Hana-Kimi

Episode 9

I officially take back anything nice I said about Hana-Kimi's dub.

Okay, no, that's not entirely fair. Katelyn Barr is still doing a solid job as Mizuki, including a convincingly husky tone that differentiates her boy-mode from when she's speaking in her natural voice. But this episode was the most dramatic of the series so far, for reasons we'll get into in a moment, and Wyatt Baker did not at all rise to the occasion as Sano. Whether he was scolding Mizuki, comforting her, talking to Makita, his tone never changed. While I've long maintained that modern simul-dubs are often dull and samey, it's rare for the acting to simply be bad. Yet, Baker's flat inflection made Sano sound bored and pissy, no matter the occasion. I get it, Sano isn't the most expressive guy, but that just means he takes more acting skill to pull off, skill that Baker clearly lacks. Kyle Phillips was no great shakes as the creep Makita, but he's also not a main character, so this episode will likely be the last we hear of him. 

This episode brings the beach arc to its climax, tying up the loose ends so that Mizuki, Sano, and Nakatsu can move back into their dorm. A lot happens, and they feel slightly out of order: it begins with Mizuki having her epiphany about her relationship with Sano. All that grumping around was indeed because she was jealous that Tamami can pursue him openly as a girl, regardless of whether he's interested. She moved to Japan to be with him, but in her mind they have no chance of dating because he only knows her as a boy. While that's frustrating, however, they have a strong and close relationship as things are, one that's worth valuing. She decides she wouldn't trade that for anything. While this is sweet, it does feel like we've been here before. Remember the Valentine's chocolate? We're just retreading it. Hana-Kimi ran for 36 volumes, so do get ready for a fair bit of repetition in the emotional component of its sitcom shenanigans.

It also comes early in the episode; Mizuki's big emotional revelation is quickly followed by Io walking in on her changing and seeing her boobs. Doesn't anybody knock in this damn place? This seems like a huge violation, especially when you employ underage children and provide them with room and board. What if she'd seen someone's hog? And Mizuki, if you're hiding your gender, shouldn't you lock the door while you're changing? While this does resolve into a fairly sweet moment of Io having a frank discussion with Mizuki about her changing body, getting there is frustrating. It also runs into one of the issues with setting it in the modern era instead of 30 years in the past: Mizuki wears a thick denim vest that will eventually no longer be sufficient to hide her bust, never mind the permanent damage that improperly-done compression can do to her breast tissue. This may have made sense in the 90's, but proper binders that are effective against even large busts are easily accessible to anyone with internet access and a debit card here in the 2020's.

Moving on, Sano overhears Makita talking with his buddies about how he's done with his previous girl and is totally going to bang Mizuki. They chuckle about how he's only after one thing, and… I wish I could call it cartoonishly villainous, but I know that's how a lot of men talk amongst themselves. This comes to a head when, after going to town to shop for supplies for the guesthouse, Makita calls in with a lie about their engine stalling so that he can pull over to the side of the road and assault Mizuki. I'm not exaggerating; when she tries to gently reject his advances, he pins her down by her wrists until Sano arrives in the nick of time to pull him out of the car and deck him. (In the manga, he got as far as getting Mizuki's shirt off and was starting to unzip her vest, but I get the feeling that was too spicy for TV.)

While, once again, the soft lighting and awkward running animation failed to bring the appropriate tension to the moment, I have to give the writing here some credit. Once Sano gets Makita out of the car, Mizuki's freeze response shifts into flight, and she takes off in fear. It's not a romantic savior moment for her; it's terrifying and traumatizing. She doesn't see that Sano is there to help her, only that her adrenaline-flooded system is telling her that she needs to go. Now. Nor does Sano shame her for getting into a car alone with a man who has predatory designs on her. Mizuki trusts everyone so deeply, and that's a strength of hers. Even if Sano is keeping up the kayfabe of believing that she's a boy, they all knew Makita saw through her rise. He could have yelled at her for allowing herself to be vulnerable, for putting herself in a position where she was almost taken advantage of, even after he tried to warn her. But he doesn't. He doesn't victim blame. He only soothes her and gets her home, even after they fall off a cliff.

The weirdest response is Io. When Makita stumbles back to the guesthouse, a bruise on his cheek where Sano punched him, she doesn't fire him on the spot for being a sex pest and putting another staff member in danger. No, she taunts him for trying to rape a guy by pointing out that Mizuki attends a boys' school and therefore must be a boy. Her priorities are so wildly off that it's a little shocking. Then, with two children lost in the woods, she not only declines to send out a search party for them until morning, but allows a third child to go out after them, potentially getting lost as well. Io is written sympathetically but y'all, I think she might actually suck.

The episode's structure is undeniably odd: start with the big emotional epiphany, then end with the stock shoujo “lost together in the wilderness” plot. I feel like it would have worked better with these two moments reversed. Mizuki realizing how wonderful it is to have this close relationship with Sano where she feels safe with him after one of the worst moments of her life, even if she can't pursue him romantically, would have made for a satisfying emotional conclusion that didn't just feel like a repetition of things that happened earlier in the series. Instead, the big denouement is… bidding farewell to the Kagurazaka siblings? Well, okay.

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