Meru Zetsubouda

Name: Meru Zetsubouda

Gender: Female

Age: 15

Occupation/Role: First-year student at Ohana Honey University Affiliated High School, Class 1-6; picture-book author; one of Rentarou Aijou’s “100 girlfriends”

Birthday: November 30

Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius

First Appearance (story beat): “Bibiin!!” moment in Volume 21, Chapter 177

Joins Rentarou Family: Volume 21, Chapter 178

Her birthday is revealed under the cover of Volume 21 and is likely inspired by “Picture Book Day”.

Meru is the 29th “fated one” for main protagonist Rentarou Aijou.

She is the author of the wildly popular, dreamlike picture book "Yume-chan and the House in the Sky", praised for its cute art and hopeful, healing content.

On the surface, she appears like a gloomy, negative girl with long dark-blue wavy hair, a constant beret, and lifeless, highlight-less eyes.

In reality, she is someone who once gazed at the world with pure hope, only to stare too long into its darkness and then cling to “fairy tale” as the one and only salvation from absolute despair.

Meru believes that the world itself is saturated with hopelessness, yet she also believes that dreams and hope may still survive inside people’s hearts.

This is why she writes picture books: to pour fairy-tale-like light into the hearts of children, whose innocence she sees as the last reservoir of hope.

Despite her despairing worldview, her mentality is incredibly tough.

She does not crumble; instead, she chooses to confront despair head-on and cover it with “fairy tale fantasy” as a deliberate, almost religious act.

Meru always wears a beret, which, together with her occupation, gives her the unmistakable aura of a picture-book creator.

Her long, wavy dark-blue hair reaches her back, and her eyes are usually drawn without highlights, emphasizing a hollow, deadpan look.

When she is exposed to a particularly intense dose of despair, both her mouth and eyes become pitch-black, as if scribbled over with a thick pen.

By contrast, when she becomes a baby due to a drug by Kusuri Yakuzen, her eyes regain their shine, visually recalling her pre-despair self.

Her high school uniform is the same basic blazer style as Nano Eiai’s, worn open in front rather than buttoned.

The beret functions as both a personal trademark and a visual cue to her picture-book-creator identity.

Personality-wise, Meru speaks in polite, formal language to everyone regardless of age, which makes her sound somewhat adult and composed.

However, her inner thinking is extremely “fairy-tale-like”, constantly framing events in terms of salvation, miracles, and fantasy.

Her favorite word – practically her catchphrase – is “fairy tale”.

She uses it for anything that feels fantastical, miraculous, emotionally overwhelming, creatively inspiring, or supernaturally strange.

She tends to respond to bizarre phenomena with calm acceptance if they seem “fairy tale enough”.

On the other hand, when reality is too mundane or cruelly rational, she can deliver surprisingly sharp and dry internal commentary, though she often keeps these harsher thoughts to herself.

Meru laughs in a very distinctive, slightly creepy way when something hits her funny bone, letting out a “Hi-hi”-type chuckle.

This usually happens when someone’s reaction or a situation blindsides her, such as Shizuka Yoshimoto’s expression after drinking carbonated energy drinks or a sudden visual gag.

She is proactive when it comes to love once she embraces it.

Despite her reserved appearance, she will boldly say “Let’s kiss” to Rentarou in public whenever the urge for a “thick, dense fairy-tale moment” strikes her.

Meru has extensive knowledge of fairy tales and can effortlessly spin new “fairy-tale stories” on the spot.

She frequently makes meta comments that acknowledge that “The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You” is a created work with an author, and she even breaks the flow of panels in the manga to “step in” as if she is narrating a storybook.

She sees herself not as a genius author but as a messenger.

In her mind, despair gives rise to fairy tales, and fairy tales then overwrite despair; thus, the true greatness lies in the fairy tale itself and the despair it transforms, not in her own personal talent.

She believes: “Because despair exists, the fairy tales that overwrite it are born.”

Therefore, she thinks she is merely the one who writes down the stories that the fairy-tale realm has allowed to appear, rather than an inherently extraordinary human.

Meru’s picture books are adored by the Rentarou family.

