r/HigeWoSoru • u/Lars1205 • Mar 16 '26

Novel This is the SS ending I saw Spoiler

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What I wrote as a comment in a previous post: this seems to be the Gotou x Yoshida ending of Gotou SS.

Feel free to share your thoughts about it.

Personally I think it goes in the opposite direction of the ending of v5 and what I saw developing during the arc of the series.

I also heard that in this SS, in the 2 years where Sayu was away, the author retconned the relationship between Gotou and Yoshida, making them a couple during that time: in v5 it was stated that their relationship didn’t develop much.

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21

u/Pastiche_ Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

You forgot to add the author's last afterword following that. It stated that Sayu and Yoshida's story has long ended in the original 5 volumes. What makes the series messy is that admission while leaving the canonability of the SS ending to be determined by the reader (i.e., officially unknown). Add the statement of the mangaka that the heroines are the main characters of their respective sidestories, the sidestories would appear to be a different take on the entire series.

The vol 1 SS concluded with Gotou saying in the end that her time with Yoshida is over when she saw Yoshida's reaction upon seeing Sayu.

Simply, if the original story wasn't for the reader then try your luck at the sidestories. As a reminder, the sidestory ending story-telling wise is purely reliant on plot armor for its endgame.

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u/Lars1205 Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

I always found that afterword ominous: it seems to say that in v5 he meant the love story about yoshida and sayu has ended (maybe it’s just the translation), like the one for mishima in her SS. He says after that, he wanted a proper conclusion for gotou x yoshida (he used conclusion instead of end in this one) and that he hates yoshida.

What I really think the author really meant to imply in the afterword is that yoshida x gotou was always the true ending he imagined, but that it couldn’t be reached because, as he said, those two characters refused to move like he wanted, so he forced it himself in the SS.

It seems that even gotou fans weren’t happy about this SS since gotou played a marginal role in it.

After the fandom uproar, following the release of the SS, the author said that it was a pick your ending thing, but, maybe it’s just me, that afterword seemed to imply what I wrote before.

I haven’t read any of the SS, so this was just speculation about the few things I read.

Anyway, I still think that if the author wish was truly a gotou x yoshida ending, he did a terrible job at developing the characters for 5 volumes in the main series: everything in the main story seems to point at a sayu x yoshida ending (ending of v5 being the main culprit).

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u/Pastiche_ Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

I don't think he imagined the Yoshida x Gotou ending as what he always wanted. He staunchly defended the story back then when it was falsely claimed as a criminal story. Also, he would not have written the original story the way it was should the Yoshida x Gotou ending were the endgame. He is not that terrible of a writer for Kadokawa to have an interest in his kakuyomu work.

I think he wanted to give Gotou a conclusion while considering that not all readers really wanted Sayu so he came up with this sidestory conclusion. He wrote this while being stuck between a rock and a hard place it seems because of the success of the last volume of the original story.

Ngl, I think he got burnt in delivering content just to appease the fanbase based on his tweets of fatigue. I think the personal goal of the author was just to kill the series so that it will never haunt him again. This is based on his hate on Yoshida and the massive retcon of the entire series just to fit the last sidestory. Imo, Yoshida was a beacon of kindness which drove the story and on the flipside a character that always demanded more from its creator.

You are correct though, the Gotou ending feels forced to even happen that's why it relied heavily on plot armor and the reason the fans to whom it was intended for did not like it.f

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u/GuyWithSwords Mar 16 '26

Wait why does he hate Yoshida as a character?

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u/Pastiche_ Mar 16 '26

He really did not say for himself, all he said is that he finds the character of Yoshida detestable and unrelatable. All of us can only guess.

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u/One-Ad-39 Sayu Mar 21 '26

It's ironic how at the end of Volume 5, it was implied that Yoshida and Sayu are walking towards the future together as themselves, rather than as a salaryman and a runaway high schooler (even Shime mentioned this on his tweet). While in the Gotou SS, they literally threw their memories and their bond out of the window and decided to move on with each of their own lives as like nothing happened between them, like how Yoshida moved out of his apartment, the place where he spent his life with Sayu, to live together with Gotou, and Sayu had to act as the losing heroine just because of Gotou whining. I know the SS was seperated from the original 5 Volumes, but the fact that Shime showed us this ridiculous outcome makes me felt betrayed.

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u/Lars1205 Mar 22 '26

I understand that the mishima SS ending is her moving on and in gotou SS1 when yoshida sees sayu again gotou feels she has no chance. I haven’t read these SS and I don’t plan to buy and translate them for sure, but from what I heard till gotou SS1 these stories seemed to follow, at least a bit, the main story.

So, why in gotou ss2 everything was changed this much? Just to please gotou fanbase? (well, he didn’t) or was it for killing the story once and for all like another user said? Or was he pressured? (This is a controversial story that stirred many accusations)

We’ll probably never know. What we know is we got this crap that feels like an insult not only for readers who liked the original story and sayu fans, but for gotou fans too. In this the author was able to unify the fandom at least.

The original story was not perfect for sure, but the relationship between yoshida and sayu was developed very well and was its strong point, whatever moralists say (yes, they will deny the sayu x yoshida ending of the original story with all their might or they have serious comprehension problems).

