YMMV / Higehiro

• Audience-Alienating Premise: "A salaryman lets a homeless high school girl stay at his apartment" sounds like a porn premise and doesn't leave a good first impression.
• Awesome Music:
  • The ED "Plastic Smile", sung by Mishima's voice actress, is a catchy song for the series.
  • The OP "Omoide Shiritori" is similarly catchy, and the full song even makes a perfect shiritori loop within select lyrics.
• Dueling Works: With Koikimo, another series about the relationship between a 17 year old Joshikousei and a Salaryman ten years her senior, whose anime adaptation aired on the very same day.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The series has a polarizing reputation in native Japan, with an even mix of watchers who are either receptive or repulsed by it. Reception in the West is more welcoming, with the anime adaptation being highly rated within the Spring 2021 lineup.
• I Knew It!: With how the opening shows a girl standing on a rooftop then cuts to a pair of glasses falling, many guessed that Sayu's trauma was caused by her friend committing suicide.
• Moe: Sayu is so cute and friendly and endearing that it is no surprise that several characters (like Yoshida and Asami) quickly become protective of her. Even Gotou, who could easily view her as a love rival, decides instead to become her Cool Big Sis.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • 177013^Explanation Sayu's backstory instantly drew comparisons to Metamorphosis 2013, implying that she could have easily gone down a similar path of drugs, exploitation and abuse had it not been for Yoshida's intervention.
• Spiritual Successor: Look closer, and Higehiro is basically the 1990 Romantic Dramedy Classic Pretty Woman turned on its head. Like Vivian (played by Julia Roberts), Sayu is a down on her luck girl fleeing from an abusive family who survives by selling her body; however, instead of her being saved by a wealthy millionaire like Vivian was by Edward (played by Richard Gere) it is Sayu who is the wealthy Uptown Girl who is saved by Yoshida, a financially average everyman hero who starts the story with an already-unflinching moral compass (unlike Edward who had to re-learn how to love from Vivian). And although Yoshida also teaches Sayu to see value in herself beyond her ability to sexually satisfy men, aside from the occasional brotherly embrace, never becomes intimate with her. Rather than making Sayu a woman in his idealized image like the Pygmalion Plot that Pretty Woman (and My Fair Lady that inspired it) was, Yoshida saves her by re-teaching her to be a happy child by reconciling with the past of her abusive family rather than leaving it behind, so she can grow up to be her own woman.