So I left HNK2 for last because I feel like it’s the bastard child of the whole series. The only thing it has going for it is Kazuki Yone is still the artist for it but the characters are different, the seiyuus are different, and the entire Tamayorihime story is twisted in such a weird way that I wonder what they were thinking then they made it. Well they realized the ORIGINAL was a massive failure so actually this is in fact a remake of the Hisui no Shizuku (hence the 真) because apparently they remade all the chars personalities and for some reason kicked off the HNK1 cast off the face of the earth. I’m not about to extend my hiiro marathon and play the original for comparison so you’ll just have to satisfy yourselves with the remake review XD. So this time we have a good girl Suzu (similar to Saya from HNK4). Her mother is the Tamayorihime but she says soon the Ryujin (Dragon God) seal will break and Suzu will be the next in line for the Tamayorihime duties. One rainy night the seal does break and her mother Ayako indeed goes to seal it, sacrificing her life in the process. On top of this, the spirit of the Toyotamahime, who just so happens to be the older sister of the original Tamayorihime (that we never knew) escapes and possesses Suzu’s older sister Mao. So now the village has a half broken seal with demons running around everywhere and Suzu’s gotta train to seal it up. If that wasn’t bad enough, Toyotamahime-Mao comes and tells Suzu that she hated Tamayorihime (Marsha Marsha Marsha!) and wants her to die while fully breaking the seal so she can get the rest of her powers back. Suzu’s like “k sure I’ll die as long as my mans are alive” but Suzu’s childhood friend and guardian Akira won’t be havin’ any of that. Additionally, in HNK2, the guardians are humans and are not gods with inner animal powers. They fight with weapons which they are able to pull out of thin air (lol) if their bond with Suzu is strong enough thanks to the Magatama powers. This also means that if the bond weakens, they will be completely useless bums so Suzu’s got a lot on her plate. With the help of her loli neko guardians Sana & Kana, and manharem (+1 sarcastic token bff chick) she’s got to get her sister back to normal and save Japan!
Shigemori Akira – So Akira’s like the main dude like Touma/Takuma w/e and similarly to those 2 he gets pretty screwed for being a main dude of the series! He’s already got a head start with Suzu because he’s been her childhood friend and guardian since they were little kids. As if you couldn’t guess already, he’s also had a crush on her forever, but sadly they wrote his character really poorly so you couldn’t even tell he had any feelings for her until maybe half way through the game? Or maybe the like 5 moments where he actually showed his feelings. Or maybe it’s because Nojima Kenji sounded like he was reading a VERY SRS book and forgot he was voice acting a bishie I don’t know honestly. ( ≖Д≖;) Since Suzu’s mom is dead and sister is MIA, no one in school will talk to her except Akira, who is fairly popular but only really gives a crap about his time with Suzu. So after some battles with Mao and her follower Ramon, Suzu goes and talks to the village chief who gives her the briefing on Tamayorihime and Toyotamahime. Turns out that everyone only gave a crap about Tamayorihime and when Toyotamahime, the sea goddess, had a baby with some random dude, he left her and she dumped it on Tamayorihime. Tamayorihime then took the baby to raise it, so everyone gave her even more attention, and so Toyotamahime (omg these names are annoying to type) was like RAAAGGE (lol what is this the little mermaid) and swore to seek revenge on her younger sister. So then the 2 sisters battled under the sea and Tamayorihime died sealing her sister and so through the generations they’ve had to seal Toyotamahime/Dragon God ho and sacrifice themselves doing it. Sadly for Suzu, her mom kinda failed epically and died without fully sealing da skank which is why it took over Mao’s body.
Suzu then gets all depressed about it and Akira tells her that he doesn’t protect her because of her powers but because he cares about her as a person. He even does some crappy magic tricks to try and cheer her up. In the meantime the winglolis Sana & Kana tell Akira to come over and they send him and Suzu off on a picnic saying that she has a love confession for him. Suzu’s like (*ノノ)?? and then finally Akira’s like “well IF you were to confess to me I’d say that I’ve loved you forever and I will always protect you.” Fortunately, Suzu’s not dumb as a brick and she gets the picture regarding his feelings for her. (´^ω^`) Sadly Otomate doesn’t seem to wanna throw us a bone and that’s as far as it goes until Akira catches her trying to leave on her own to sacrifice herself to Toyotamahime. He tells her that he’s gonna take her out of this POS village if she has to die for it and he doesn’t care if this country is destroyed if she’s not gonna be with him. (Kinda reminded me of Shinogu from HNK4 lol.) Mao runs into them and beats Akira up really badly telling them that if in 5 min they can run back to their holy shrine (where the anti youkai spirit is strongest) she will let them live. However because they’re too busy chit chatting about how it’s Akira’s fault that Suzu’s dad died (cause he saved him when he was a shota being attacked by a demon), Mao catches up and Ramon knocks Akira out completely. Suzu agrees to go with her, and she kisses an unconscious Akira goodbye saying she loves him. The condition of Suzu opening up the Dragon god seal and dying is that all her close friends will be saved when the rest of Japan is blown to smithereens.
