Hey everyone! How're you all doing today? I'm doing well. It's a rainy day here at the Review Basement (outside, not inside) so I decided to review an anime series. Yes, it's my first anime review on this blog. I've talked about anime on the old blog, but this is the first time I've talked about it on this blog. The anime I'm going to be talking about is called Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai or Haganai: I Don't Have Many Friends. So let's get into it.
The basic premise of Haganai is a boy named Kodaka Hasegawa, who is a new transfer student at St. Chronica's Academy, gains a reputation as a delinquent because of his brown-blond hair which he got from his late mother who was English. As a result the other students are afraid of him and he has a hard time making friends. Enter Yozora Mikazuki, who comes up with an idea to start a Neighbors Club, as a way for the two of them to make friends. Eventually Sena Kashiwazaki, the daughter of the president of the school, joins the club along with Rika Shiguma, Yukimura Kusunoki, Kodaka's sister, Kobato, and Maria Takayama, the club's ten year old staff advisor. Together the club members participate in activities like going to the pool, playing video games, and going to a beach house.
I first watched Haganai in either 2014 or 2015 when Brad first lent me the Blu-ray/DVD combo set. I didn't have a Blu-ray player at the time so I watched the DVD. Back then Brad was doing everything he could to get me into anime and outside of a few shows like Sailor Moon, Digimon, Pokemon, Speed Racer, Astro Boy, and Samurai Pizza Cats I was not as big into anime as many of my friends were, so it took alot for me to get into an anime series. It still takes alot for me to get into an anime series. So I was pleasantly surprised when I watched it and found how good it was. I probably binged the show in two days when Brad lent it to me because it was so good and I couldn't get enough of it.
Fast forward to last year and Brad asked me if I wanted the Blu-ray/DVD combo sets for both Haganai and it's second season, Haganai: Next, because he was getting rid of them. Of course, I said yes, because it had been about five or six years since I originally watched it. And then it sat on my shelf for a few months because I was busy watching other things, including season 2 of The Mandalorian, season 1 of Star Trek: Lower Decks, and season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery. Finally I decided to do another watch through of the series.
Based on the Japanese light novel, basically a cross between a young adult novel and comic book here in North America, Haganai actually holds up. It's ridiculous of course, but it's also pretty entertaining. My favourite part of the show is the dynamics between the characters. However, I think the main characters are Kodaka and Sena. Yozora, Rika, Yukimura, and Maria are fine as characters, but they honestly don't have a whole lot to do with the story. Sure, Yozora is definitely more prominent than Rika, Yukimura and Maria are, but by the end of the series, we know as much about Sena as we know about Kodaka.
I don't normally do this, in fact I do my absolute best to avoid this at all costs, but if I were to ship Kodaka with any of the other characters on the show, it would have to be Sena. I know, I know, it's stupid, but hear me out here. Sena and Kodaka's fathers are basically best friends, though Sena's father, Pegasus, disagrees with the way Kodaka's father left him and Kobato alone to continue his work as an archaeologist, and to be honest I like their chemistry better than I did the lack of chemistry between Kodaka and Yozora. And trust me there is no chemistry between Kodaka and Yozora at all. But Kodaka also calls Sena out on her crap. Like in episode 3 when she and Kodaka go to the water park together and Sena gets into an argument with a group of guys who had been hitting on her, instead of leaving it at telling them to stop. Then Sena practically orders Kodaka to fight them to defend her honour. Immediately Kodaka yells at her because she pushed those guys into escalating the fight. This is the turning point in their relationship because Sena realizes that Kodaka isn't going to just fawn all over her like other guys do (Sena's reason for not having friends). Which I like.
I also like Kodaka and Kobato's relationship as brother and sister. Kodaka takes care of Kobato, but in a way Kobato also takes care of Kodaka if that makes sense. We don't see their father at all during this season, though I think his voice appears in Haganai Next in one of the episodes, so it's basically just Kodaka and Kobato, as their mother passed away many years before, though they don't say when she passed away exactly. They hint at it though.
The other characters are kind of just there. We don't see Yozora, Rika, Yukimura, and Maria's lives outside of school, and three of them aren't all that well developed. In fact Rika, Yukimura and Maria are all kind of one note characters that are more stereotypes than actual characters. Which is fine because Kodaka is the main character, and Sena is the secondary character even with what we learn about Yozora by the end of the series. Though I don't like it when Yozora's picking on Sena goes too far and legitimately becomes outright bullying. That's the kind of thing I saw when I was in high school among my group of friends and it was even more stupid in real life than it is in this show. Sometimes it can be pretty funny, especially when Sena walks right into it and Yozora takes her down a peg. Other times it's just like, "was that really necessary?"
Another thing that I like about this anime is that, well, it changes genres in a couple of episodes. In one they're playing an RPG and we see them represented inside the game so it feels more like a Fantasy series. In another they tell a round robin story where each person writes a page in a story, taking turns. That one starts off as a classic Samurai story, becoming Fantasy midway through and then becomes Science Fiction by the end of the story. Most shows can't pull that off and make it work, but man, Haganai does.
Overall this is a great anime. If you're into anime and into slice of life high school shows, and you haven't seen this yet, I'd recommend you check it out. Like I said in the beginning of this review, it gets pretty ridiculous at times, but it's also alot of fun.
That's it for this review. I'll be back tomorrow for a comic book review though. This week I'm going to be looking at Star Trek #75, published by DC Comics in 1995. So until then have a great night and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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