English Dub Review: Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun “Sumire”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Nene and Hanako awaken in a strange land and meet an odd girl named Sumire, who is set to be married to Number Six the very next day.

OUR TAKE

The saga of the Grim reaper continues, this time entirely following Nene and Hanako as they enter…somewhere. I guess the best guess would be Number Six’s boundary like all of the other Wonders have, though this seems different. Not just because Six’s boundary is supposed to be the border between the living and the dead, but as it is later revealed, this world is more a recreation of the memories of Sumire, a woman from Number Six’s past who was used in some ritual sacrifice, and it seems the he was used to protect her during her youth until the day she would be used for it. It also turns out that Sumire is Six’s “Yorishiro”, a Wonder’s most precious object. We’ve seen other Wonders Yorishiros, as well as seen glimpses of their memories and origins, so this way of explaining it isn’t exactly unprecedented, though the question at hand now is what we’re supposed to be figuring out from seeing all of this. Is there a hidden message about what to do to get Nene out of there? Is Nene, now taking the place of Sumire in this apparently constantly restarting ritual, meant to break the cycle somehow?

Well, at the very least, it seems that Hanako has managed to interrupt the ritual for the moment. Shortly before this, we saw that Sumire had knocked him out and switched Nene in her place (as for how she knocked him out, it seems she used some kind of cursed dagger), but the ritual fails when Nene can’t make it through the gate. Putting aside the horrible implications of Sumire apparently having done that and still existing, possibly meaning she’s done this countless times with no end in sight, it may be that putting Nene in Sumire’s place could be an effort to stop this once and for all. It certainly seem like she was doing it just to find someone to take the suffering for her, but honestly it could be anything at this point. And that’s without taking into account all of the other subplots going on like with Kou doing that sleep ritual. We do check in with Akane and Aoi, though he seems to…die? I mean yeah, he’s a human, but he’s also a Wonder…though we have seen them be able to die. Regardless, we seem to be drawing closer to the climax of this and we will continue moving towards that next week.