Before they can go to the seal place though, Akira finds them and has another beat up session with Ramon saying that even if Suzu dies, they will still fight against Toyotamahime so her dying isn’t an option here. Ramon is so moved by Akira’s awesomeness that he says “I’ll see you at the battle field dude” and peaces out. Suzu continues babbling about how she needs to die while Akira continues bitching that she needs to live until she realizes that her mother didn’t die wishing for her to do the same thing. She wished for Suzu to live on and so Suzu breaks into tears part 100 and hugs a sore Akira (who deals with it cause it’s mah woman huggin me so its awwwright.) They return to the village where at this point because Akira’s bond weakened with Suzu (due to her wanting to die and him wanting to live), before the final battle she asks him to stay back since he can’t fight. He’s like “well if our bonds are weakened we need to strengthen them” and then Kana’s like KISS DA GIRL and so Akira’s like ok lols and so they kiss….BUT LOLOL TROLLOMATE DIDNT GIVE US A KISS CG. That’s right its a CG with their faces looking at each other but during the kiss NICE WHITE FADEOUT YEA. I LOVE DEM WHITE FLASHES THANKS OTOMATE ( ಠ益ಠ ). Afterwards Akira’s like “lol I lied, I actually got my powers back a while ago – I just wanted to make out with you hehe.” Suzu’s like (/ρ\)いやーん and so now that their bond is like glue, they go off to fight Magatamahime. Everyone’s sorta split fighting each one of Toyotama’s lackeys, Akira fighting Ramon and Mao against Suzu.
Suzu yells out “Mao-neesan” multiple times to get her sister’s attention and I guess it works and Suzu’s able to seal away Toyotamahime out of Mao’s body. She thinks she’s gonna die due to this but then she hears her mother’s voice saying it’s not her time yet so she wakes up and sees her sister sleeping safe next to her. Just then, the Dragon god seal (the rest of Toyotamahime) breaks and it merges with Ramon’s body and so they gotta fight & defeat Mr. Fugly now. After Ramon is defeated, we see a flashback where Toyotamahime is a loli and nobody gives a damn about her except Ramon. Before she got sealed she realized that she wasn’t always “alone” and regretted that she realized it too late. (Also rofl loli Toyotamahime sounded so much like Asche from UTM since they have the same VA – where as when she voiced Mao she sounded a bit differently.) Anyways battle is over and Akira & Suzu hold hands as they watch the sunrise. Everyone else joins them and Sana is so pumped she starts spitting out random Engrish lines :lol: In the epilogue Ryouji becomes the new village chief since his dad retired. The Mibu bros. return to their town saying they’ll come visit again and everyone helps clean up the shrine for Mao’s return (I dunno she’s at the hospital maybe or something.) So then loli nukos tell everyone to GTFO so that Akira & Suzu can have their ラブラブ time together (yes she really said that) and the 2 of them eat shaved ice on the deck. Well the upside is that it wasn’t that long, but downside is wow lack of romance? I really wanted to like Akira because I felt he had some tsundere potential but I felt like that UMF was just not there. NojiKen sounded bored most of the time, even during the lines where Akira was blushing (´・ω・`). The lack of a real kiss CG was a huge downer, especially since this is a remake. What you couldn’t have added some smooching? I don’t even wanna know what the original was like at this rate lmfao!
Takachiho Riku – Riku is Suzu’s younger brother but he definitely loves his nee-san more than a brother should :lol: He will do anything for her, and if she says that snow is black, then he will say snow is black. When he finds out that their mother died he’s kinda chillax saying yea I kinda figured and the whole Sana/Kana picnic scene was rather meh since at this point we’re still in “brother” mode. So things finally get interesting when Tenko shows up saying that he wants Riku’s body as his next vessel and he then wants to destroy the Toyotamahime because he hates that stupid ho. At the same time he also informs Riku that he’s not re