Higehiro Episode 2 Review: SALARYMAN OR LADIES' MAN?!

Written by: Karlo Cervantes | Published on: April 19, 2021

Late night gyudon, steamy yakiniku, and more miso soup!

As Yoshida takes in Sayu, his co-workers begin to notice some changes and rumors start to spread about him. But what happens when the girl who just rejected him suddenly asks to have dinner? The horizon of Higehiro expands with this new episode as potential conflicts and new love interests get thrown into the mix.

If you paid close attention to the episode, you might have spotted a little Easter egg.

“Cell Phone” covered Chapters 3-5 of the manga adaptation based from Shimesaba’s Japanese light novel: Higehiro: After Being Rejected, I Shaved and Took in a High School Runaway. (Hige wo Soru. Soshite Joshikousei wo Hirou.)

Quick Recap

Here's what you've missed on the previous episode:

Yoshida, a 26-year old salaryman, gets rejected by his boss Gotou Airi.
Feeling the pain of rejection, he gets himself drunk and finds a runaway school girl, Ogiwara Sayu, by his house sitting under the lamplight.
Sayu tried to seduce a drunk Yoshida in exchange to allow her to stay the night
Yoshida takes in Sayu and made arrangements for her to do the household chores in return for allowing her stay indefinitely

You can check out the full review of the previous episode here.

Yoshida the Salaryman or Ladies’ Man?

Jumping off of the first episode where it was mostly an introduction of the main characters of Yoshida and Sayu, this one focused more on the background of Yoshida, the Salaryman.

A salaryman, in layman’s term, is your traditional corporate office worker in Japan. As Yoshida’s work place environment gets highlighted, the audience also got introduced to new characters that add to the Higehiro narrative. But what made it seem realistic is how it closely resembles the work ethic of the Japanese people. This is by no means a perfect similarity but the intent of showcasing how they work is a nice touch of Japanese culture.

Potential new conflicts/love interests also rose about in this episode, at least that’s how it was portrayed. Despite the obvious intentions, there’s not much we can take out of it given Yoshida’s platonic reactions.

Black and White

The real highlight of this episode is the conversation between Yoshida and Hashimoto, his married colleague. Hashimoto, in a way, is similar to the audience as he is also a third party viewer of what’s going on between Yoshida and Sayu but he also acts as a way for the audience to voice out their thoughts. In a way, it still supports the idea that the anime gives off a feeling of involvement of its viewers through this character.

Yoshida (L) and Hashimoto (R) at the store

Going back to the conversation (spoiler alert!), Yoshida asks Hashimoto to accompany him to the store to buy Sayu a cell phone. His colleague makes a very good point in trying to understand the intent of ones actions. If it’s just to address the issue at hand, any cell phone that is able to take/make calls and/or messages should suffice but Yoshida takes into consideration what Sayu would prefer. That particular thought takes the recipients’ feelings into account which supports the idea of wanting that person to be happy.

At the end of that exchange, Hashimoto advises Yoshida that the safest option would either be black or white. This is also a clever delivery of how a person should act towards others. It can be very confusing for people to see actions that are wishy-washy that tend to fall in the gray area. In order to avoid giving off mixed signals, it’s always safe to be direct, or as Hashimoto suggests – black and white. This can also be related to Sayu's habitual bad behavior as evidenced in the episode.

The narrative is still quite far out in terms of a budding romance but this slight change in behavior and perspective from Yoshida makes it all seem like it’s possible.

“Cell Phone” was a good episode to provide depth into the show’s narrative. As more characters are introduced, we can’t help but look forward to how Yoshida’s relationships evolve with everyone around him.

Little by little, Yoshida and Sayu begin to open up to each other but we have yet to receive some solid backstory about our runaway school girl. Mishima and Gotou are also two people to watch out for as they build closer relationships with Yoshida. Let’s all tune into the next episode as it might be a really juicy one given its title!

Episode 3 of Hige wo Soru. Soshite Joshikousei wo Hirou entitled “Living Together” airs on April 19, 2021 at 10:30PM (JST).

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read)

Potential conflicts and new love interests arise as the episode highlights Yoshida’s workplace and its realistic similarity to Japanese office culture
It’s important to understand the intent of your actions but people are sometimes oblivious about it
Clever representation of how people should be black and white with their actions through Hashimoto’s recommendations
In a way, Hashimoto represents the viewers while being in the anime as he also views Sayu and Yoshida's relationship from a third-person vantage point.