kamome's eighth wonder

I'm a writer, aspiring author, and a huge TBHK fan. I've loved the series for years and have an... excessive amount of knowledge on it, so I've been meaning to create a blog to post literary analyses of the story and other TBHK-related commentary. I tend to look at stories from a writing perspective, so I love analyzing plot, characters, etc. while sharing my personal opinions as well. I'll probably also post about AidaIro's other works and their style in general. In addition to TBHK, here are some other things I might occasionally post about:

- Revolutionary Girl Utena (and other Kunihiko Ikuhara works)

- Percy Jackson and the Olympians (or really, any of Rick Riordan’s book series)

- Cardcaptor Sakura (the original 1998 anime, not Clear Card)

- Fruits Basket

- random books, shows, movies, etc. or my general media-related rants

(UGGH for some reason tumblr isn’t letting me put in the screenshots so i’ll update this with them attached ASAP)

1. Okay, people do talk about this one, but Nene is taller than Hanako (I love when people remember this in fanart!)

2. Kou is canonically in remedial classes (and he’s failing them. Even art class).

3. In the very first chapter, Teru admits that he’s been in love with someone for a while, but we don’t actually know who it is. He could be lying, or maybe Akane’s suspicions are correct and he likes Aoi. In 2018, while AidaIro was answering fan questions, they were asked if the person Teru likes really does exist and they answered yes. Personally, I think the one he likes is Akane himself, but that’s just my own theory…

4. Nene is strong enough to pick up Hanako. One could argue it doesn’t count because he’s a ghost and can float, but remember she’s ALSO strong enough to pick up Akane.

5. The Minamoto family has a cat.

6. Natsuhiko makes ASMR videos “for kittens only.” Are they good? Probably not, but maybe he has a gift. As a member of the Broadcasting Club, he has access to some recording equipment.

7. When Akane is upset, Nene shows him pictures of Aoi to calm him down.

8. Sousuke was good at cooking when he was alive, but inexplicably lost all ability to when he became a ghost. We know that he was never really hungry in this chapter of ASHK and just wanted to spend time with Kou, so maybe he’s just pretending to be catastrophically bad at cooking.

9. Akane collects books with characters named Aoi in them. Apparently, he’s never read TBHK though, which is too bad because there’s definitely more than the average number of Aois in that one. He would absolutely love it.

10. Satou claimed he almost fell in love with Teru once. Also, both he and Yokoo had crushes on Aoi at one point, but Akane took care of that pretty quickly.

11. Natsuhiko’s necklace is actually a gift from Sakura. Or… so he says.

12. Nene bathes as a fish. I see people all the time wondering how Nene takes baths/showers, but we actually have the answer to this! In one bonus comic, Hanako invites Kou to spy on Nene taking a bath. Kou refuses and freaks out, but it turns out Hanako is just admiring Nene’s adorable fish form as she swims around in a fishbowl.

13. Aoi once walked in on Akane professing his love to another girl. Unbeknownst to her, he was actually just helping out a mokke. And that girl was actually a mechanical doll child.

14. One of my personal favorites: Kou once skipped class by telling everyone he was having labor pains. What makes it even better is that Yokoo and Satou seem to simply accept this explanation.

First, what erasure actually is: There are a few bits in the current arc where Akane mentions that Tsukasa's supposed to be erased. However, the odd thing is that Tsukasa's actions clearly don't seem to be erased as he still went into the pit saving Amane and Amane remembers him. However, the results of those actions were vastly different, Tsukasa never got to grow up in this timeline and Tsukasa lacks pupils in this timeline so clearly something was done. I think it's because Tsukasa was sent to the far shore leading to him appearing to be "erased" in a similar vein to how Aoi appeared to be "erased" when she was sacrificed. It would also explain why some people, like Amane, still remember him.

