#hirano to kagiura analysis

For those wondering why this analysis in ch.5+6, it’s because I wanted to analyze Niibashi’s role in the story and I can do that better if I talk about both Niibashi and Kagiura’s conversation over the phone before the Christmas party (ch.5) and their conversation in the sweets cafe (ch.6). I will still come with a ch.6 analysis.

Anyway, I consider Niibashi to be the, mostly romantic, common sense of H&K. Which is sorely needed as our main characters are Hirano I-have-no-idea-how-going-above-and-beyond-for-my-roommate-can-be-seen-as-romantic Taiga and Kagiura I’m-skipping-wanting-to-date-my-roommate-to-wanting-to-marry-him Akira. Though obviously Niibashi is only playing the common sense to Kagiura as he’s Kagiura’s best friend and has barely ever interacted with Hirano.

Before talking about how exactly Niibashi is the romantic common sense, I want to real quick talk about why Hirano doesn’t have a designated romantic common sense. Because Hirano is close with Hanzawa who gave Miyano romantic advice. Two reasons why Hanzawa can’t. Firstly, Hirano barely ever reflects on his own feelings, let alone talk to others about it. Secondly, Hanzawa didn’t get over his “I won’t sabotage it, but I’d rather that my friends NOT be gay” before December in his third year. If we’re lucky Hirano and Hanzawa will talk about kagihira’s romantic entanglements when they’re in their last semester of high school, but until then, Hanzawa won’t be told about the explicitly romantic parts of kagihira’s relationship.

Sasaki just isn’t the type to probe into people’s business unless that person is Miyano.

Anyway, back to Niibashi and the chapter. Niibashi mainly has three jobs as the romantic common sense.

1) Point out the ways kagihira’s relationship isn’t normal

Now, Hirano’s classmates also do this. However, Niibashi is much more privy to what’s going on so he gets to react to pretty much all of it. The fandom is also pretty quick to point out all the ways Hirano acts like more than just a roommate to Kagiura. Still, it’s nice to have the story confirm that Hirano’s actions are unusual.

2) Try to interpret Hirano through common romantic wisdom

Now, I don’t think that Niibashi is always right in his deductions or that the readers should always agree with him - he tells Kagiura that he should rely on Hirano less when we as readers know that Hirano LOVES taking care of Kagiura - since he doesn’t actually know Hirano and mostly just points out the most reasonable explanations based on what most people with some knowledge of romance would come up with.

I do, however, think that there is a point to him pointing these things out. Most people reading H&K will at least have some romance trope knowledge, even if it’s through BL. However, neither Hirano nor Kagiura has any of that. Kagiura would be spending a LONG time wondering about why Hirano doesn’t get his confession without Niibashi giving an explanation. It helps move the plot along in a deliciously frustrating slow burn way rather than an annoying slog by skipping some of the frustrating parts.

3) Prod at Kagiura’s feelings

When I first read ch.6 I thought, “Wait, I thought this was pining x oblivious, but it was actually oblivious x oblivious the whole time?!?” Thanks to Niibashi’s prodding, though, H&K turns into a proper “pining x oblivious” story.

TL;DR, Niibashi is a big part in moving kagihira along by adding a bit of romantic common sense into the mix in various ways.

There won’t be any analyses in this week either, but that had actually been the plan before I skipped last week’s analysis. I kept up my weekly analyses to hopefully help with the long wait for the next chapter (which is partly why I skip this week - assuming the chapter gets translated the same day it comes out, the drought is over tomorrow), but I can’t keep up with the weekly releases. As such, the analyses will from now on be biweekly. (Hopefully this will be a rate that I can keep up indefinitely.)

For every volume, I want to look back and see if there is a theme or pattern for the volume.

The first Hirano to Kagiura volume exist in large part to create a baseline for their relationship. Nothing really changes in their relationship. Every chapter showcases how close they are and how happy they are with each other - the only exception arguably being when Kagiura worries about being a burden to Hirano in ch.3, but even then he is cheered up by Hirano calling him and the chapter ends with Kagiura being in a good mood because of it.

Sorta like the cover says, the first volume is about their everyday happiness. With a hint that things are going to change relatively soon at the end when Hirano misunderstands Kagiura’s confession and the main chapters end with Kagiura thinking “I’ll DEFINITELY tell him next time!”

But I want to talk a bit about how much Hirano taking care of and doing things for Kagiura is a part of that happiness. I already called it out a bit in my ch.1andch.3 analyses, but it’s something that comes up in some form in every single chapter of the first volume (which is only four chapters, but the point still stands).

