Last season's 'Hige wo Soru. Soshite Joshikousei wo Hirou' ruffled the fethers of many while being defended by others for mostly the wrong reasons, thoroughly (albeit with less staying power) cementing itself into the pantheon of controversial age gap and supposed 'Paedophilia baiting' anime that near ever closer to being a regular talking point for this community. As I've spoken on many of these topics at lengths in relation to a much more divisive (with far better surface level reasoning) show before, I'll be refraining from repeating myself too much. You can read that essay here as something of an accompaniment to this one if a balanced discussion on these such controversy interests you ( "On Culture Shock and Imposing the Standards of the West" https://myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=851966 ) and without any further ramblings lets embark into the spoiler free segment.
Music and Animation - These two categories represent both the very best and worst of Higehiro, on the side of music we have a really solid score. It leans heavily on the use of string instruments (in particular the guitar) in a way that gives the whole Ost a homely, comfortable feel which is obviously rather fitting. Furthermore it has a number of well produced more emotionally resonance songs, so that the large number of dialogue heavy scenes don't all sound the same with the more prevalent inclusion of the piano and violin for the sadder tracks which quite nicely contrasts the guitars of the upbeat ones. Finally the more tense music for scenes where characters are worried and so on, while weaker then the rest, certainly fulfils their roles to an above average degree. All in all it's a great showing in the Ost department.
The animation on the other hand lags behind the rest of the show, it's not an issue with the direction which is generally pretty strong, along with a great sense of lighting and a fitting artstyle, but rather that the actual movement of the characters is fairly poor. At times it can seem rigid and for the most part the visuals are often stationary aside from the mouth movements, nothing unusual for this genre but note-worthy all the same. This most comes into play when the characters attempt to express emotions, some of these scenes operate better then others but often-times characters will almost look like they've been super imposed onto the background when they try to interact with it or their facial animations simply won't keep up with the voice actors, leading to a far-to-frequent portrayal of the dialogue being more melancholy or sadder then the emotions being displayed. Overall the direction is strong which makes up for alot of this but if the property didn't have this good sense of pacing and so on, then the animation could easily be seen as below average.
Story and Characters - Will leave any discussion of the more controversial elements till post the spoiler tag but for now it should suffice to say that if your worried about this being a show that in some way endorses paedophilia, then worry no further. The same applies to the false and somewhat sarcastic claims of grooming, Higehiro is simply put a slice of life anime with a secondary focus on romance. It's main query is the display of the daily lives of it's lead characters, whom through unusual circumstance become co-dependant on one another and find a sort of kinship that allows them to be more fulfilled in life via each other's company. It goes a fair bit deeper then this mind you, with their backstories receiving time to naturally arise and then settle before being dealt with in a relatively mature manner. As already mentioned the pacing is strong, slow enough to make you believe in the relationship dynamics of each character but never drags, something of importance is usually right around every corner. The story's messages and themes are all handled with what I would call a degree of personal sincerity on the part of the author and I think it achieves all it sets out to do commendably well in it's short 12 ep run.
The characters are fairly simply for the most part which is in no way an issue. This isn't the sort of tale the requires a full supporting cast of well-fleshed out individuals, rather instead the anime makes the wise choice to give us more then enough from the side cast to make them believable and compelling but never so much so that the focus is taken from Sayu and Yoshida. This is a solid decision considering the story is driven by these two and to deviate from them would only be to miss-manage the limited time space, so while I understand those disappointed not to see adaptations of the stories B-cast development arcs, I think the choice to be concise and effective was definitely the right one. The characters are therefore more then serviceable and certainly enjoyably to spend time with.
Spoiler free Conclusion;
Despite the often mis-placed or narrow minded whining and intolerance of twitter mobs and Mal forums against this show, Higehiro actively pursues it's goals in an efficient and engaging manner. It sets out its stock from the very beginning and delivers on pretty much everything satisfactorily, even if those deliveries weren't what people necessarily wanted for better or worse. The animation while sometimes weak, by no means gets worse as the show progress and the Ost is consistently well suited to any occasion. If you enjoy a short slow burn, with good pacing, mature discussions and a heartfelt message for youths and adults alike, then you should hopefully enjoy Higehiro however if you find it boring or feel urged to sling derogatory rhetoric at it, then it may simply not be for you. I give it a score of 8.5.
