The next morning, he finds out her name is Sayu Ogiwara, and she's a runaway from Hokkaido who's been surviving for the past six months by sleeping with random men. Yoshida allows her to stay for the time being in exchange for doing household chores and cooking. For her part, she's confused that he doesn't want her body, and is willing to give her so much for so little in return.
Higehiro, short for Higehiro: After Being Rejected, I Shaved and Took in a High School Runaway (ひげを剃る。そして女子高生を拾う。, Hige o Soru. Soshite Joshi Kōsei o Hirou.) is a Light Novel series written by Shimesaba and illustrated by booota. It began serializing online in March 2017, and finished with the release of Volume 5 on June 1, 2021. Both the novels and the manga adaptation (drawn by Imaru Adachi) are published by Kadokawa, with the latter being published in Monthly Shonen Ace since November 2018. An anime adaptation by Project No.9 began airing in April 2021, and can be watched on Crunchyroll
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This work provides examples of:
- Blatant Lies: Yoshida and Sayu tell Asami they are old childhood friends, but they are so awkward about it she doesn't buy it for one second.
- Bookends: The anime starts with a drunken Yoshida encountering Sayu under a lamppost on the evening of the same day Gotou turned him down. It also concludes with Yoshida, minus the drunkenness, encountering Sayu in the exact same area he first met her as he returns home from work.
- Calling the Old Woman Out: In Episode 12, Sayu finally confronts her mother for the verbal and emotional abuse she faced for years, that caused her to run away in the first place.
- Cutting the Electronic Leash: After running away, Sayu didn't want to be contacted by anybody back home so she hurled her cellphone into the ocean. Yoshida buys her a new one so they can contact each other.
- Drowning My Sorrows: After Gotou rejects him, Yoshida gets very drunk.
- Failure-to-Save Murder: Sayu's mother blames her for her best friend Yuuko's suicide, causing Sayu to run away from home and eventually have to offer Sex for Services to survive. Her accusation is especially egregious because Yuuko was Sayu's Only Friend and nobody else is more shaken by her death.
- Family of Choice: Rather than being a typical "romantic" Dramedy, Higehiro is about Sayu finally experiencing what it is like to have a family, with Yoshida as the stern but protective "father", Gotou as the gentle and loving "mother", Mishima and Asami as sisters she can share laughter and tears with, and occasionally Hashimoto as a supportive uncle. Through their 6 months of collectively "raising" Sayu to finally be a happy little girl, the office-quartet and Asami themselves become as close as a family by the story's end.
- Festival Episode: In Episode 8, Yoshida and Sayu go to a matsuri, where she uses the excuse of not getting lost to hold his hand.
- First Love: Yoshida has a girlfriend named Ao Kanda in high school and already had sex with her during their short-lived relationship.
- Get Out!: Yoshida and Issa appealing to Sayu's mother to do better as a parent results in her breaking down and telling them off.
- Green-Eyed Monster:
- Sayu gets jealous of any woman she sees around Yoshida. She thinks that once he gets a real girlfriend, she'll be kicked out.
- Airi, on a minor note. She shows subtle jealousy at Mishima and even questions Yoshida on their relationship after his transformationnote during their second "date". She also feels rivalry to Ao later in the series.
- Mishima also gets jealous to Airi, Sayu and Ao
- Hard Truth Aesop: As legitimate as your personal problems are, you won't be able to move forward if you spend your lifetime running away from them. After months of running away from home, Sayu eventually acknowledges her hurtful past and faces it head-on.
- Joshikousei: Sayu apparently has no clothes other than her school uniform when she meets Yoshida.
- Maybe Ever After: When Yoshida has to come back to Tokyo, Sayu declares her love for him and promises to find him after she becomes an adult. The story concludes at the point where Sayu appears in front of Yoshida again after graduation, at the spot where they first met, asking him to let her stay at his place again.
- Minimalist Cast: The series has no more than ten named characters, with the focus of the series revolving around Sayu confronting her hurtful past head-on and growing from it.
- Please Put Some Clothes On: Yoshida asks Sayu to do this when she's trying to seduce him.
- Pygmalion Plot: A reversal of Pretty Woman (and My Fair Lady, which inspired said Julia Roberts classic), wherein an emotionally immature and irresponsible girl is made into a mature and ladylike candidate suitable for marriage, Higehiro is about reversing the damage that sex has wrought upon a young woman and teaching her to be a happy little girl again.
- The Sociopath: Kyouya Yaguchi. He genuinely thinks there's nothing wrong with dating seven women at the same time and was confused that one of them got mad at him over it. He also has no qualms taking advantage of Sayu when she was vulnerable, then pressures her to have sex with him again simply because he can. When Yoshida calls him out on it, he smugly declares that by simply keeping Sayu around, Yoshida is no different from him.
- Think Nothing of It: Yoshida is constantly telling Sayu not to thank him for meeting basic standards of decency.Yoshida: Listen up! I'm not nice. They were shit. Get that straight.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: In Episode 4 when Sayu is remembering her past, the trauma forces her to run to the bathroom and vomit off-screen.
- Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: Defied. Yoshida has to tell Sayu not to thank him for being a good person and instead to expect other people to be good by default.
