Despite being with Hanako all this time, Nene suddenly realizes there’s still a lot she doesn’t know about him. So what do you do? You try and find all you can behind his back!
Well, specifically, Nene learns about the latest school mystery after encountering an unknown school girl, who tells her to look for the “Four P.M. Bookstacks.” With Kou with her, they end up stumbling onto the location, and it soon appears the truth of the mysterious hidden library is correct. But maybe they’re digging too far into Hanako’s past…and that could have consequences.
Toilet-bound Hanako-kun volume 3 is an excellent example of advancing the story while still providing incredibly designed characters and backgrounds and excellent expressions in a manga. While of course the first two volumes have shown this, volume 3 really ups the ante. There’s a moment where Nene confronts school mystery #5, who actually turns out to be a teacher at the school, and they duke it fighting game style. Well, it’s more of a mental fight — Nene has to reveal a good enough secret, or she can’t see school mystery #5’s yoishiro.
There’s also a hilarious moment where Nene ends up wondering about being Hanako’s friend because he’s dead…but that moment of seriousness turns into laughs, as she says this while she should already know he’s dead, making donuts with Kou, and her face looking so sad (tears and all). But it’s not all meant to take away from what we know so far in the narrative. It’s hard to draw scenes like that without messing up the timing, and combine that with the art, Aidairo’s manga is truly a great reading experience.
But on that note, we are supposed to gleam the severity of it all as Nene begins learning not just about Hanako, but the role the school mysteries are supposed to play. What they know is someone in that group is a traitor and is conspiring with someone within the school to flip the mysteries upside down. We, the readers, do get an idea of who those people are, but our main cast has no clue yet. As it turns out, how Hanako is one of the school’s mysteries plays a part in all of this. I’m curious, however, to see how this plays out in manga form as opposed to the anime.
Toilet-bound Hanako-kun is doing something that’s not easy — it’s lighthearted but also trying to be sinister at the same time. That can certainly backfire if we can’t get behind any of the characters or the story’s unfocused or the art is pretty drab. But the humor is wonderful (Hanako is indeed the Leader…he totally proves it in this volume!), the story continues to intrigue, and it’s still pretty to look at. Doesn’t matter if it’s a spirit that can copy someone’s look or Nene becoming embarrassed at reading her own future! So all in all, this is still a really strong series, and the end of this volume suggests it’s time for Hanako’s past — and the mysterious saboteurs — to become a focus in volume 4.