Here is why:

- Tsukasa isn't trapped in the red house like he should be considering what Kou said in 121: "If you die here, you become a prisoner. Trapped in the belly of the red house." While Tsukasa technically didn't die in the red house in the original timeline, he clearly died at 4 or around that age in this timeline anyways, yet isn't stuck in the red house. Why not? Because he was teleported to the far shore.

- Another piece of evidence I have is the rumor about Tsukasa which back in the 1980s, it is said by one of the students doing the summoning ritual: "This circle is going to act as a gate to the spirit world." This implies Tsukasa has been summoned from the far shore to the near shore.

Second, the main theory:

Nene is going to end up accidentally erasing Amane and this is why:

The big clock and the hourglass have many similarities. Not only are they both time travel devices associated with the clock keepers, they also have similarities in how they curse users. To explain this, I’ll use Amane and OG Kako.

OG Kako: Goes back in time with the hourglass and is unable to prevent the accident that Marie’s parents were in. The hourglass curses him by erasing Marie from existence. Meanwhile, the hourglass steals bits from his soul each time he goes back in time.

OG Amane: Goes back in time with the big clock and fails to save his brother since both versions go into the pit. Then his brother gets “erased.” Meanwhile, since Amane is the most likely choice for the cat’s identity, it would mean he also lost part of his soul for going back in time.

There’s a pattern here: someone is sent back in time, fails to make the meaningful changes they want, lose part of their soul, and to top it all off, the person they’re trying to save gets erased.

Now let’s look at Nene:

When Akane is about to send Nene back in time, he emphasizes to her about helping Amane: “If anyone is going to tamper with honorable no. 7’s past, I can’t think of a better person for the job.” This is quite odd considering previously Akane had only focused on the change being about Tsukasa. Furthermore, Akane doesn’t stop counting when Nene expresses that she‘s not ready yet, like he wants her to fail. Nene later on says she’s going to save Amane in the same chapter Amane says he’s going to save Tsukasa, that draws parallels to their situations.

When Nene is actually back in time, she fails to actually change anything. Even after she realizes she needs to stop Amane at the end of 129, she ends up not doing shit in 130 to actually stop him.

Hi! I know it’s been a long while since you sent these, so I’m not sure if you’ll still see my response, but thank you so much! I’m sorry to answer so late—first the holidays and then a ton of schoolwork was keeping me super busy, so I apologize for such a long delay. This theory made me think a lot about the timeline(s) of everything in TBHK, including time paradoxes and stuff. Anyway, I’ll get started with my own thoughts on the erasure theory:

Firstly, I completely agree with the idea of Tsukasa being in the Far Shore instead of trapped in the Red House. Like you said, the Far Shore is the “spirit world” the students were talking about. My guess is what happened to Tsukasa was more like death than true erasure (what happened when Kako accidentally prevented Marie from being born in the first place). It all made sense to me until I reread ch. 121 and noticed that Amane says this:

To my understanding, he basically implies that Tsukasa died because Amane sacrificed him to the Entity. But for some reason, even though he would have died in the Red House, Tsukasa isn’t trapped there like the other souls. I still think he’s in the Far Shore, but there must be some explanation for why his body isn’t bound to the Red House. (This is kind of off-track, but if Amane was the one who killed Tsukasa like he says, he would’ve done it at 4 years old. Tsukasa in this timeline died at 4, and Amane would’ve been the same age… meaning he would’ve already been possessed by the Entity by that time.) Then, there's 13-year-old time traveler Amane, who is drawing a kind of parallel to Kako's experience with the hourglass. Like you said, they go back, fail to make the change they want, lose a piece of their soul, and then the person they're trying to save ends up gone. Even if Tsukasa and Marie weren't necessarily erased in the same sense, the pattern still holds up. And Nene has two of those conditions met: she goes back in time, and presumably pays for it with a piece of her soul. From here, she could either reinforce the pattern, or be the one to break it. As for the possibility of Nene erasing Amane, I think it would be pretty intriguing to see this happen (especially as a parallel of Kako and Marie). The story could definitely take this in an interesting direction: What if the best outcome for everyone is if Amane/Hanako never existed at all? If she erases Amane, it’d be pretty safe to assume that she also erases Tsukasa, meaning that his body would never be sacrificed to the Entity, which might solve some problems. But to erase Amane completely, Nene would have to go to a point in time before he was born. Just sending him to the Far Shore after he's already been brought into existence wouldn't do anything to help her reach the original timeline or make it better. This is the same reason I don't think Akane is sabotaging her. If he sent Nene back in time in hopes that she would fail and erase Amane, he probably wouldn't have sent her to Amane's 4th birthday. He also has the same goal as Nene: to get back to the original timeline. The only way to do that is to stop the Clock Keepers and Amane from changing anything and let the timeline progress as it did originally until the time of the school festival.

