SPOILERS

My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, aka My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected, aka Yahari Ore no Seishun Rabukome wa Machigatteiru, aka Oregairu (which we’ll be using for this review) is a romance comedy anime surrounding our pessimistic main character, Hachiman Hikigaya, and his adventures through high school in the Service Club. In this Service Club, with his two main love interests, Yukino Yukinoshita and Yui Yuigahama, Hachiman is forced out of his usual shell and has to help other high school students which breaks down his perspective on society and has him question his methods and motives behind his meddling in other people’s lives.

I love this anime a lot. I watched the first two seasons when I was in eighth grade and at the time I related a lot to Hachiman and his outlook on life and society. Hachiman Hikigaya truly is the highlight of this show. Watching this show makes you feel for him as you see him suffer from the consequences of his self destructive methods of solving problems. Hachiman thinks of himself as the lowest of the low in normal society. In being self aware, he holds this position with pride and is not afraid to perform actions to preserve his role. With his position in society he is perfectly satisfied with not having any actual friends. But as the series goes on, he realizes that he wants “something genuine”.

Now notice how I didn’t say he now wants friends or literally anything else. I kept it vague and didn’t say it outright which is just like how the show presents itself; which brings me to my biggest gripe with the show: the convoluted dialogue. I have forgotten it over the years but on my recent rewatch of the first two seasons, often times I watch these scenes and just sit and wonder, “What the fuck did that character mean when they said that?” So many times during this show the characters just do not say what they mean at face value and I feel it takes away a lot of the value the show has. It really disrupts the flow of the show when I have to pause it, think about it, then go on the internet to consult the good ole Reddit analyzers to give me some explanation as to what’s going on because I have no fucking clue what this paragraph this character said means.

On a rewatch, this glaring issue really dampened my fondness for the show. It sucks because for years I thought this was one of the best shows I’ve ever watched because of how relatable Hachiman was on a personal level and how nuanced the show was. But it’s sad to say that on a rewatch, it’s not as good as I remembered. Still a great show but to say that it still holds up as the best romcom anime that I’ve said it was would be a lie.