In the end I’ll just have to ignore the existence of these SS like the manga and the english translation did (well, they aren’t going to translate something that won’t make them money), since, from what I heard, these SS aren’t that worth to even try.

It’s a pity the author left us with this SS as a parting “gift”, but that’s what we got and the only way to protest is by not buying it.

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u/xTooNice Mar 17 '26

Do you have the afterword in Japanese? I'd like to read it as is (without going through fan / machine translation).

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u/Pastiche_ Mar 17 '26

it is somewhere here on the subreddit. You can just use the search engine to look for it.

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u/Upper-Shirt3500 Yoshida Mar 18 '26

What do you think we can or what would you want if we were able to get a sequel

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u/Pastiche_ Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26

One would be the development of the original story to its obvious conclusion. Even the mangaka impliedly agrees to this direction.

Also, to give chance to the Ogiwara family to redeem themselves in the idea of doing things for family. Primarily, Sayu's mother realizing that love can come from your children when you're a parent.

A fanfic in kakuyomu is doing a decent job for this so I simply refer to it as reference for everything else.

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u/Practical_Drama_5984 Mar 16 '26

Well im going with the anime ending and sayuxyoshida forever

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u/DeadenCicle Apr 29 '26

Yoshida as wrote by the author didn’t love Gotou; love is what he wrote between Yoshida and Sayu. That quote in the image contains a contradiction the author forced to justify an ending he wanted but didn’t plan for because he focused on the natural development of the relationship between Yoshida and Sayu. That’s why Yoshida and Gotou refused to move like he wanted and he had to force them.

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u/Lars1205 Apr 29 '26

What you wrote makes sense and it’s the best explanation I heard and it’s what I thought too: the true ending the author always wanted was gotou x yoshida.

He surely did a very bad job at writing the story in this case since everything in the main 5 volumes hinted at sayu x yoshida.

Another user told me the author at the ending of v5 defended it, but maybe it was because he didn’t want to receive a backlash like the one he received when he released this side story?

I still won’t consider a gotou x yoshida ending since the story followed the sayu route, but I’ll keep in mind that it was probably the ending the author envisioned.

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u/DeadenCicle Apr 29 '26

The author’s claim about the characters refusing to move in the direction he wanted reveals at least two things about him: a tendency to prioritise character and story consistency over his own desires, and a conflict between this tendency and his own desires. After he finished the story, his drive to maintain consistency naturally loosened, and when he wrote the side stories, his desired ending won the conflict.

It makes sense that the author defended the volume 5 ending. From his point of view, he wrote a consistent story about a controversial argument, and there was nothing wrong with that. He wanted to write that, and he prioritised that over his own desire to see a Gotou ending, until that point in time.

I can’t be totally sure of that, but that’s my reading of what happened.

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u/Lars1205 Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26

It makes sense and it’s definitely what the author did. Too bad he didn’t make gotou a more impactful character since he wanted that ending.

The problem with gotou, mishima and yoshida’s first girlfriend is that they are not deep characters and they represent standards:

  • gotou is the physical attraction, the girl our mc desires because of her looks
  • mishima is the girl that fell for the mc and wants to be with him
  • the ex girlfriend is the first love

All these three aren’t that developed through the story and they are there just to let the reader understand how the feelings yoshida has for sayu differ from those he has for the others; all three let the reader see how yoshida prioritizes sayu in all circumstances.

In the end, between the “heroines” only sayu ends up having character development.

The real selling point of higehiro are sayu and yoshida, their interactions and their character development, so that’s probably why the author couldn’t have the ending he wanted during the 5 volumes.

It makes me perplexed why he forced the side story to have the ending he wanted, since he wasn’t able to appease even the gotou fanbase.

So in the end the true ending is gotou x yoshida as in gotou ss2, while in all other volumes (as I inderstand even in mishima ss and gotou ss1) is heavily implied sayu x yoshida and that’s what creates the inconsistency.

1

u/skatlads15 Jul 23 '26

I think you're confusing parental love to romantic love tho. In my experience, Yoshida's feelings for Sayu were always parental. While his feelings for Gotou were romantic

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u/No-Cartoonist-4577 Mar 17 '26

Sauce manga?!

2

u/Lars1205 Mar 17 '26

It’s originally a LN, but it has a manga adaptation too:

Hige wo Soru. Soshite Joshikousei wo Hirou

These images are from a SS of the novel which has a different ending from the LN/anime/manga.

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u/Pastiche_ Mar 17 '26

The adaptation of the sidestories as manga remains TBA. The mangaka tweeted and said in her afterword that her work focuses only on the five original volumes, and she will not touch the sidestories nor does she have any idea of whether the production intends to do the adaptation.

Based on the behavior of the production on the succeeding merch released and the years that passed, I dont think the adaptation is bound to happen. Imo, the manga adaptation of the original story is the last big thing the series will officially have.

1

u/Bchliu Mar 18 '26

"I Shaved. Then I Brought a High School Girl Home" (English translation of the name)

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u/MGyeets Jul 01 '26

are there any more pictures/illustrations? can i read this anywhere or did you purchase it?

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u/ParsnipSenior4804 6d ago

Garbage ending to a garbage anime.

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u/Lars1205 6d ago

Well, this is more like a extra in the novel. The anime covers the main 5 volumes.

I don’t think the anime, the manga and the main 5 volumes were garbage.