Good job!
Kamizono Academy — this is where four freshmen meet up by pure chance. Torako Kageyama, Suzume Saotome, Tatsuki Iizuka and Ayumi Nonomura — their misadventures, along with a colorful support cast, are what this series is about. A unique brand of humor is present throughout.
Hyakko is a comedy Slice of Life manga by Haruaki Katoh that started serialization in 2006 on Comic Blood magazine. A 13 episode anime adaptation was broadcast in 2008 by Nippon Animation.
The manga went on indefinite hiatus in 2012 as Haruaki Katoh was working on Abnormal Kei Joshi under the alias Juichi Sanada at the time, though now that's on hiatus too and has been since 2015.
Tropes in Hyakko include:
- Absurdly Powerful Student Council: They take care of most school policies as the principal adheres to a "hands-off" policy on his interference.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: A minor female character is strongly attracted to Kitsune, practically drooling over the evil/treacherous aspects of his character.
- Aloof Big Brother: Gender-flipped; Torako is revealed to have an Aloof Big Sister who follows this trope in almost every way.
- Art Evolution: Quite a bit. Just look at Ayumi in the first chapter, and then again 29 chapters later.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Torako has some of this dynamic with her brother and sister.
- Beautiful All Along:
- Torako actually manages to be cuter than Ayumi when she goes for it. Inori is a more typical example. After Torako remakes her, she turns out to be quite cute.
- Toma gets pretty cleaned up as well for the festival.
- Blank White Eyes: Hitsugi, a lot, although it doesn't necessarily show her emotional state: at least once she's had Blank White Eyes while smiling cheerfully.
- Body Motifs: The Kageyama Siblings each have a single accessory adorning their left ear.
- Brand X: Trickstar Coffee, Pockily snacks, and the T-Phone.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: At the beginning of the Student Council Elections arc (see Serious Business below), Torako witnessed a vicious assault and wondered in shock "Is this really Hyakko?"
- The Charmer:
- Ayumi has some of this, even though she doesn't quite realize it herself. Torako does realize it, and in episode six uses Ayumi as a sort of human cuteness shield to protect her from Tatsuki's anger.
- Minato arguably qualifies as well, but she doesn't use it quite as much to her advantage as she could.
- Class Representative: Nene. Torako is shocked that she doesn't have glasses like every other example of the trope.
- Cloudcuckoolander:
- Suzume, the quiet one of the group, who tends to speak very little. When she does, it's usually a little strange. Also, she turned up at the front gate in her gym clothes once, to the surprise of everyone (and the delight of Nene).
- Also Hitsugi's friend Yagi, who at one time, greets her with a sweeping leg hold and enjoys acting out non-sequiturs.
- Cool Old Guy: The Principal, he lets the student council run the programs and wears a freaking general's uniform while overseeing the school-wide BB-gun battle competition.
- Custom Uniform: Despite Nene's attempts to check if everyone's in their uniform (not that she is), several characters in the main cast wear the school uniform with at least some variation.
- Demoted to Extra: Hitsugi is relegated to a far less important role in the anime, and never interacts with the main four at all, which mirrors the first few volumes of the manga as she wasn't promoted to the same grade yet, so there is still hope for her in the next season—if there ever is one.
- Dirty Old Man: Nene certainly acts like one, although she's not nearly bad enough to qualify as a full-on Depraved Bisexual.
- Elaborate University High: So elaborate that the entire first episode is spent wandering around it, trying to find a classroom. Its grounds house a complete elementary, middle, and high school with a total student population in the area of 3000, apparently.
- Erotic Eating: Somehow, Ayumi invoked this trope for Torako. With noodles. Also, Torako with a chocolate-covered banana on a stick while at a festival, in chapter 29. The resulting Nosebleeds are particularly grand; Nene gushes blood, while Shishimaru passes out from blood loss. Nene immediately suggests they go for hot dogs later...
- Expy:
- Koma has an uncanny resemblance to Tamami from Chocotto Sister.
