Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun Season 2

Episode 21

It's fascinating that it took this many episodes for an episode of Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun to be titled “The Curse.” The entire story began with Nene's mermaid curse, and funnily enough, this week that same curse has come full circle to transform into her blessing. This was a world-building episode that expanded on some of the series' core mysteries. What happened between Amane and Tsukasa? How far back in time does this sacrifice/severance cycle go? And what would it take to make Teru finally snap? (That last one wasn't a long-time query of mine, but it was still pretty funny.) As the story continues to unspool its central mystery, it has even debuted a brand new character, showing me just how much more there is to learn.

This episode kicked off with one explosive opening scene: worldbuilding, plot development, and creepy horror all in one. First Teru explains to Akane how exorcist dynasties and shrines are locked together in a symbiotic relationship (whether Teru and the head priest like it or not!) then Teru's phone gets a cryptic call that is shockingly significant to everyone in the room. Sometimes I forget that if Hanako-kun had lived, he would only be in his 50s or 60s by now, meaning that there's an entire oral history to be learned about him and his family through the older denizens of this world. As it turns out, the head priest had his own run-in with Hanako-kun's family and even got his wish granted by Tsukasa, or something like Tsukasa. As the evidence stacks up that Tsukasa exchanged his own soul for Amane's life and then came back wrong, The Summer Hikaru Died parallels keep coming.

In the end, even this shared connection to Tsukasa isn't enough to convince the head priest to help Teru—in fact, revitalizing the priest's terror of Tsukasa tipped the scales firmly in the other direction. And Teru… loses it. I did not put money down on Teru becoming the funniest character in the show, but I really should have. First, there was the incredible “get in loser, we're doing karaoke” scene after the severance, when Teru experienced every amusement like a kid getting to do it for the first time (which was, in fact, the case). Now, he's facing opposition for perhaps the first time—I get the understanding that Teru is so smart he has never really been challenged before. The honor student mask completely slips off, and he reacts in a comically immature way: rolling around and whining to Akane. And while he's being real here, there's the actual possibility that Teru really does have a crush on Aoi—it wasn't just a statement to bother Akane and get Nene's romantic gears turning. Last season, Teru was chiefly unknowable and vaguely antagonistic; I never expected to like the guy this much.

Meanwhile, Nene's putting on a brave face as she tries to escape the strange pit she's fallen into. There's water on the ground, and spirits in priestess clothing ready to strike—but because of the severance, Nene doesn't want to call it a Boundary. That's been the weirdest part of this whole severance thing: Nene has repeatedly been in situations with spirits (the haunted house, the child we think is Tsukasa, and now this weirdness) that she reasons out of calling spiritual “because of the severance.” But it's becoming increasingly difficult for me, the viewer, to believe she doesn't realize it! Nene's no fighter, and with neither Hanako-kun nor Kou to come to her rescue, the story introduces a brand new character: Katakuri. In a piece of dark comedy, this ombre-haired young man got sacrificed after the village sacrificed every one of their young women. With a telegraphed knack for medicine, I predict he might hold the cure to Nene's shortened lifespan, but it's too soon to know exactly how he fits into the puzzle.

The curse of the episode title likely is Tsukasa's: whatever pact he entered into to save his dying older brother Amane, and which ultimately resulted in his family's murder-suicide. But we are lacking in some key details here. Hanako-kun is always shown with a knife and has said he killed his brother, but did he kill his parents, too? And did he kill Tsukasa, or did he kill the thing that seemed to be Tsukasa, but their mother realized was an imposter? Thanks to yet another curse, the child Tsukasa in the house is not trying to solve this alone with Kou. Thanks to Nene's fish form, she was able to use the exit Katakuri showed her, which would be far too narrow for a human body. What separates a curse from a blessing? As Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun delves deeper into its twisty tale, we're getting a glimpse of every part of that spectrum.

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