They praise her art as cute and her stories as meaningful even for adults, saying they feel genuinely saved by them.

At the same time, Meru is self-demanding and obsessed with intensity in her work.

When she draws, she can appear as if possessed, scribbling furiously while muttering about needing stronger, deeper, more overwhelming fairy tale “essence”.

She seeks “thicker, more concentrated fairy tale fantasy” that can fully engulf readers’ hearts.

Her drive can come across as slightly horror-like when she enters a trance, scraping her pen across the paper with manic focus.

Meru values sleep because she knows lack of rest degrades all of her performance.

She avoids sacrificing her health for work as much as possible, but when inspiration truly explodes, she allows herself to cut into her sleep schedule, supported by energy drinks.

She calls energy drinks “the source of fairy tale” and once described them as “the most wonderful object humanity has created”.

In scenes celebrating creative milestones or emotional moments, she often “toasts” with a can of an energy drink, sometimes with Shizuka.

Meru’s core belief is that the real world is dominated by despair, cruelty, and senseless suffering.

However, she also believes that dreams and hope may still exist not out in the world, but inside the hearts of uncorrupted, innocent people.

As a child, she was brimming with optimism, wanting to make the world a better place as a form of repayment for being alive.

She did things like giving up seats to the elderly, helping at crosswalks, picking up trash, and comforting crying children.

In middle school, she continued volunteering and believed in kindness.

Yet as she grew older, she gradually became aware of bullying, malice, and pain affecting people everywhere.

She herself was bullied, but she did not collapse or become bitter against others.

Instead, she reasoned that to save people, she needed to understand the nature of the suffering they wanted relief from.

Meru then began actively studying the world’s miseries: through books, the internet, and TV news, she sought out every form of misfortune, abuse, and tragedy she could find.

After about half a year of this, she was devastated, concluding, “This world is broken.”

In that moment, the light in her eyes disappeared, visually representing her internal loss of worldly hope.

However, seeing children with bright, innocent eyes again planted a new idea in her.

She realized that while the world as a whole might be beyond salvation, “dreams and hope might still exist inside the hearts of the untainted”.

Observing a mother reading a picture book to her child, she understood that fairy-tale stories can plant hope in pure hearts.

This realization prompted her to become a picture-book author.

She began creating “fairy tales” specifically as tools of salvation, to shield children and others from the crushing despair of reality.

She came to view fairy tales as the only true salvation available.

In her mind, “fairy tale fantasy” is a realm where miracles happen, justice is enforced, and people are healed—everything reality has failed to be.

Later, the Rentarou family becomes another axis of salvation for her.

She eventually considers “fairy tales” and “the existence of the family” as her twin sources of rescue from despair.

For Meru, if the Rentarou family is safe and happy, she can accept almost any apocalyptic scenario with a sort of philosophical calm.

She can hear hypothetical news about a crashing airplane or even the planet exploding and remain strangely unshaken if the family is unaffected.

However, she also believes that if true misfortune ever befalls a member of the Rentarou family, that would mark “the beginning of true despair”.

She once had a nightmare of Rentarou’s funeral and woke up sobbing, saying, “If that happens, then ‘The 100 Girlfriends’ is a bad ending.”

Rentarou responds by promising that he would “break the original work into pieces” before ever allowing such an ending, reassuring her with his characteristic overpowered optimism.

This promise helps calm her deep-seated fear that the story she lives in might end with tragedy.

By spending time with the Rentarou family, Meru discovers an entirely new kind of salvation.

Before, she thought only fairy tales could save people; now she also believes that “love and family” can be equally, or even more, powerful.

She cherishes reading fairy tales to the younger or more innocent members of the family.

Hearing and sharing fairy tales together not only heals others but also alleviates her own despair.

For Meru, the Rentarou family itself is a kind of living fairy tale.

They embody miracles, unconditional acceptance, and ridiculous, over-the-top happiness—all themes deeply aligned with her ideal of salvation.

Meru first meets Rentarou on the roof of Ohana Honey High School.

She goes there to sketch the town from above for reference, leaning on the fence and brooding about how every single house below contains its own personal despair.

