Hakari Hanazono — The 100 Girlfriends

Later in the early story, Hakari abruptly asks Rentarou to end their relationship. This is not a loss of affection: her mother Hahari opposes the relationship and Hakari is attempting to shield Rentarou from her mother’s intervention. The threatened separation transforms Hakari’s usual romantic maneuvering into a serious conflict between family authority, love, and her own wishes.

Hahari confines Hakari at the family estate and plans to take her far from Rentarou. With guards, dogs, and security systems obstructing access, Rentarou and the other girlfriends organize a rescue rather than accepting Hakari’s apparent decision to leave. Hakari’s predicament becomes a defining early test of whether the group’s promises to one another can withstand pressure from outside it.

At the estate, Hahari explains that her attempt to control Hakari’s future is rooted in her own experience of becoming a mother at a very young age and fearing that her daughter will suffer through a similarly impulsive romance. She uses a specially prepared lie detector to challenge Rentarou’s sincerity, but his answers hold up under the test. The confrontation reveals the fear behind Hahari’s opposition without making her decision to confine Hakari any less consequential.

The confrontation becomes dangerous when Hakari, distressed by the belief that her mother will never stop pursuing them, reaches the window of her room. Rentarou manages to catch her when she falls, and the two survive the fall into the estate’s fountain. The rescue turns her apparent breakup into an unmistakable declaration that she wants to stay with him. Karane’s fierce reaction afterward underlines how badly Hakari’s desperation has frightened the people who care for her.

After Hakari is brought home, the group spends the night at the Hanazono residence, now with Hahari among Rentarou’s girlfriends. The person who had tried to separate them has become part of the same circle, and Hakari must now share both her home and her unusual romantic situation with her mother.

As the group grows, Hakari and the other girlfriends become anxious about the idea that Rentarou might eventually tire of them. Hoping to uncover fresh attractions, they try one of Kusuri’s experimental medicines. Instead, their personalities end up in one another’s bodies. Hakari’s attempt to approach romance more strategically once again produces a ridiculous complication that no careful timetable could have predicted.

A later manga storyline centers on Karane taking a drug that removes her tsundere behavior. Although the change initially appears to make her more openly affectionate, Rentarou and the other girlfriends come to want the familiar Karane back and work together to restore her. Hakari’s participation in that shared effort places her teasing relationship with Karane in a broader context: the group values Karane as herself, not as a rival who would be easier to manage if she changed.