4 days ago today, the final volume of My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected @ comic released in english, concluding a translation effort that took 8 years, localizing a manga that ran for 10. Despite it's obscurity, this is the series I always return to when I want to experience the story of Oregairu, and it's compelling in it's own right, how one light novel series happened to get 3 seasons worth of anime and TWO manga adaptations that ran AT THE SAME TIME! This manga specifically is probably a pretty hard sell to people who already know about this story, since the anime is a completely serviceable adaptation with a stacked seiyuu cast, but I can try anyway.
The art makes great improvements over the course of the run, but there is always a sharp stylistic flair to all the drawings that make each character really stand out. It's probably the most faithful adaptation, covering arcs that the first season straight up skipped, and there is an entire volume of content that didn't exist in the anime. Certain characters are also given more love from an artistic perspective, as S2 art style change really only focused on the girls, Hayato and Hikigaya, but in the manga Tobe actually looks decent, as well as Zaimokuza and his two geek friends and other background girls like Kawasaki and Ebina. There's also a stronger comedic flair to this manga that got completely gutted from S2 and 3 of the anime, Hachiman's more comedic monologues are rendered with goofy little illustrations, and facial expressions in general are given a great deal of attention. Lastly the format of this mostly digital manga provides and aesthetic quality to the themes punctuated by Hikigaya's self perceived worldview, the liminal quality to some of the paneling produces a more character focused perspective, which to me at least, enhances the feeling the story is able to make, as things being more than they seem over their flat black and white paneled exterior, and trying to reach that real person beyond the confines of that self perception.
It really was the strangest experience I've had with a series, as the sum of it's parts have made me drop it when I first watched it in high school. Hikigaya was one of the most insufferable main characters I've ever had to witness back then, but in retrospect I think I hated him because a part of me was in his cynical, chuunibyou, loner personality. High school isn't a time I look back on with any sort of fondness, and the last 2 years of college have been so much more instrumental in constructing my self worth and confidence, but I can't help but look back at those times with a... bittersweet feeling. Yes. That's the word. Bittersweet. Oregairu is bittersweet. An oxymoronic tale of one man's self perception, filled with hypocritical fallacies that have to be undone, one by one. The road to the truth for Hikigaya was not easy, from the sickeningly sweet school club activities that run the gambit of romcom cliches, to the distasteful bitterness of teen psychoanalysis that champion the false perception of the people who want to be seen for who they really are. It's messy, boring, cliche, rote, any other adjective I've described to works that mean less than nothing to me. And yet I've come to care for these characters, to hope against all their bad decisions, that they find themselves, and each other. That mix of bitter and sweet come together to make an experience like no other, one that has opened the door to so many more anime that live and breathe on those same tropes, because if someone was able to find meaning from those connections, and grow and mature from that meaning, why can't I?
This ending was not a surprise to me, I saw it 2 years ago when I finished the anime, which has left such a mark on me that 2 years hence I have not been able to let go of the effect this series has had on me. Even with the addition of the Oregairu Shin conclusion was not something I wasn't privy to, as I even slogged through 60,000 words of MTL'd trash just to see how these characters would end up. All is to say is that I've arrived at that same crossroads with this series as I have 2 years ago. How does one even leave behind a series so steeped in indecisiveness and unsaid feelings.
The panel below is the second to final panel of the Oregairu manga, it has no dialogue and is something I wouldn't consider a spoiler since it completely lacks any context (but I'll tag it anyway). This panel gives a sense of finality to the story that I wasn't able to get through the anime, or any other adaptation of this story. The belief that these characters really have bright futures is something that needed to be shown to me. It's not much, in fact it's such a empty, simple drawing that I doubt anyone reading this will understand the feeling I'm trying to communicate with it. But it's enough. This bittersweet story has a good ending. And with that, I can see this story waving goodbye, and so, I wave back. Thank you for reading.