Rentarou sees her from behind and mistakenly believes she is about to jump.

Panicking, he rushes over and calls out to her, triggering the familiar “Bibiin!!” signal of destiny that both of them feel.

Rentarou is shocked to learn that this girl, who is so thoroughly disillusioned with reality, is actually the author of "Yume-chan and the House in the Sky".

He had assumed its creator must be someone filled with dreams and hope, not someone who has consciously stared into the abyss.

At that moment, her beret—conveniently missing just before for meta-author reasons—is blown by the wind and then lands perfectly back on her head.

Rentarou tries to use this silly coincidence as proof that the world still has dreams and hope.

Meru responds dryly that it is nothing more than nonsense plot convenience.

Rentarou then asks to hear every single tragedy and misfortune she knows, insisting that he wants to share and carry that burden with her.

She refuses, not out of mistrust, but out of kindness.

She does not want to see the light in his eyes go out like hers did, and she fears that if he knew what she knows, his hope would disappear.

Rentarou is captivated by her selflessness.

Even after losing faith in the world, Meru still wishes for others’ happiness and tries to shield them from despair.

As she prepares to leave, he stops her and tells her that salvation is not limited to fairy-tale fantasy.

He boldly declares that “love” is another form of salvation in this world.

Meru counters that love is only beautiful in stories.

She claims that, in reality, love is tainted by calculation, compromise, and that only people who can afford the effort get to experience it, excluding people like herself.

Rentarou acknowledges that love requires effort, self-improvement, and trying to make the other person happy.

But he insists that at the end of that effort lies a happiness so huge that it can save an entire life.

He confesses directly: he loves her and absolutely does not want to say goodbye here.

He wants her to live happily and wants to be the one who makes that happen.

Taking her hand as she grips the fence, he tells her that no matter what despair destroys their happiness, they can always regain it.

For him, just being able to hold hands with the person he loves is a greater happiness than the world itself.

Meru’s heart starts racing—something she has never truly felt before.

She realizes that this feeling is new, overwhelming, and inexplicably bright, unlike any fairy-tale comfort she has known.

At last, she accepts his confession and becomes his girlfriend.

She describes this feeling of love as “fairy tale fantasy that actually exists in this world”, recognizing love as a real-world fairy tale.

It is explicitly stated that she was not planning to die even though she has given up on the world.

Rentarou’s misunderstanding about suicide was only his assumption, but it led to their destined encounter.

Later, during her first meeting with the entire Rentarou family, Meru is initially stunned by their mass-kissing greeting and by how unabashedly affectionate they all are.

Seeing how genuinely happy they look, she realizes, “This is the world of salvation itself!”

When Rentarou extends his hand to her with a gentle “Meru, would you…?” she takes it and leans in to kiss him in front of everyone.

She internally concludes that Rentarou himself is her personal fairy tale: “So that’s what you are, Rentarou. You are my fairy tale.”

From then on, she treats Rentarou and the relationship as a living, evolving fairy tale that exists alongside her written stories.

Love becomes a new, irreplaceable “genre” of salvation for her.

Shizuka Yoshimoto

Shizuka Yoshimoto is a book-loving library committee member and fellow girlfriend of Rentarou.

Before meeting Meru, Shizuka read "Yume-chan and the House in the Sky" and imagined its author as someone whose heart overflowed with dreams and hope.

When she actually meets Meru and sees the gap between the upbeat, sparkling book and Meru’s hollow-eyed, despair-colored reality, she is nervous but still accepts her wholeheartedly.

Shizuka praises Meru as an amazing creator who can draw such lovely and healing stories.

Meru, in turn, is impressed by Shizuka’s love of books, calling her someone with more affection and passion for literature than anyone she has ever met.

Meru eventually asks Shizuka: “If you love books this much, why don’t you write one?”

Shizuka is hesitant but deeply moved by Meru’s wish to read a story only Shizuka can write.

She attempts writing, struggles intensely, nearly breaks down, but then finishes a rough story and shows it to Meru.

The notebook is wrinkled and shows clear signs of emotional struggle.