In the first chapter, we see Hirano giving Kagiura a treat after a match, waking him up for morning practice, and taking care of him while sick. In the second chapter the main part is about how Hirano cheers Kagiura up after losing the match and also shows Hirano helping Kagiura with his dislike for green peppers. Hirano is on his school trip in the third chapter, but how much Hirano takes care of and spoils Kagiura is discussed. And the fourth chapter is Hirano putting a lot of effort into getting Kagiura a good birthday gift.

In pretty much none of these instances do Kagiura ask Hirano to do these things - he’s thanking Hirano far more often than he’s asking for things. Hirano does these things because he wants to. And I think that’s pretty important to establish early on in romances where a big part of the dynamic is character A is taking care of character B far more than character B is taking care of character A. The relationship can easily seem one-sided in one way or another. But by showing both sides, it’s clear that for Hirano and Kagiura, the care is freely given and accepted with open gratitude. And that’s something that makes them both happy.

This is the chapter where Hirano takes Kagiura to a basketball match as his birthday gift and Kagiura makes his first attempt at confessing to Hirano.

There’s twice in this chapter where Kagiura reacts in a way that confuses Hirano or Kagiura a bit. The first one is Kagiura’s reaction to getting the keychain souvenir:

To which Hirano says “…? Oh, sure.”

The second is when Kagiura explains why he gave Hirano a crepe and Hirano says that he loves that sort of thing:

To which Kagiura wonders “…Why did that almost move me to tears…?”

These two reactions are mostly surprising in their relative intensity, with Kagiura being genuinely really happy to receive a silly keychain and being almost moved to tears by a simple statement. I think both of these reactions come from the same place - how Kagiura wants Hirano to be a part of his family. We’re told how gift giving is a fairly common thing in Kagiura’s family:

It’s also in this chapter that we’re told that Kagiura loves the relationship that his parents have.

Both of the reactions are to something Hirano does that means that, for at least this aspect, Kagiura can have his parents’ kind of relationship with Hirano - he gives an extra souvenir to Kagiura just because and says that he likes this kind of thing. Kagiura’s family means a lot to him, so anything Hirano does that mirrors the aspects that Kagiura likes in his family would obviously matter a lot to Kagiura.

It’s no wonder that when Hirano said he had a lot of fun at the basketball game (another thing that Kagiura loves) right afterwards Kagiura couldn’t help but confess.

H&K ch.6, aka the one where Kagiura realizes that he wants to kiss Hirano. And since that has a REALLY big impact on Kagiura’s feelings, I wanted to make something close to a retrospective, I guess, talking about what exactly Kagiura has been feeling until now.

I’ve always found it interesting that Niibashi questions whether or not Kagiura’s feelings are romantic here, considering that Kagiura is rather… loud about being in love with Hirano, for the lack of a better term. Aside from just talking a lot about how much he’s in love, he keeps blushing whenever Hirano smiles or does something for him and is miserable as soon as he can’t see him for a day. (Granted, Niibashi rarely sees him interact with Hirano.) To look at why Niibashi starts questioning whether or not what Kagiura is feeling is actually romantic love, I want to compare it to one of the kagihira extras in S&M:

When Kagiura wasn’t sure whether or not he was in love with Hirano, him talking about how great Hirano is was enough to make Niibashi think that he actually was in love with Hirano. But in ch.6, months after Kagiura began talking about wanting to marry Hirano, Niibashi is doubting if that’s really romantic love. And I think it has something to do with how we expect romantic feelings to play out in someone. Like, in the beginning, always talking about how amazing someone is is enough. But we expect a person who has realized their feelings to want to date that person and care a lot about having their feelings reciprocated. What makes Niibashi bring up his doubts about Kagiura’s feelings is that Kagiura is perfectly content with his relationship not changing for a while.

I think that’s really the biggest difference between Kagiura’s feelings before and after this chapter. Because quite frankly, Kagiura currently pretty much already has the relationship he wants to have with Hirano. He wants the kind of romantic relationship that his parents have and (almost) the only difference between the kind of relationship that Kagiura’s parents have and the kind of relationship kagihira has at the current point is that kagihira’s isn’t reallyromantic.

I do think that Kagiura’s feelings are romantic. Hirano’s touches matter a lot to him,

he wants to be with him all the time,

and he wants to be the most important person to Hirano.

There’s also Kagiura blurting out his confession and wanting Hirano to know. It’s just that usually when you have feelings for a friend you want to start dating them instead because you want something more or different than just friendship. But when Kagiura says that he wants to marry Hirano, it has little to do with wanting a different relationship.

It’s about keeping their relationship forever. It’s not that he doesn’t want to tell Hirano that he’s in love with him (and have him ACKNOWLEDGE it) and have it reciprocated, it’s just that he doesn’t really have anything he wants to change after that.

Until he realizes that he wants to kiss him and the lap pillow incident happens.