Spoilers Ahoy;
On debate and the merits (or lack there-of) of intolerance - I don't intend for this to be one of my longer reviews, as aforementioned I've written on much of this in other essays but maybe it bears re-mentioning that intolerance gets you nowhere, not wanting to understand and engage with the media you watch is fine if you're busy or tired or just watching for light relief, those are all great reasons to enjoy anime but to have the available processing power and free space to go out and complain that such and such is this, to ride upon your white horse of justice, to call a creator paedophilic for writing a doujinshi, to write off a show or person for including/liking ecchi content, to attempt to 'cancel' someone's entire career and presumably livelihood, is all ultimately to be intolerant. If you have that time on yours hands then be constructive, attempt to understand the media you consume or the people you lambast. Not everyone is out to get you and your creed, while it oversteps the line in places, Dragon Maid's Lolita's are clearly meant for comedy and found family purposes, Re;Zero is an active critic of the power fantasy genre not a member of it and School days is friggin brilliant (no really I mean it, it is).
The point I'm trying to get across here is if you label a group you perceive to be corrupt as 'evil' or 'immoral' then how are you any different? Violence only creates more violence and the same applies in debate. If you refuse to interact with someone, try to force you will on them - If your a collage student who labels all Right Wing speakers 'Nazis', someone who tells anti-vacers or flat earthers to go die, then you yourself are only antagonising them, only making them more hard-line, if anything your proving them right, they're mad conspiracy theories hold far more sway if you use their on own insane debating tactics against them, you yourself become part of the problem, If your in 'The Right' then you almost never ever have the Right to be equally intolerant - "An eye for an eye and we all go blind". What I'm trying to get at is even if 90% of those people can never be convinced back to their sensibilities, there's never a good reason to give up and push away the 10% who will still talk amicably, the civil one's who just got lost along the way.
Is Higehiro intended as grooming? Clearly without question No. It's actually a pretty simply story but the fact that two people falling in love upsets so many is baffling. It's not that I'm saying an age gap is ok but rather that Love is. Great lengths are taken to show that Yoshida isn't a paedophile, nor does the show or author endorse their actions, even if it's 100% easy to say they end up together at the end, its quite intentionally left slightly vague as to weather they go any further then living with one another and painstakingly clear that their now both of age. How can Yoshida groom a person he didn't know, are we suggesting he was waiting for a girl to appear and offer himself to her? Or what, that his efforts to make sure she got home happily and learned to value herself and her body more were somehow an elaborate ruse to win her over? Why would he even do that when she offered herself to him, while he was plastered drunk, in their very first encounter? It's just absurd put lightly. Now to be fair if we entertain the idea that people believe their could be a tenuous link between this and inspiring real life adults, then yes there may be a discussion that needs to be had there but to me the discussion should be about improving society to the point where people aren't that mind-numbingly easy to influence. To censor media as exceedingly tame as this, is indicative of a world where doing so would simply be to put a band-aid on a burst dam. Its ridiculous and unreasonable put lightly. Shall we ban all murder mysterious lest they encourage or inspire homicide? Iseakis certainly need to go if their going to actively encourage the act of jumping out in front of Truck-kun's in order to attain paradise. Again I go into far further detail in my other essay but even then, Higehiro is so tame and clearly has such pure intentions that I'm not even sure if the discussion is even feasibly comparable for all but the most arbitrary of connections.
The struggles of youth Or living for the sake of living - Moving back to the actual show rather then politics and bureaucratic grandstanding, for our last talking point lets return to what the story is actually about. It's core theme across it's entire cast is simply growing up. We often look to older media for insight on our current predicaments, for examples I myself briefly touched on how 'Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind' talks about Climate change long before it's mainstream relevance, in ways that are still poignant to this day, but in Higehiro's case were presented with the common flaws most all of us share from a modern perspective. It's not unique, nor do all anime need to strive for this but it most certainly is well put.
Sayu is struggling with an infinitely more complicated world than is suited to sentient creatures, one so complicated that you can lose a friend to mental illness for what seems from your perspective to be incomprehensible reasons. Where you can be surrounded by adults who are seemingly highly apathetic simply because they too are just trying their best to cope. A world that's so unfair we all, and I think I really do mean all, sometimes want to run away no matter the consequences. No she isn't always rational, why this surprizes people I can't fathom, she's a teenage girl, it would be far more unrealistic if she did act logically. Her story is about growing up, learning to value your own body and coming to understand one another. It is so brilliant that her mother is portrayed as wholly incapably of understanding Sayu because that's real life. I know more people like that than is preferable, they aren't malicious or 'evil' they just see things in a different light, cope in a different way but that can make them hard to deal with, can make them act cruel and harshly selfish as is the case here.