Meru senses the universal “birth pains” that all creators go through and is grateful that Shizuka pushed through that suffering to create something.

Even though Shizuka’s prose is technically clumsy and clearly that of a beginner, Meru is moved to tears.

She realizes that every person has a story only they can create, and those stories cannot truly be ranked against each other.

At this time, Meru herself is struggling creatively.

After joining the family, she has experienced the “fairy tale of romantic excitement” and worries that her picture books feel small compared to that overwhelming reality.

Shizuka’s story reminds her that each story has its own irreplaceable value.

Meru thanks Shizuka, saying that her book has saved her, and they become close creative partners.

Afterward, they often work together in the library, writing and drawing side by side.

To celebrate Shizuka completing her first book, they toast with energy drinks, and Shizuka’s pained reaction to carbonation makes Meru laugh in her signature “Hi-hi” way.

Over time, it becomes common for them to share energy-drink “cheers” when they hit creative milestones.

Their relationship becomes a prime example of one creator’s story saving another creator’s heart.

Himeka Saiki

Himeka Saiki is a young genius singer who transfers into Class 1-6 and also becomes one of Rentarou’s girlfriends.

She is obsessed with being seen as a “genius eccentric” and constantly performs odd behaviors to uphold this image.

Because Class 1-6 now contains both a picture-book author (Meru) and a prodigy singer (Himeka), classmate Tama Nekonari jokingly calls it a gathering place for “young prodigies”.

Himeka is rattled when she sees Meru’s intense philosophy that “despair and fairy tale fantasy are two sides of the same coin” and that fairy tales are literal salvation.

Himeka feels that Meru’s dedication to “fairy tale salvation” makes Meru seem more of a true “eccentric genius” than herself.

This sparks a strange rivalry in Himeka’s mind as she tries to one-up Meru in oddness.

In shared episodes like the aquarium trip and the challenge-ramen event, Himeka and Meru often appear together as a kind of comic duo.

Himeka once proudly recounts an “eccentric” act of drinking from a small bottle by poking a hole in its lid with a toothpick.

Meru, however, interprets this in her own framework as “childlike behavior” rather than “eccentric genius”.

She considers that “childishness is itself a form of fairy tale fantasy” and assumes Himeka is aspiring to that.

Himeka, on the other hand, equates fairy tale fantasy with “oddness” in a more direct way and smugly claims their philosophies align.

In reality, they are slightly talking past each other, but their mismatch is played humorously.

Shiina Usami

Shiina Usami is another of Rentarou’s girlfriends and shares the Volume 21 cover with Meru.

In one episode, a landslide leaves Shiina and Meru stranded together at the bottom of a slope.

Shiina, easily bored and needing physical closeness, clings to Meru.

Meru responds by telling her an elaborate fairy tale from her repertoire to distract her and ease her worries.

The story about a family of one hundred mice is especially appealing to Shiina, who loves tightly packed, crowded scenarios.

Pressing close to Meru as she listens makes the experience even more comforting for Shiina.

Meru herself also benefits from this exchange.

Having a pure-hearted listener to absorb her fairy tale allows her to momentarily forget her own despair.

The two develop a mutually beneficial dynamic: Shiina offers open, innocent attention, while Meru provides carefully crafted fantasy.

They become close in a soothing, big-sister-and-little-sister sort of way, despite being in the same family of girlfriends.

Kishika Torotoro

Kishika Torotoro is a chivalry-obsessed girl who reverts to baby-like behavior when pampered too much.

One day she overhears one of Meru’s story sessions and is instantly overwhelmed into full baby mode.

Meru is struck by Kishika’s completely innocent, untainted eyes when she regresses.

She sees Kishika in that state as a “treasure born from the fairy tale fantasy of this world” and feels a strong urge to protect her.

As a result, Meru repeatedly tries to soothe Kishika with fairy-tale storytelling whenever she’s in a vulnerable mood.

This creates a somewhat comedic cycle where fairy tales keep triggering Kishika’s inner baby while also healing her.

At the same time, Kishika comments that she has long respected Mai Juri (another girlfriend), but feels she is always dangerously close to breaking from overwork and seriousness.