- As seen in her A Day in the Limelight episode, Inori doesn't merely share the creepy looks with another well-known Sadako look-alike, but also her personality and hang-ups.
- Face Framed in Shadow: The principal. Even in the daylight we don't actually see anything more than his mustache.
- Family-Unfriendly Violence: Torako at one point uses excessive violence against a teacher to prevent being caught after breaking a window.
- Former Teen Rebel: Amagasa-sensei, who used to be known as "The Wolfblade".
- Four-Girl Ensemble: Early on, though it doesn't really hold up after a while. Tatsuki in particular drifts Out of Focus as the story follows Torako's antics with anyone nearby.
- Friendless Background: There are very strong indications that Tatsuki had no friends before highschool. Inori and Ayumi, of all people, also had this. Well, Ayumi had one friend in middle school, but this was after her elementary friends decided to shun her because the boy one of them liked was interested in Ayumi instead. She never had any idea why her old "friends" suddenly abandoned her, and the rest of their class just unthinkingly followed suit.
- Hot for Teacher: Torako seems suspiciously glad to run into Amagasa-sensei during the Halloween festival. Shishimaru certainly thinks so. Seeing as the girl does so much as barge into his apartment in the summer to hang out, it certainly means something.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: A friendship example: Kumahiko and Torako, who both grew up in the same neighborhood and went through elementary and middle school together. A picture from middle school shows him as maybe half a head taller than Torako, and now he's a giant in comparison.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: A lot of the manga chapters, especially in the first half or so of the series, have something about tigers in their titles. Most are references to well-known aphorisms in Japan, but with random elements replaced with the word "tiger."
- Japanese Delinquents:
- Ushio, who is labeled as such more than she actually is (she apparently dyes her hair, modifies her uniform, and has skipped school a couple times, but that's literally the worst of it). She somewhat sarcastically started calling herself a delinquent after Torako started joking about it.
- Kumahiko is a more regular sort, being a big and fairly rough guy who dyes his hair and is apparently really good at fighting.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- Ushio (acts like a jerk as part of her Delinquents persona) and Torako (who just tends to be a bit too Genki for her own good, but is good on the bottom).
- Also Kumahiko is painfully shy around women and usually nice if given a reason.
- Jerkass: Torako's brother Kitsune, at least towards the girls, though he is a little bit nice to Ayumi.
- Knight Templar Big Sister: Oniyuri has her overprotective moments toward Torako.
- Knowledge Broker: Kitsune, the "All-Knowing Spirit." He demands a secret — the more embarrassing, the better — as the price for information.
- Meaningful Name:
- There are a lot of names, but the most obvious is Kageyama Kitsune, who has shifty fox eyes and also has the nickname of the "All-Knowing Spirit".
- Oniyuri makes a joke costume based on the "oni" in her name by going as one during the school's Halloween-themed culture festival.
- Mondegreen Gag: Ushio's karaoke session is rendered as a string of nonsense language when she's really singing out the Zodiac, which is relevant to the show's Theme Naming.
- Mood Whiplash: Episode 12 inserted drama yet to be seen in the series.
- Not Blood Siblings: Torako is actually a step-sibling of Kitsune and Oniyuri.
- Orphaned Series: Might as well be this, there hasn't been a new chapter of the manga since 2013 and Haruaki Katoh was focused working on Abnormal Kei Joshi for a while, but now that's been on hiatus since 2015.
- Ojou: Tatsuki, except she doesn't give off the vibe.
- Painting the Medium: One instance is Tatsuki's thought bubbles actually being narrated by Nene before Tatsuki tells her to stop.
- Placeholder Titles: During the original broadcast, it wasn't until episode nine that the opening finally had animation of its own.
- Real Trailer, Fake Movie: Episode six features an extended and epic preview for the next episode that resembles an action flick more than the slice of life school comedy the show actually is.
- Sacred First Kiss: Torako loses hers to Suzume.
- Sensei-chan: Gender-flipped, Amagasa-sensei is very informal with his students, and has met Torako on occasion while online gaming. Torako feels no compunctions playing with his hair, even.
