Review: Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai (I don't have many friends) aka Haganai
OK, for those who do not know, every year, I sit down and intentionally watch an anime which is bad and I know it's bad. I want to make sure that I know what is out there so that when I get outraged by the moe-crap that exists, I can point to a recent example of it and I can call it out. Thankfully, between Cruchyroll and Funimation, there is no shortage of bad, moe, otaku-bait shows being released that are just recycled clinchés which are best ignored, so each year, it is pretty easy to find a show. This is my entry for 2011, and if you are curious, you can watch Haganai on Funimation.com and see it for yourself.
The show is 12 episodes long; it ran from October 7, 2011, to December 23, 2011. It is directed by Hisashi Saito who has a lot of credits as for key animation for shows like Gundam Seed and Code Geass, but his directing credits range from the very good (Bamboo Blade and Planetes) to utter SHIT (Sora no Otoshimono... a show no one should bother watching).
So, first thing: I do not know why Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai is shortened to Haganai. And I don't care. The literal translation of the full title is "I don't have many friends," and that is basically what the show is about. The main character is Kodaka Hasegawa, who is half English and half Japanese, and because of this, he has natural dirty blond hair and light eyes that make it look like he's wearing contacts while keeping the facial features of his Japanese father. He looks like a typical Japanese delinquent known for dying their hair and wearing light colored contacts, and sadly for Kodaka, perception is reality, so everyone is afraid of him. As he enters his new school, he cannot make friends, and he settles into a very lonely life, until he stumbles across a girl, Yozora Mikazuki, and finds her talking to an imaginary friend she has named Tomo. After a brief exchange, they decide to do what happens in all high school animes: they start a club. The Neighbors Club is a club for people who want to make friends but they cannot. Once the club is open, the flood of otaku-fetish girls come in and the fanservice is complete. So, we have:
Sena Kashiwazaki: the daughter of the headmaster of the school, a blonde rich girl who is stuck up, treats men like servants, and who cannot seem to get any female friends, and is desperate for them. She gets hardcore into playing dating sims.
Rika Shiguma: a reclusive nerdy scientist, whom Kodaka saves from a lab explosion, and she joins because Kodaka saved her and she thinks she has to pay him back with sex. Her misguided beliefs about human relationships come from 1) being a geek and 2) reading way too much porn doujinshi (she favors gay-male robot sex... don't ask).
Yukimura Kusunoki: a "boy" (actually a girl pretending to be a boy), who follows around Kodaka because "he" idolizes the "delinquent" myth that has arisen around Kodaka and "he" wishes to become a "tough man." Everyone takes Yukimura for a boy, except for Yozora, who decides that "he" has to wear a maid outfit (so it's a girl, pretending to be a boy, who is cross dressing as a girl), which fuels Rika's yaoi beliefs about Kodaka and Yukimura. Confused yet? Good.
Maria Takayama: a 10-year old nun (I'm not making this up) who is a teacher at the school that Yozora bullies into being the club adviser and into getting the club room. Maria eats nothing but junk food until Kodaka starts making her healthy lunches, which of course, causes her to develop a crush on him and start referring to Kodaka as her "older brother" (onii-san).
Kobato Hasegawa: Kodaka's little sister, a middle school student, who is obsessed with the "show within a show" Full Metal Necromancer, and who dresses in gothic clothing and believes that she is an ancient vampire queen. She sees Maria as an enemy because she is an agent of the church (remember, Maria is a 10 year old nun) and because Maria is moving in on her older brother. So yes, she has a "brother complex" *repeated headdesking*...
So with a cast of otaku-bait checklists like this, you would expect this show to outright suck, and by all rights, it should. Here's the problem: it doesn't. Although this show is set up to be a creepy dating sim anime (even though it is based off of light novels and not a dating sim), it takes several steps to avoid being a horrible show:
1) Kodaka has absolutely no interest in ANY of the girls in the cast. He never looks lustfully at anyone, he never behaves in anything other than a gentlemanly manner, and he never succumbs to the crap that most moe-harem protagonists do which leads to them getting beat up. He is genuinely a nice person who just wants other people to see that he is nice.
2) This show spends a lot of time commenting on the complexity of gender. Not only through the character of Yukimura, who is struggling to find and understand "his" (and later, her) own identity, but Kodaka knew the other main character, Yozora as a child, in which she was presenting herself as a boy. On the day that Kodaka moved away, when they were kids, she planned to meet him wearing a skirt to reveal that she was a girl, but she got scared and never showed up. Kodaka does not realize that Yozora and his childhood friend, the boy he knew as "Taka" are the same person. This reveal is a large portion of what the show is building up to.
