MASSIVE SPOILERS AND LAST EPISODE ANALYSIS BELOW THIS IS INTENDED FOR THOSE WHO ARE WAITING FOR SEASON 3

Hachiman yearns for “something genuine”. Season 1 began with anime’s Holden Caulfield, friendless, who really only likes his sister, Komachi, before he meets -- Yahallo! Yui Yuigahama, and “Ice Queen” Yukino Yukinoshita who become his first friends. He comments often with a blunt, almost derisive tone upon the behavior of his fellow social animals and meets others. “Hikki” begins to emerge from his shell and isn’t alone anymore. Goodbye, alone.

Zoku blows the first season straight out of the water. Brain’s Base hands the colors to feel. who continue the story with a sunset-warm fervor, outbursts of animation, and new character designs which fill out the characters more. Closeup shots of an earnest face. Tears flowing as Yui indirectly confesses to Hachiman. His own pained expression of his desire for something genuine. You then wonder, what has he been doing all this time? Was friendship not genuine? Hello alone, again.

Yui’s proposal to keep the three together after her confession, steeped out of the sociocultural motif of offering chocolates to your romantic interest, fails to prompt Yukino to do the same with hers. Both Yui and Yukino have feelings for Hachiman who, besides having shown embarrassment from both of them and Iroha, realizes, as they do in the final episode’s moments, that to confess would shatter their friendship as it is -- formed under the guise of doing service for others, merely an excuse to interact with others and come to the same place every day after school and be forced to interact. Yui, who for most of Zoku has acted her Yahallo self’s cheerful demeanor, is the one who in the last episode displays her truer self. She has been in love with Hachiman from the beginning. Yet she loves Yukinon -- I’m afraid to use the word “genuinely” -- and prizes the three’s platonic state dearly; yet she tells Hachiman, “I’ll beat Yukinon.” The three have long since achieved friendship with each other. Hachiman expresses his longing for understanding, a faculty he’d been wielding since the first episode, whether to please his own ideal of solitude or to attempt to save social tension and endangered bonds. He recognizes it as selfish, to understand another person, but to share that selfish desire with another person, to move beyond mere friendship which isn’t enough, is what he esteems. Or maybe that something doesn’t exist, but for Hachiman, to still struggle and writhe and suffer with others also on that path is what remains.

In the last episode, all three enact self-sacrifice: doubly significant due to the individual’s weighing of romantic attraction and friendship and the still-growing high schooler discovering himself or herself. Yukinon displays strong depth of uncertainty when Yui holds her hand and, while so clearly reluctant, as she has always done vis-à-vis her older sister, is about to accede and let Yui take it (as she did with the penguins, although nothing happened there) when Hachiman -- the Lone Knight -- steps in, clenching his fist. Yui for the entirety of both seasons had many opportunities to confess, and while she does so here, she only does so so that her best friend whom she knows has feelings for Hachiman also, can also bring out her other bag of chocolates. Haruno had interrupted her earlier, so Yui gives Yukino this chance, which she still doesn’t take as she hasn’t found herself yet. Had both confessed, while that is a gesture of sacrifice on Yui’s part, Hachiman would’ve been put into a tenuous position. While she isn’t that important, Kaori Orimoto, the one and only girl Hachiman confessed to in middle school, in her acceptance of him and his humor opens up the possibility. Now of course Hachiman, whether or not he ever had the guts -- but that doesn’t matter, because Hachiman steps in when he must, sacrifices himself for others because according to his ideal he is already alone and it’s his own thing. He’s been sacrificing himself this entire time. He steps in and rebuts Yui’s proposal, averring that Yukino has to fix her own problems, which is an action self-contradictory as in doing so he just helped her once again, as he did earlier when Haruno called (providing the words). Before gravity takes over Yukino asks him to save him someday -- Kan, you’re already doing it, stop it! Stop making me cry and agonize over other characters… I’m really just crying over myself. It has to end. Season 3 will be the end of this modern Austen-esque tomfoolery in which everyone is pretending or lying to themselves. Yukino will probably be saved but will that come at Hachiman’s hand or her own getting up and defying her older sister? Can the three simply do curtain call, hand in hand, walking off into the sunset simply friends? Will Hachiman “get together” with one of them? Will that entail a tragedy? You and I both know that something has to change. Why do I know this? Because it’s fiction. We’re watching these individuals and think we understand, writing reviews from our high horse.

