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“To the girls that will never graduate from highschool, to the girls that will never find warmth in this world, to the girls that have been abandoned by their parents. I pray that you will find peace in your heart, I pray that you will overcome all your demons, I pray that one day you will say “I’m happy””.

Higehiro is not a romantic comedy, it is an anime that seeks to tell a story, a story about despair, about home and most importantly about need. To tell this story we are introduced to two characters. Yoshida, a man who falls in love with his boss ... and is rejected, and Sayu, a schoolgirl who has run away from home and exchanges sexual favors in order to have a roof over her head. Through these two characters, the author's vision of the world is presented to us.

We learned that the title is the summary of an opera, and in this case it is no different, HigeHiro: After being rejected, I shaved and went to a High School Runaway is exactly what the title says. What makes us think about why such events occurred, the main one, why Sayu exchanges her body for a place to stay? And yes, the main question is not “Why Sayu left her home”. the main point that proves this is the protagonist's attitude towards Yoshida, she not only teases him, but incessantly seeks him to have sex with her. This point is not only stupidly discarded, it is also tossed aside during the rest of the plot and minimized in exchange for another point, her past. her past is portrayed as something dark, traumatic and life-changing, a question that even Yoshida is reluctant to ask.

As we incessantly think about the event that brought about sayu's escape, we are led to believe in Yoshida's goodness and to see him as a moral example to follow, the man who blame his boss for rejecting him, the man who lets a minor spend days in his house, is the same "morally upright" man.
The other characters are despicable and replaceable at any time, besides completing the social circle of our protagonists, they are used to reinforce Yoshida's criminal behavior. They accept the situation calmly and even support him to stay close to Sayu in order to give her the necessary support. As we go through some deplorable fan service scenes, Sayu's long-awaited past is revealed to us, a discussion. The cause of the whole plot is not only stupid, it uses suicide in a disrespectful way, The death of her friend is not the reason for the escape, also there’s no reason for her friend suicide at all, the lesson that is given to the viewer is “Let propel alone, friendships tarnish the beauty of individuality”. In addition to all of the above, we see an incongruity between the facts when Issa is presented in the story, Sayu's brother whose existence proves that the past doesn't make any sense, he always supported her and sought her happiness, he came to afford hotel stays to leave her alone, away from her demonic mother, and how is he presented? Like the villain that will separate lovers.

In the technical aspect, HigeHiro is a mess, the direction is terrible, besides being quite visible how the lack of experience harmed the director, the excess of static scenes (which served in this case to represent the character's thinking) makes the anime dull and uninteresting, there are so many scenes in this format that the thoughts of the characters became predictable. The soundtrack is boring, nothing impactful or memorable, with the exception of the song “Forgotten Event”, which despite not being totally original, is worth listening to.

In the end HigeHiro uses a real and troubling theme to bring out a happy story, where he treats the protagonist as a guardian angel while treating anyone who sees the problematic relationship between Yoshida and Sayu as the story's villain. If you felt bad for Sayu's early story, see other true stories about girls who gave up everything in search of a happy life and a place to call home and all they found was a dark and cold world.