3) This show, while it could glorify otaku bullshit, basically comes right out and says that the reason why otaku have no friends is because they act like fucking otaku. They are reclusive and anti-social, and if they want to have friends, they have to get a life. I love that this is setting up the intended audience for a much needed slap in the face.
4) The show is an interesting look at race in Japan. Kodaka and Kobato are half English and half Japanese. Kodaka seems to have gotten the worst of the genes (at least from his perspective) while he states that his little sister is the spitting image of his mother. Kodaka could solve the problems of his appearance by dying his hair black, but he refuses to do so because it is the one trait he really got from his mother, who is now passed away. I wish the series had spent more time on this issue, but the fact that the novels and the show think this needs to be addressed is interesting.
So, the show has some redeeming commentary, but does that save it? Well, almost...
Technically, the animation of the show is fantastic. This has high production values, and that makes it pretty easy to watch. The show is also funny. Most of the jokes hit home and operate to make the intended audience laugh while hopefully making them realize that they are a joke themselves. The character designs are much more "realistic" than most moe crap, and I was struck by the attention to detail in make-up as it seemed to be shown more realistically than most shows which do not pay attention to how girls put make up on. That said, the music is not memorable; the opening song is made for the show, and the ending song is forgettable. To top it all off, the show ends with Yozora's reveal, and the meat of the story with the commenting on gender never really takes off as much as it could.
But the real problem with this show is that, in the end, it is still a fanservice harem show for a moe-obsessed otaku crowd, and while the show does slap that crowd in the face somewhat, it's not nearly hard enough. I wish the show had taken more time to deal with the issues of race, gender, and gender identity that it wants to handle, but it doesn't. And, because this show is based on a series of light novels, which will never be translated, I have no idea whether or not the source material is really going to go there at all.
Is the show horrible? No. It's middle of the road. Is it worth watching? No. Maybe if you are not too far gone into the otaku lifestyle, this show could wake you up and help you realize that you need to get a life, but it also just might push you further in. If you have not watched a lot of anime, steer clear of this, and if you are looking for more as a veteran anime fan, I wouldn't recommend it either. The show seems to exist to be an advertisement for the novel series and to provide fodder for people who will be making doujins off of this.
I did enjoy aspects of this show, but really, is that a surprise? If a show deals with gender play at all, I'll probably watch it. That said, you can safely skip Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, aka Haganai, in favor of many shows that are far, far better.
So, any one have a suggestion for the crappy show I should watch for 2012?
The show is 12 episodes long; it ran from October 7, 2011, to December 23, 2011. It is directed by Hisashi Saito who has a lot of credits as for key animation for shows like Gundam Seed and Code Geass, but his directing credits range from the very good (Bamboo Blade and Planetes) to utter SHIT (Sora no Otoshimono... a show no one should bother watching).
So, first thing: I do not know why Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai is shortened to Haganai. And I don't care. The literal translation of the full title is "I don't have many friends," and that is basically what the show is about. The main character is Kodaka Hasegawa, who is half English and half Japanese, and because of this, he has natural dirty blond hair and light eyes that make it look like he's wearing contacts while keeping the facial features of his Japanese father. He looks like a typical Japanese delinquent known for dying their hair and wearing light colored contacts, and sadly for Kodaka, perception is reality, so everyone is afraid of him. As he enters his new school, he cannot make friends, and he settles into a very lonely life, until he stumbles across a girl, Yozora Mikazuki, and finds her talking to an imaginary friend she has named Tomo. After a brief exchange, they decide to do what happens in all high school animes: they start a club. The Neighbors Club is a club for people who want to make friends but they cannot. Once the club is open, the flood of otaku-fetish girls come in and the fanservice is complete. So, we have:
Sena Kashiwazaki: the daughter of the headmaster of the school, a blonde rich girl who is stuck up, treats men like servants, and who cannot seem to get any female friends, and is desperate for them. She gets hardcore into playing dating sims.
Rika Shiguma: a reclusive nerdy scientist, whom Kodaka saves from a lab explosion, and she joins because Kodaka saved her and she thinks she has to pay him back with sex. Her misguided beliefs about human relationships come from 1) being a geek and 2) reading way too much porn doujinshi (she favors gay-male robot sex... don't ask).
