Summary

Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun Season 2 began airing on Jan 12, 2025, continuing the story at Kamome Academy.
Nene Yashiro summons Hanako expecting a love wish, but he is a boy and has a role in maintaining balance at school.
Hanako of the Toilet urban legend inspired the series, based on the spooky Hanako-san ghost story, often tied to Japanese horror.

Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun Season 2 began airing on January 12, 2025. Weekly episodes hit Crunchyroll a few hours after they are broadcast on Japanese TV.

The story is set at Kamome Academy, a fictional school best known for its urban legends regarding supernatural events. The school is rumored to have Seven Wonders (seven mysteries) – one of them involves the spirit of a girl haunting the girls' bathroom who will grant wishes once invoked properly.

Urban Legend Anime- Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun

Winter 2025 Preview: Toilet-Bound Hanako-Kun Season 2

Our second-favorite ghost with the most is back, and this time it's continuing where the first season left off.

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By Stormie McNeal

Nene Yashiro, a student who wants a boyfriend but is unlucky in love, tries to summon Hanako-san, only to discover that Hanako is actually a boy, and he refuses to grant her a wish. Hanako has a role to fulfill in the school: keeping the balance between the supernatural and human worlds. After a turnaround, Yashiro ends up becoming his assistant.

The Seven Wonders are based on popular ghost stories in Japan. Actually, the idea of "Seven Wonders" in itself is actually quite common in Japanese ghost stories – there are many regions where stories of seven wonders (seven strange and unexplained phenomena) take place.

Given that, it's only natural that Hanako-kun himself is also inspired by a common Japanese urban legend – the "Hanako of the Toilet" (Toire no Hanako-san).

The Legend of Hanako of the Toilet

The basic idea of the legend is the same described in the story: the ghost of a girl is haunting toilets. As happens with many urban myths, there isn't a clear origin of when or how this story was originated.

Hanako-san is generally described as a girl who died in a tragic way in a toilet (tradionally, a pit toilet) – in some versions, she committed suicide in a school toilet, in others, she was murdered in the toilet by an abusive parent or a stranger. According to another version, it was an accident, and she fell from the bathroom's window – the bathroom is generally located on the third or fourth floor of the school in the legends. There is also a popular version in which Hanako was killed during an air raid while playing hide-and-seek at school (in this case, she was hiding in the toilet) during World War II.

Depending on the version, her legend is deeply associated with either the number three or number four – one way to say "four" in Japanese is "shi", which can also mean "death", so many ghost stories involving deaths might be associated with the number four. Anyway, it is said that to summon her, you must enter a girls' toilet (on the third or fourth floor of a school), knock three or four times on the third or fourth stall and ask if she is there. If she is, she will reply something like "Yes, I am" – she is often described as having a hoarse voice.

In some versions, Hanako, or another creature that protects her, may get angry at having her privacy invaded and will try to harm the person or even try to pull them into the toilet bowl (which allegedly leads them straight to hell) with a bloody hand. Other versions also involve Hanako calming down and leaving if the person calling her is a good student.

Apparently, this urban legend started spreading in Japan around the 1950s, but it could be even older than that. Anyway, as it's easy to notice, Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun adds a humorous tone to it by depicting Hanako as a boy, and not a girl, subverting expectations. Since Hanako is a common girls' name, the Japanese audience gets the joke just by reading the title.

Other Hanako-san References in Japanese Media

As said, Hanako-san has become a popular urban legend, which has inspired many other stories. Besides Hanako-kun, she is also the main character in a manga titled Hanako and the Terror of Allegory, in which Hanako helps a detective in solving supernatural cases. She is a minor character in GeGeGe no Kitaro and Ghost Stories, and one episode of Yamishibai (Season 1 Episode 10) seems partially inspired by Hanako-san.

The game Silent Hill 2 also makes a small reference to her – the door of the fourth stall in the women's bathroom in the prison is closed. If you knock it a few times and try to leave, you may hear a woman screaming.

Furthermore, a few horror movies are based on this legend, like Toire no Hanako-san (1995) and Shinsei Toire no Hanako-san (1998).

Not everything inspired by Hanako-san is scary though – there's a fun Japanese toy based on her, in which Hanako comes out of a toy toilet bowl.

Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun is streaming on Crunchyroll. The original manga is licensed in the US by Yen Press.

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