Hearing this, Meru internally thinks, “Look who’s talking,” finding Kishika’s comment ironically hypocritical.

She does not say this out loud, showing her restraint and kindness.

Instead, she keeps such sharper observations as private thoughts, reflecting her habit of protecting others’ feelings.

Other Interactions

Meru often tells stories to the younger or more childlike members of the family.

In doing so, she naturally bonds with characters who already love fairy tales or are open to imaginative play.

She initially clashes a bit with Nano Eiai and Mei Meido.

Nano tends to be realistic and skeptical, while Mei grew up without much exposure to picture books or fairy tales.

All three share a common thread: Rentarou had to persuade each of them that “love is happiness” before they accepted becoming his girlfriends.

Even Nano and Mei eventually begin listening to Meru’s stories among the younger kids, showing a gradual openness to fairy-tale thinking.

Meru gets along especially well with Shizuka and Shiina because they already enjoy stories and fantasy.

By contrast, her gap with Rentarou (who naturally respects her as “Meru-san”) and with Himeka (a modern-world entertainer) highlights how “out-of-place” a fairy-tale inhabitant can be in reality.

Understanding Meru’s mindset is easier if you first grasp how she distinguishes “fairy tale fantasy” from “fantasy” in general.

In her framework, her own approach is much closer to a classic fairy tale than to grounded fantasy.

Fairy tale fantasy (Meru’s style):

It is something that makes you think, “There’s no way this exists, but it would be wonderful if it did.”

If an animal spoke to her, she would not scream; she would naturally converse with it as though it were normal.

She accepts unusual rules, like talking animals or miracles, as if they are just part of how that world works.

She sees herself as a “messenger” who writes down fairy tales that already exist in some higher conceptual realm.

This is akin to a storyteller who narrates to children using puppets or picture books, standing outside the story and guiding the audience.

Her viewpoint is almost like an omniscient narrator looking down from the sky at a fictional world.

Grounded fantasy (like Uto Nakaji’s approach):

It makes you think, “There shouldn’t be such a thing, but maybe, just maybe, it could exist.”

A person with this mindset, if grabbed or startled by something impossible, would react with surprise and fear.

Grounded fantasy is more like an extension of the real world with additional speculative elements.

Uto calls herself something akin to a modern bard, inserting herself as the protagonist in her stories.

While Meru and Uto both handle “stories”, Meru lives mentally inside a fairy tale, while Uto plays inside a pseudo-realistic fantasy.

This difference explains why Meru reacts to many bizarre events in the “100 Girlfriends” world with calm acceptance rather than shock.

Because of this fairy-tale-centered thinking, Meru never truly “graduated” from the fairy tales of her childhood.

Other kids grow up, adjust their reading level, and adopt more realistic dreams; Meru remained in the fairy-tale mindset while her peers moved into pragmatic adolescence.

Her classmates eventually saw her as “different” or “odd”.

The bullying she suffered may have partly stemmed from this growing distance between her inner world and theirs.

Meru did not ask, “Why am I being bullied?”

Instead, she asked, “Why does something like bullying exist in this world at all?”

Searching for answers, she turned to the internet and other media and discovered horrors that never appear in fairy tales: war, slavery, systemic abuse, and senseless violence.

Her focus on these negative aspects, combined with the fairy-tale expectation of clear justice and happy endings, led her to conclude that reality is hopelessly unfair.

She then embraced fairy tales not as childish entertainment, but as a deliberate form of escape and spiritual armor.

In her view, covering cruel truth with gentle lies—like changing a baby’s origin story from a biological explanation to “born from a giant peach” or “carried by a stork—is an act of mercy.

She once mentioned that she imagines babies arriving via giant peaches or storks rather than biological reproduction.

This is consistent with her preference for “kind lies” that reframe reality in fairy-tale terms.

She has said that she will only be freed from this world’s despair either when she has covered the world in fairy tale fantasy and saved humanity, or when the fairy-tale realm itself acknowledges her for life’s work.

Translated into fairy-tale logic, this is like saying she will only be released after defeating evil and bringing peace like a hero, or being allowed into heaven like the “Happy Prince”.