Unfortunately, there cannot be a “someday” for these characters. To be saved someday, to return to the amusement park someday; both are the undiscovered person’s means of postponing certainty, of infiltrating the present-day despair with a residue of hope. It’s weak self-appeasement and besides foreshadowing only assuages the not knowing in the present. Hiratsuka-sensei impresses upon Hachiman the need to act in the present time and as the brouhaha surrounding Hayato’s course choice indicates, their time together won’t last, whether they move up to different classes or graduation brings a much more distant separation. It’s almost as if it’s only the romantic thread that can cement connections at this junction, that friends will have it harder staying friends after the enforcement of time; Shizuka still isn’t married and look at her, she’s still teaching at a high school and comforting herself by providing advice to the younger ones. The single inherent flaw of fictional narrative is that it has to end. Within this end-defined superstructure are the means of narrative which include character, and for characters to acquire any significance in a primarily character-driven story they have to change, realize themselves, bow and leave satisfaction as the curtain descends. Kan will bring the third act and conclusion; no matter how much they continue to struggle together, it will have to reach breaking point, and Hachiman must leave his fans and shippers and critics with a pleasing happy end.

The second act isn’t only about these three, of course, as the show’s Best Girl (and my personal ship) takes the stage as well. Iroha Isshiki -- note how her last name culminates in I and not A -- is alone. Note her despondent back as she walks back from the meeting without Hachiman. She needs him to hold her bag, which while not containing chocolates puts her in a position of dependency on him. She is the Truest Pretender who does what she does to maintain her image, greeting Hachiman “senpai” and rejecting him for apparently hitting on her over and over again in her made-up cute voice. If you’re still unsure, listen to Uraraka. As Hachiman himself notes, she “uses” him to actually accomplish things with the other student council run by Hand-Waver BS-Spouter. With Hachiman, she can be not herself and also herself, as glimpsed too briefly when she whispers into his ear on the train, “You’d better take responsibility.” She’s only gotten this far with his (sneaky) help and certainly feels some measure of debt, as well as a certain sense of her own growing feelings for him as he may be the only one who can understand the true Iroha. Note how in episode 4 she almost immediately goes to him, surprising Tobe with her speed. There are several ship moments, another being her surprise at Hachiman’s remembering her birthday (not to mention her coming to the Service Club more than once), and with Season 3’s teaser I -- I -- I ship. Yes, so far Yukino is the likeliest vessel but there’s something very appealing about Irohas’s pixie-like haircut, her voice which is just slathered with fakeness, her commitment to her propped-up image. WAIT WHAT IF IROHA X HACHIMAN ALLOWS HIM TO CONTINUE BEING FRIENDS WITH YUKINO AND YUI now see, I’m being selfish here, imposing my own desires onto the narrative without understanding… See what I did there! This is serious, you can’t just dismiss Yukino and Yui’s love. But then again, more than one person will be sad at the end no matter what, right?

And that’s how Oregairu Zoku is meta-commentary on the audience’s selfish privilege to ship characters.

But don’t worry, Rumi Tsurumi is also an “I” character who is alone. In some ways she is a preconfigured Hachiman-type, remarkably aware for her age and while she doesn’t really get friends in this season, she allows Hachiman to cut out decorations next to her. He’s drawn to the alone and Rumi, Iroha, and the single teacher illustrate this -- Hachiman’s statement that he would probably have fallen madly in love with her was he born ten years earlier. Her being Shizuka.

Pretend jokes besides, we cannot forget my boi Hayato Hayama and Best Imouto Komachi. They both score points and both understand Hachiman’s modus operandi, H. H. #2 being a quasi-rival in the endeavor to understand others (while recognizing that H. H. #1 is superior, which forms his dislike for him) and Komachi having lived with him all her life. Her moments with him are touching and far more pure than, cough. Hayato is the romantic interest for several characters and is popular as the star athlete and all-around nice guy but in Zoku he sobers up and doesn’t tell a soul about what he’s doing next year, not wanting to be the Hayato everyone expected him to be. It’s strongly implied that he has feelings for Yukino, whom he’s known the longest out of the bunch in addition to a yet undisclosed event that happened in the past, which will complicate things even further in Kan when he shows his truer self to more than just Hachiman. If Kan takes place in their third year, then Komachi will enter the picture too!

I’ve written a lot, Hachiman definitely wouldn’t have been able to write this much, and my tears have long since dried. I’ll conclude by stating firmly that Oregairu Zoku is the best high school anime I have seen to date, as far as high school anime are concerned and their shared archetypes and what they, in general, attempt to achieve. It is phenomenally written and heart-wrenchingly delicate and understands people on a whole 'nother level.

Waiting for Kan with bated breath.