Meanwhile Yoshida is going through the same experience but as a young adult, he doesn't take care of himself enough which is something even the title of the show reinforces "-After Being Rejected, I Shaved-". He lives to work rather then working to live, a feeling many of us know all to well. We're subtlety informed that he's a heavy drinker, frequent smoker and always accepts business trips. He lives is a crappy messy apartment and eats almost solely fast food. While on the surface he may seem like the usual calm and collected, has all the answers, self-insert character, in reality he's a mess who's struggling just as much as Sayu is with the whole process of growing up, except where she is a girl, he is a man. Where would he run to? Who would pay his taxes? What would his colleagues think?
This is what I meant when I said above in the spoiler free segment, that this is a deeply personal story, it's clear alot of the authors own experiences with the world must of gone into this and I find it hard to believe most people don't empathise with or even see themselves in at-least one of these character's struggles. Once you stop bit*hing all the time, you migth just find this of all things is an anime that attempts to try talking directly to you in particular, you just aren't listening and that's a sad reality in my view.
So then where does that lead? The people of Higehiro aren't 'bad' just human. The store clerk who forces himself on Sayu should be objectively 'evil' or morally reprehensible but then he helps her with her brother (that could of been handled a little more nuancedly but it does get the thematic point across quite effectively if clumsily), so is he good or bad? In the end Yoshida has to step up not Sayu's brother so is the brother good or bad? The Mother clearly can't handle the situation around her, rich or not she was abandoned with a baby by her husband and is greatly prideful in her personal image, there is no clearly positive outcome with her, only a compromise, so is she good or bad? In this harsh world where everyone is just trying to cope in their own, often very corrupt ways, why wouldn't these two confused souls end up intermingled? How could Yoshida not fall for the girl that he both needs and who wants him. The girl who gives him a reason to work, to turn down business trips, to come home on time, helps him eat better, makes his apartment a home rather then a box, the girl who gives him a reason -to well- shave. Conversely Sayu is presented with someone genuinely kind after literally months of misery, self-loathing, losing her best friend, her family and her own body. Despite how utterly broken Yoshida clearly is to anyone with a pair of working eyes and functional brain cells, he takes her in, cares for her, helps her realise the value of herself, smooths things over as best as possible with her family for her, gives her a place to return to, makes it ok to cry, ok to hate her friend for dieing, ok to hate herself for not being able to save her, the man who was kind to her, simply because she was cute and he was drunk. Age didn't matter when they met basked in the moonlight under a lamp-post, he just acted out of the kindness we should all hold. That's all.
Closing Thoughts - Higehiro was my seasonal anime for last month (Late review I know, wasn't sure if I wanted to talk on such familiar ground again but I really do like this one), I don't always pick one up, rather like I did with 86, I wait till the end of the season and then pick and choose what I like the look of because somewhat tangentially related I find watching anime seasonally to be something too close to a regimented experience, where your immediate reactions take over your whole viewpoint, where popular opinion sways your time with a piece. I watch anime to enjoy and understand it as either entertainment or works of artistry, why would I want to let it or a streaming company's whims choose when I can and how much I can watch of something? In Higehiro I partially kept up with it due to it's relevance to a few pieces I'd been writing and I'm glad I did as I doubt without the controversy I'd of ever picked up this one (every cloud has a sliver lining I guess). As a story while it could sometimes be tighter or more in-depth it seldom if ever felt like it coped out, I felt I got every interaction I wanted in a fresh and mature fashion all with a style and production that felt honest. I don't think Higehiro is game-changing or even that memorable in the long run nor do I think it surpasses it's contemporises but I also don't think it wants to and that's ok. It feels almost unique in that it doesn't really belong to any one genre, it isn't quite a pure romance or romcom nor is it a true slice of life or drama, it's something different, more akin to an open letter to the youth of the world, to everyone's shared experience of struggle with the human condition and I think that's quite speical. Art is the/an expression of oneself and while not all aspects of this show are outstanding, I feel I can say with certainty that I thoroughly enjoyed coming along for the ride that was the artistic pursuit and production of themes expressive of adolescence and growing up in modern society, and for that alone I think the show is a surprisingly great success.
I hope you enjoyed, if you did please press the 'helpful' button (Turn phone's to 'desktop mode') and-
Thanks for reading.
