Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai (2011)

02 Jan 2012 1 Comment

by aurajanuary in Anime Reviews Tags: Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, Haganai, I don't have many friends

In the face of the new year, I’m going to experiment with a much more thorough style of review, starting with the first show I finished from the Fall 2011 season: Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai

Many people have difficulties fitting in, but Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai (also known as Haganai) takes it to a whole new low as it chronicles the adventures of a club that gathers for the sole purpose of making friends. The main character, Kodaka Hasegawa, transfers to St. Chronica’s and is immediately outcast because of the blond hair he inherited from his English mother and his mean-looking face (basically, everyone assumes he’s in a gang). He quickly meets Yozora Mikazuki, a girl with such a bad attitude that the only friend she has is an imaginary one. Yozora gets the brilliant idea to start a club, and the harem group accumulates from there.

As some of you may remember, I put this show down as one to keep an eye on, but Haganai proves to be a lesson in relatively misleading first impressions.

Story

As I said, the plot follows this club of high school students as they try and make friends and do what normal groups of friends would do. At first, I wondered if this was a parody, given how sarcastic the Kodaka is and how bizarre and unappealing Yozora (and her imaginary friend Tomo) are by comparison. As more females get tacked on, each is more unappealing than the next: Sena Kashiwazaki is gorgeous but has an addiction to datings sims; Kobato Hasegawa, Kadoka’s younger sister, pretends to be a vampire from a gothic anime; Rika Shiguma is a scientific genius and nymphomaniac; Yukimura Kusunoki is either a trap or a very confused young girl who wants to be a samurai; and Maria Takayama, the adviser of the club, is an obnoxious ten-year-old nun.

Seriously, who could think of any of these girls as fantasy material?

So I dove into this show assuming that it would make fun of itself on occasion. The show was relatively episodic, so each adventure kind of has its own “what shenanigans will they get up to next” kind of thrill. The first three episodes even get to the point of being almost laugh-out-loud hilarious. Yet as the show goes on, the shenanigans seem less like they’re trying to make you laugh and more like they’re trying to make you jack-off. The opportunities for jokes are replaced by awkward sexual tension with no real plot to back it up. By the last episode, the romantic storyline which had been sneaking through as a continuous but unnecessary side-story makes itself the focal point of the resolution, leading to very little satisfaction at all. While it starts off strong, this finish left me feeling a bit betrayed by screenwriters that had started off trying so hard to be the funniest guys in the room.

Story grade: C+

Music

Needless to say, the music is not the highlight of the show. The opening (Zannenkei Rijinbu – Hoshi Futatsu Han/The Regrettable Neighbors Club – Two and a Half Stars) and ending themes (Watashi no Kimochi/My Feelings) are recorded by the voice actresses, with the opening being most of the club and the ending done solely by Marina Inoue, the voice of Yozora. Neither is all that exciting to listen to since they were written as high-energy music, the type of which you hear in… well… a harem anime. Let’s not kid ourselves, this wasn’t a big project worthy of a thought-provoking score. The soundtrack is nothing like the more action-packed harems of Mai-Hime, nor is it subtle like something out of a shoujo. Instead, it’s standard, nothing to make it stand out from any other show of its ilk.

Music grade: C

Art

The art starts out a little above average. The one thing I can say is that unlike its predecessors in the harem anime industry, Haganai avoids falling into the pit of actual mediocrity. The animation is smooth and the color remains rich. I don’t believe that it ever looks like they cut down on the number of cells or took the cheap route in animating a scene. As far as the character designs go, they’re… cute. The rounder faces and frequently-blushed cheeks are not something that I’m used to and, at first, I wasn’t sure how to react. For me, it was a little off-putting, but I am not their target audience. I think the difference in character design, however, allows the show to get a foot in the door with perspective viewers who are within that target audience.

Art grade: B

Overall view

I can’t say I 100% regret watching Haganai, but I sincerely wish it had lived up to its first impression of being a quirky and funny show. It didn’t throw much new and exciting into the mix and I could have watched the first and the last episode without feeling like I lost out on much. Instead, I spent 12 episodes watching the same sort of hijinx occur over and over without anything new or exciting to back it up. I’m glad that I watched it as it was airing, though, because I never would want to marathon this.

Final grade: C+