- Serious Business:
- Student Council President elections in volume 5 of the manga. Threats, attacks, information brokering, backstabbing and politicking... One would almost think the candidates involved were jockeying for control of a criminal organization, not a student council. It turns out a lot of the intrigue from at least one side comes from the president effectively controlling who gets to be treasurer, who in turn has access to a rather sizable budget.
- And the deciding factor for the entire thing? A freaking mixed martial arts match. Complete with fighting ring.
- She Cleans Up Nicely:
- Gender-flipped, again with Amagasa-sensei, when he not only retains his makeover appearance the next day (when everyone else who had one reverts to their usual appearance) but attempted improved on it.Torako: He still looks the same ... and he's evolved?!''
- Inori. The same chapter/episode had Torako fixing her up so she no longer looked so off-putting and she turned out maybe the most stunning girl in the class.
- And at a summer festival, we get to see Inori and Touma and a few others all cleaned up and in yukata. Kitsune and his friends hit on several of them without realizing who they are, and largely get brushed off.
- Gender-flipped, again with Amagasa-sensei, when he not only retains his makeover appearance the next day (when everyone else who had one reverts to their usual appearance) but attempted improved on it.
- Ship Tease: Torako and Touma, definitely. The culture festival ladles out an extra spoonful of teasing for Kitsune and Ayumi, too.
- Simultaneous Arcs: The school festival arc follows a part of the core cast as they split up to various parts of the school.
- Shrinking Violet: Inori, right down to the hair covering the eyes.
- Shout-Out:
- To Genshiken, which gets mention as one of the school's clubs.
- Nene gets the facial expression and diction of Lupin in one of her most lecherous moments.
- During a school-wide shooting tournament, both teachers Amagasa and Fumizuki are dressed up as Lupin and Jigen respectively per Amagasa's wanting.
- Also, one of the teams, using a sniper, was called Team Golgo.
- Torako starts dropping references to Ushio and Tora once she learns Ushio's name.
- In chapter 41, the school's Halloween-themed culture festival is full of Shout Outs to anime, manga, games, movies, and TV shows given that everyone's in some kind of costume. Spider-Man, Angels, Marisa, Mega Man, Morrigan Aensland, and Friend, to name just a few.
- Split Personality: Suzume develops one in Tsubame, her "twin brother", which was brought upon from childhood when Kitsune suggested she could speak to the dead through her cell phone by answering it herself as him. Even she was surprised that she could still become him during the school festival when she tries calling him.
- Stalker with a Crush:
- Torako tends to act like this toward Touma, which she even openly admits.
- And if you think that's bad, never let Minato owe you a favour.
- Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: Inori unintentionally gives off a Sadako vibe.
- Tears of Blood: Played for laughs - Amagasa sensei starts crying blood when his students push him too far
. - Theme Naming: All major female players have the kanji for one of the twelve animals of the Eastern Zodiac in their names. The lead four relate to The Four Gods.
- This Is My Name on Foreign: Before a dodgeball game, Torako has fun translating peoples' names as literally as possible.
- Those Two Girls: Hitsugi and Yagi in the anime.
- Tsundere: Touma Kazamatsuri, although Torako argues that she has no deredere side.
- The Unfavorite: Early on Torako felt alienated from the rest of her family as the odd one out, since she's just a step-sibling to her older brother and sister. Neither of them is very good at showing affection, either; Kitsune is kind of a trickster jerk and Oniyuri is just very cool and reserved. Torako used to run away from home a lot (usually with Suzume) for up to three days at a time, possibly because of this.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Tatsuki and Torako develop into something of a type 2 version, though it's not apparent even to Tatsuki until the others run off after school one day without her and she wonders sadly if they abandoned her. They didn't; at Torako's insistence, they raced to Tatsuki's home ahead of her to give her a surprise visit. Torako's usually doing something to annoy Tatsuki, and Tatsuki is usually complaining that she doesn't want anything to do with Torako while yet going along with Torako's latest idea.