To her, the story can end only in two acceptable ways: a happy ending or a “bittersweet but meaningful” one.

A cruel, meaningless bad ending is not something she can accept in a fairy-tale framework.

This is why she fears a tragedy affecting the Rentarou family so deeply.

In her mind, a terrible fate for them would represent a “true bad ending”, something her storybook logic cannot reconcile.

Fortunately, the world of “The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You” is inherently miraculous and meta-flexible.

There are gods, ghosts, and even a “god of creation” who can edit reality for story reasons.

With someone like Rentarou, who always finds a way to overcome obstacles, Meru’s dream of “making the world fairy-tale-like” is not completely impossible.

She happens to live in one of the very few universes where her ideals might actually be achievable.

People who want to connect with Meru need to approach her not as a distant genius, but as someone who still deeply identifies with “the child inside the fairy tale”.

Those who share or respect that perspective, like Shizuka or Shiina, naturally resonate with her.

For more realistic or skeptical people like Nano and Mei, the first step in understanding Meru is learning to engage sincerely with fairy tales.

Only then can they meet her halfway, bridging the gap between harsh reality and gentle fantasy.

In that sense, her relationship with Rentarou can be seen as a romance between a boy rooted in the real world and a girl whose mind belongs to a storybook land.

It pushes the boundaries of romantic comedy in a different way than the other girlfriends do, by testing how far a “fairy tale worldview” can be sustained inside a romantic harem narrative.

Meru’s mother appears in a bonus chapter in Volume 21.

She resembles an older version of Meru’s earlier, hopeful self, with straight long hair, softer eyes, and clear highlights.

When Meru was young, her mother read her stories like “Cinderella”.

These early reading sessions are what first inspired Meru to seek dream and hope in the world.

Her mother’s act of reading aloud planted the seed that fairy-tale stories are tools of hope.

This eventually blossomed into Meru’s career as a picture-book author and her philosophy that fairy tales are salvation.

“Meru Zetsubouda” is a deliberately symbolic, somewhat pun-based name.

“Zetsubouda” sounds like “zetsubou da”, meaning “it is despair”, reflecting that she has concluded the world is full of despair.

At the same time, “Zetsubouda” can be interpreted as “one who stores or accumulates despair”, emphasizing how much misery she has absorbed through her research.

Her first name, Meru, echoes the word “fairy tale” and represents the opposite pole: dream and storybook-like hope.

Her family name can also be read in a way that evokes “yearning” or “seeking”, hinting that beneath the surface layer of “despair and fairy tale”, there once existed “hope and dreams”.

Her given name uses characters meaning “dream” and “to keep/retain”, suggesting someone who preserves dreams even in a hopeless world.

This double-layered construction fits her perfectly.

On the outside, she is the girl who has stared into despair and clings to fairy tales; underneath, she is still the child who wanted to fill the world with dreams and hope.

Meru’s name is first revealed narratively through a storybook-like narration, rather than by her introducing herself.

In her debut chapter, she and Rentarou become a couple without exchanging names; her surname appears only in the subtitle, while her given name and year are revealed in the next chapter.

Later, the Rentarou family learns her full name through Rentarou, not from Meru’s own introduction.

This mirrors how fairy-tale characters are often introduced by a narrator saying, “Once upon a time, there was a girl named Meru Zetsubouda.”

Meru’s middle-school uniform resembles that of Ohana Middle School.

However, unlike the typical checkered skirts used by other middle-school girlfriends, her skirt is not checkered, making it uncertain whether she attended the same school or a different one.

If she did progress from Ohana Middle to Ohana High, she would be, like Yamame Yasashiki, an internal student continuing from the affiliated middle school.

The series does not definitively confirm this, leaving some ambiguity for fan speculation.

Her image color has not been officially stated.

From her birthday art post, it is inferred to be a mauve-like shade—a grayish purple that matches her melancholic yet gentle aura.

However, promotional material on Volume 22’s prize campaign uses a color closer to slate gray.

This suggests that, like Kurumi Haraga, her image color might be adjusted per illustration rather than being set in stone.