The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You

Episode 12

I may have fibbed a bit last week. I said that episode 11 had a bit of everything that makes this series so special. I stand by that statement, but there was some deception by omission, since I knew what was coming this week. Last episode was like a sampler platter, laying out little tidbits of the various offerings that make 100 Girlfriends so tantalizing for you to sample in your own time. This season finale is more akin to a buffet table being tipped up on one side, so that the entire contents flow into your cartoonishly distended mouth and fill you up like a big balloon.

Granted, there is a bit of a bait and switch. I'm sure everyone hoping Rentaro was about to give Hakari a new sibling will be a little disappointed to find out Hahari was just getting her new boyfriend to dress up like a girl—and I'm sure that will please a different-but-possibly-overlapping field of horny viewers. I don't know exactly how the venn diagram between MILF-lovers and people who get excited over "a crossdressing girl kissing her crossdressing boyfriend Sleeping Beauty-style while his other five girlfriends watch" shakes out, but I do know that this show is smack dab in the center of it. Combined with the girls' quest to see Rentaro's elephant trunk, not to mention Hakari and Karane's late night "Close Friends" moment, and this may just be the most unabashedly horny episode of this whole show.

Which makes it even wilder that the show chooses here and now to proudly deliver a heartfelt paean for the power of polyamory. Sure, the conversation is technically couched in Hahari feeling guilty about finding a new relationship while still harboring feelings for her late first love, but when Rentaro asks “Who ever said that loving someone means your love for someone else is fake?” the subtext couldn't be clearer. Human emotions don't come with easy shut-off valves, and whether it's loving both a former partner and a new one, or loving more than one at the same time, there should be no guilt over those feelings—so long as everyone is honest with each other. I have tried to be careful and cognizant when talking about 100 Girlfriends and its relationship to real-life poly love, and I certainly wouldn't tell anyone that it represents a realistic or model vision of polyamory. Yet in moments like this, I can at least say it understands the heart of the idea, and fully believes that love shouldn't be restricted to arbitrary, prescriptive forms. There's something seriously sweet to that ideal, and something anyone should take to heart regardless of what kind of romance they do or don't practice.

Again, that whole sequence comes like five minutes after Shizuka, through a sequence of cartoon slapstick hijinks, accidentally lays eyes on Rentaro's dick and right before Rentaro is confronted by the ghost of Hakari's dead middle-schooler father. Somehow, through this series' inscrutable alchemy, it all works to make something undeniably charming and funny—landing as the perfect finale to this season. You really should not be able to take any meaningful messages about love or relationships from a show where a guy kisses a girl and her mother on the mouth in the same episode. It should either be too trashy, too silly, or too unhinged to meaningfully communicate anything that sentimental. Yet here I stand, genuinely tearing up as Hahari can finally be relieved of the guilt and hurt that has tainted her love for so long. Then I'm standing here laughing at her literally buying the school so she can still be around with everyone else. This show really is magical, and I can't wait to see what it has up its sleeve in season two.

As all of the Rentaro family are accounted for in the main image, let's spread some love and highlight some of these nice girls who showed up in the end credits this week.

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The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.