But, even with all her friends on her side, the possibility that she fails to prevent those changes and has to use time travel yet again is looking pretty likely... (as of ch. 130). So until she's safely returned to her original timeline, we can't rule out the possibility of her erasing Amane, either. If she does, I’m almost entirely certain that the series won’t end that way. She’ll find some way to bring him back. It would be a terrible writing decision for the characters not to return to the original timeline—and I trust Iro’s writing enough to be fairly confident it’s not one she would make (I’ll talk more about this in a separate post). Of course, if Amane were erased, there would be no way of returning to the original timeline. Unless, that is, Nene figures out how to get him back. It would be really interesting to see Nene follow in the footsteps of Kako and Amane's time travels and somehow erase Amane... but if she does, I won’t be too worried about him.

Because TBHK is so heavily influenced by folklore, I wanted to make a post about the connections I've noticed between elements in TBHK and Japanese folklore, legends, history, etc. Obviously, there's Hanako, based on the famous urban legend of Hanako-san, but AidaIro pulls inspiration from all sorts of other stories as well. For most of the folklore I talk about in relation to TBHK, I'm not sure if AidaIro even intended to reference it. But seeing the connections (even they happen to be coincidence) is interesting. There are so many to talk about that this is part 1 of... multiple.

八百比丘尼 (Yao Bikuni)

The story of Yao Bikuni is about a legendary Buddhist nun who lived to 800 years old. It starts with her father, who is invited to a dinner with friends when one of them catches a fish he wants to serve. During the meal, one friend sneaks into the kitchen and discovers that the "fish" being served is actually a 人魚 (ningyo, or mermaid) with a human head, fish body, and shiny scales. The guests are scared of being cursed if they eat a yokai, so they secretly hide their portions in napkins to discard later. But when Yao Bikuni's father arrives home, he forgets to throw away the ningyo. You can probably guess what happens next-- Yao Bikuni finds and eats it before her father realizes what's going on. She seems fine, but what neither of them know is that if you eat a mermaid's meat or scales, you're cursed with a super long lifespan.

So... of course the whole mermaid-eating + curse + lifespan thing reminded me of Nene.

Okay, so I know this isn’t really story-related or anything, but before I get into the more important stuff, here is a quick(?) rant about the “Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun” title… because, why did they have to call it that? 😭

The main reason I usually call TBHK exclusively by the acronym is because I refuse to casually mention that I’ve spent the last 3 years of my life intensely fixated on something with the word ‘toilet’ in the title. That’s not even the worst part, though.

The Japanese title, 地縛少年花子くん (Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun) NEVER mentions toilets. The first word, 地縛 (jibaku) refers to a type of ghost. Well, the literal meaning is “earth-bound,” but in this context, it’s a shortened version of jibakurei, which refers to a ghost that’s bound to a specific location. 少年 (shounen) means ‘boy.’ Finally, there’s 花子くん, or Hanako-kun, which is the same in English. All together, a much more accurate translation would be “Ghost Boy Hanako-kun.” I firmly believe that TBHK would be more popular in English-speaking countries if they had went with that. But the English translators decided to throw toilets in there for some reason???

Well, at least one good thing came of it. This amazing official art where AidaIro makes fun of the English translation with a little doodle.