Yukimura Kusunoki: a "boy" (actually a girl pretending to be a boy), who follows around Kodaka because "he" idolizes the "delinquent" myth that has arisen around Kodaka and "he" wishes to become a "tough man." Everyone takes Yukimura for a boy, except for Yozora, who decides that "he" has to wear a maid outfit (so it's a girl, pretending to be a boy, who is cross dressing as a girl), which fuels Rika's yaoi beliefs about Kodaka and Yukimura. Confused yet? Good.
Maria Takayama: a 10-year old nun (I'm not making this up) who is a teacher at the school that Yozora bullies into being the club adviser and into getting the club room. Maria eats nothing but junk food until Kodaka starts making her healthy lunches, which of course, causes her to develop a crush on him and start referring to Kodaka as her "older brother" (onii-san).
Kobato Hasegawa: Kodaka's little sister, a middle school student, who is obsessed with the "show within a show" Full Metal Necromancer, and who dresses in gothic clothing and believes that she is an ancient vampire queen. She sees Maria as an enemy because she is an agent of the church (remember, Maria is a 10 year old nun) and because Maria is moving in on her older brother. So yes, she has a "brother complex" *repeated headdesking*...
So with a cast of otaku-bait checklists like this, you would expect this show to outright suck, and by all rights, it should. Here's the problem: it doesn't. Although this show is set up to be a creepy dating sim anime (even though it is based off of light novels and not a dating sim), it takes several steps to avoid being a horrible show:
1) Kodaka has absolutely no interest in ANY of the girls in the cast. He never looks lustfully at anyone, he never behaves in anything other than a gentlemanly manner, and he never succumbs to the crap that most moe-harem protagonists do which leads to them getting beat up. He is genuinely a nice person who just wants other people to see that he is nice.
2) This show spends a lot of time commenting on the complexity of gender. Not only through the character of Yukimura, who is struggling to find and understand "his" (and later, her) own identity, but Kodaka knew the other main character, Yozora as a child, in which she was presenting herself as a boy. On the day that Kodaka moved away, when they were kids, she planned to meet him wearing a skirt to reveal that she was a girl, but she got scared and never showed up. Kodaka does not realize that Yozora and his childhood friend, the boy he knew as "Taka" are the same person. This reveal is a large portion of what the show is building up to.
3) This show, while it could glorify otaku bullshit, basically comes right out and says that the reason why otaku have no friends is because they act like fucking otaku. They are reclusive and anti-social, and if they want to have friends, they have to get a life. I love that this is setting up the intended audience for a much needed slap in the face.
4) The show is an interesting look at race in Japan. Kodaka and Kobato are half English and half Japanese. Kodaka seems to have gotten the worst of the genes (at least from his perspective) while he states that his little sister is the spitting image of his mother. Kodaka could solve the problems of his appearance by dying his hair black, but he refuses to do so because it is the one trait he really got from his mother, who is now passed away. I wish the series had spent more time on this issue, but the fact that the novels and the show think this needs to be addressed is interesting.
So, the show has some redeeming commentary, but does that save it? Well, almost...
Technically, the animation of the show is fantastic. This has high production values, and that makes it pretty easy to watch. The show is also funny. Most of the jokes hit home and operate to make the intended audience laugh while hopefully making them realize that they are a joke themselves. The character designs are much more "realistic" than most moe crap, and I was struck by the attention to detail in make-up as it seemed to be shown more realistically than most shows which do not pay attention to how girls put make up on. That said, the music is not memorable; the opening song is made for the show, and the ending song is forgettable. To top it all off, the show ends with Yozora's reveal, and the meat of the story with the commenting on gender never really takes off as much as it could.
But the real problem with this show is that, in the end, it is still a fanservice harem show for a moe-obsessed otaku crowd, and while the show does slap that crowd in the face somewhat, it's not nearly hard enough. I wish the show had taken more time to deal with the issues of race, gender, and gender identity that it wants to handle, but it doesn't. And, because this show is based on a series of light novels, which will never be translated, I have no idea whether or not the source material is really going to go there at all.
Is the show horrible? No. It's middle of the road. Is it worth watching? No. Maybe if you are not too far gone into the otaku lifestyle, this show could wake you up and help you realize that you need to get a life, but it also just might push you further in. If you have not watched a lot of anime, steer clear of this, and if you are looking for more as a veteran anime fan, I wouldn't recommend it either. The show seems to exist to be an advertisement for the novel series and to provide fodder for people who will be making doujins off of this.
I did enjoy aspects of this show, but really, is that a surprise? If a show deals with gender play at all, I'll probably watch it. That said, you can safely skip Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, aka Haganai, in favor of many shows that are far, far better.
So, any one have a suggestion for the crappy show I should watch for 2012?