Episode 21 sees Haiji wreaking more havoc. It turns out that two members of MMM drink some poisoned coffee before a performance, and they collapse on stage just as they’re about to start performing.

After this, Masayoshi receives a call from Ishihara, and he is escorted to the hospital. In the waiting room are the other Flamengers, Joji’s wife, and Harazuka. They tell him Joji is now awake and wants to speak with Masayoshi alone. Joji asks Masayoshi if the culprit is someone he knows, and mentions hearing Haiji say to give his regards to Samurai Flamenco before being hit by the truck. During their conversation, Masayoshi asks who a hero turns to when he’s in trouble. Joji says a hero doesn’t ask others for help. He also says that heroes have a secret weapon on their side: love. Masayoshi has no idea what this means.

The waiting room and hospital room scenes where both Joji’s wife and Momoi appear bring in some much needed comedy to help lighten the mood a little. Joji’s wife has some witty verbal attacks to launch on Momoi, while Momoi shoves a divorce petition into Joji’s wife’s face.

Later, Masayoshi has a conversation with Ishihara, where he tells her about everything that’s happened with Haiji and about love. When it comes to the Haiji situation, Ishihara ends up calling Konno to see if he can dig up anything on him. Ishihara is surprised to learn from Masayoshi that he’s never been in love with a girl before, because he was too busy training to be a hero. This leads to Ishihara trying to explain the different ways that love can be expressed.

Hidenori, meanwhile, sends himself a text message as his missing girlfriend, asking if he’s sure that he’ll never see Masayoshi again. He tells himself to shut up and then puts his phone down. Later, he finds his phone has been replaced with another one, and the replacement phone rings. Haiji sends text messages as Hidenori’s missing girlfriend and does it in a rather cruel manner. He’s then shown a picture of his own phone and is told to go to a certain location alone if he wants it back. Hidenori is captured by Haiji, and the episode ends with a major cliffhanger.

In this episode, Masayoshi gets confirmation that Haiji isn’t simply a figment of his imagination when Joji tells him that he also saw Haiji. Konno later digs up records that show that Haiji died of illness a year ago and that, after the funeral, his parents went missing. After losing their only son, they must have been in shock. It sounds like they really doted on him. It also sounded like he was rather apathetic to his parents’ love. From what Haiji tells Hidenori just a short bit after that information is revealed, he corroborates that this indeed is true.

A lot went on over the course of this episode, and it’s definitely heading for a climactic ending. Masayoshi will have to have some kind of confrontation with Haiji before the next episode ends, so it’ll be interesting to see how that confrontation turns out and what impact it will have on the ending of the story. Even without that, the cliffhanger alone makes me want to see Episode 22 in order to find out what exactly has happened to a particular character.

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