WHO IS REJECTED AND THEN INADVERTENTLY TAKES INTO HIS HOME A VULERNABLE UNDERAGE FEMALE HIGHSCHOOLER WHO OFFERS HIM SEX.
Credit to these fans...they’re not completely wrong. Higehiro isn’t completely devoid of substance. It’s not ecchi garbage. Or like a literal hentai.
But what it is, is what you get when you elevate a perverted whiteknight self-insert with some clumps of substantial themes and an ungodly fuckton of self-praising gratification.
Everything in Higehiro revolves around its characters, so let’s start there. The main character
...
— Yoshida — serves as (kinda) a self-inserting vehicle for the audience. For many viewers, Yoshida is not only relatable but also an entertainable source of self-manifestation. He can be relatable because he is single, out of luck, and unable to take complete care of himself at home. But he’s also a money-making adult who is dependable, decent, and even noble. So he’s a good guy. Nice. And like us, he’s not like the ‘other guys’. He’s better than the other guys. More on that later.
For the story’s female lead you also have Sayu, who serves as the ‘rescued princess’ of the story. Sayu’s a vulnerable underaged highschool girl who has thrown away her own innocence in an effort to run away from domestic and personal issues at home. In enduring such Sayu has internalized being a literal prostitute as a means of survival as she makes her stay from home to home. Most importantly, she lacks autonomy and basic needs; she needs proper guidance and care.
It’s upon these aspects of these two apparently complimentary characters that the show propels itself with its self-glorifying whiteknight fantasy; the conveniently placed good-guy main-character — who is just like us, but also dependable and principled —
takes into his home a cute highschool girl who needs help.
And the beautiful underage highschool girl constantly wants to fuck the main-character for his care, and desires play a role as his house-wife.
But no — wait — of course the show is better than that. The main-character isn’t low enough to accept the sexual advances of a misled underage girl. He’s — no — *you’re* better than that, because you’re not like the other guys. You’re better. You're noble, because you have basic standards. In fact, you’re just the man she needs. There’s no one else but you that can help this underage, sexually exploited, and traumatized self-made prostitute.
It’s this dynamic of self-indulgence that the show more or less capitalizes on (explicitly or subtly) throughout the entire show. Sayu has a problem. Good-guy MC takes care of her. Continue and continue and recycle throughout by accompanying a fantasy of countless sexually suggestive shots of Sayu while lingering interminably on the ever-present potential of a romantic relationship between adult guy and underage girl.
Now, to the story’s credit, it’s not completely devoid of substance. There are absolutely decent moments where you can catch a decent glimmer of a more mature story about a growing girl who flees from trauma and seeks proper guidance in her life. You can see natural and enjoyable moments where you can feel a warmingly substantial theme or two. And I don’t even think the show’s premise is inherently perverted. Seeing genuine care and love for a character who needs to know its feeling most — parts like these are probably the best and most interesting part of the show, but it’s also these parts of the show that’re most exploitively cucked. The show offers a tangible narrative, digs into character backgrounds, and puts effort into exploring a theme or two — but all of it ultimately serves the underlying dynamic of having a conveniently placed noble whiteknight main-character rescue a vulnerable underage girl who’s being exploited by others.
Main pair aside, there're also a handful of other characters that get their fair say in the story. These characters can actually offer their own warmth to the story as proper side-characters, but are just as easily guilty of contributing to the story’s underlying fetish fuel when you notice things like the all-too noticeable harem ring starting to form. Other characters for the most part are either relatively unremarkable or are just depressingly shallow.
As for the overarching narrative that all of these characters partake in, well, there is admittingly a story that exists. Again, it’s not pure unfiltered ecchi fetish-fuel. The author of the source material does appear to make a genuine effort to structure together a real and developing story. Whether or not you might buy the (mediocre, at best) story is whether or not all you’re willing to unironically buy the premise of the show at face-value; the story does ask itself to be taken seriously and it does take a good degree of suspending common sense’s disbelief.
Every other stylistic aspect of the show (visuals, cinematography, sounds, etc) are completely unremarkable as far as my memory can extend. Not bad. Not great. Gets the point across. Except maybe the OP. OP was good.
All in all, Higehiro’s a perverted whiteknight fantasy at its core that does a great deal in dressing itself with comparatively more substantial themes and decent moments that could have otherwise manifested a lot more nicely in a different and more mature story.
Whether or not you can buy into the given story is entirely up to you and your tastes as the viewer, but lest having yourself behind bars or leaving deeply misguided, it might be healthy to remember that this anime’s fantasy is above all a fantasy, and absolutely not an informative investigation into the Iraq War and its consequences.
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Jun 28, 2021
Some fans will you that Higehiro isn’t as bad as the story sounds, which is to say A STORY ABOUT A MALE OFFICE-WORKER WHO IS REJECTED AND THEN INADVERTENTLY TAKES INTO HIS HOME A VULERNABLE UNDERAGE FEMALE HIGHSCHOOLER WHO OFFERS HIM SEX.
Credit to these fans...they’re not completely wrong. Higehiro isn’t completely devoid of substance. It’s not ecchi garbage. Or like a literal hentai. But what it is, is what you get when you elevate a perverted whiteknight self-insert with some clumps of substantial themes and an ungodly fuckton of self-praising gratification. Everything in Higehiro revolves around its characters, so let’s start there. The main character ... 
Jul 29, 2020
Houkago Teibou Nisshi
(Anime)
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There are two fundamentally essential main points that can be understood about this anime.
1) Name: "Diary of Our Days at the Breakwater", it's an anime about fishing. 2) It's a CGDCT (cute girls doing cute* things) Now if you take these two main points and apply it into the most simple, straight-forward, and elementary way possible - this anime is exactly what you get: Ordinary high school girls. At a breakwater Fishing ... 
Sep 21, 2019
Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo.
(Anime)
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im not gonna waste your time summarizing the anime because there's a synopsis lol
The anime definitely doesn't hold up in what it tries to be in its melodramatic story and writing. buuuut, I think it excels at still being reliability engaging, charming, and often utterly hilarious. In other words, it's something like a really good cute-girls-doing-cute-things anime that's unique in that it actually acknowledges that other sex (!!!) and even revolves pretty ambitiously around the topic of sex, maturity, and all that romantic jazz but then it hinders itself in trying to be more serious than is suitable for its own good, and so you ... 
Aug 22, 2019
I'm going to save you from reading the usual fuzz that you can read in every other review ever on Natsume Yuujinchou. I mean, it's Natsume. You already know what Natsume Yuujinchou is.
That brings me to the good thing about this movie, it doesn't do anything wrong. It's good because it's Natsume, and if you're thinking about watching this movie, chances are you've already watched the last SIX SEASONS (!!!) that precede it. By this point, you probably like Natsume and know what to expect. What you expect is exactly what you'll find in this movie: the good old usual Natsume Yuujinchou. Describing it as ... |
