(Disclaimer: this is a review of the series as a whole, not just on any season in particular.)
After nearly a decade, the story of Oregairu comes to its conclusion. For me, I didn't get into Oregairu until the summer of 2016, where I vividly remember binging the entire series in two days and falling in love with the characters and sub-textual method of storytelling that Wataru Watari is such a master of. I'm not going to go into a deep, analytic dive into Oregairu and how it uses sub-text to develop its characters or tell its stories, but I will be speaking for what Oregairu means to me and how it hits me on an emotional level. I think there's plenty of character studies on Oregairu that for me to put my two cents in would feel somewhat redundant. I think I'd made up my mind on my feeling concerning Oregairu long before the conclusion really came into play, but with its conclusion, I can more accurately say something that I was a little hesitant to say until now: I love Oregairu with all my heart.

I think something that gets understated is how much the transition from Brain's Base to Studio feel. affected the series. While the former's artstyle may have been more faithful to the light novel, I think feel upgraded the aesthetic of Oregairu in every way possible. If you ask me, light novels provide the most freedom of any source for an anime adaptation, which is shown here extraordinarily well. You may as well utilize the strengths of the medium you're adapting to. For anime, you can make something beautiful visually. That's exactly what feel did to Oregairu and I believe they knocked it out of the park, even to the point of recreating scenes from season 1 to fit their artstyle. Visually, Oregairu never falters, but the point also must be brought up that Oregairu never has to do anything extremely special in the animation department, which isn't a detractor, but more of a point to the fact that visuals were never something that they could really afford to mess up.

Musically, Oregairu is beautifully understated. The musical selections are perfect for the kind of story that Oregairu is telling. It's never a detractor or overwhelming, but fitting for the scene. I won't go much more into this aspect, as I think there are much more important aspects of Oregairu than the music, but I definitely have to give credit where it's due. Voice acting was also incredible throughout the three seasons. I couldn't name a single voice actor that was detracting to the overall show, but I could name so many good performances like Hachiman's genuine scene where Takuya Eguchi absolutely knocks it out of the park.

Favorite Character: Hikigaya Hachiman

Honestly, any other choice would have been trolling. Which is something that I think is true for legitimately everyone who has watched Oregairu. You can go on and on about the waifu wars and whatnot, but in the end, most of us watched the show for Hachiman. He touches a core part about a lot of us who watch anime feel, I think. The one that is a loner and giving up "real life" to live in our own bubble and not get hurt, which maybe strikes a lot of anime watchers, myself included, right where it hurts. Hachiman as a character defines everything unique about Oregairu: nihilistic, pragmatic, cynical, rebellious, and hypocritical. It's this beautiful combination that makes him such a compelling main character. It's clear in his hypocrisy that he truly wants to have a memorable youth despite his claims otherwise. We learn to see through his coarse outward disposition that he's really a very caring and lonely boy who's been nothing but bullied and forced into his shell. Perhaps this is painting him in too much of a victim's light because he certainly does himself no favors, but it's hard to say that his fate was his choice, only a convenient excuse for him to seem in control of his life. It's such a joy to watch Hachiman grow to become more compassionate, make friends, temper his self-destructive tendencies, and learn about his own true desires. This, I think, is the crux of Oregairu. It's not really about choosing a girl or which girl is better, but about Hachiman growing up and realizing who he is truly and what he wants out of life. The two main girls, Yukino and Yui are personifications of that in my mind, Yui being the fake, delusional reality that he could follow, whereas Yukino stand for accepting himself and genuineness. Perhaps that's also an oversimplification, but if you really boil down what they stand for to Hachiman, that's it.

On a more biased level, I loved Yukino from start to finish. It was clear that Hachiman was head over heels for her from season 1 episode 1 and watching their development and their chemistry was so beautiful. They have a chemistry that is among one of the best in all of anime, up there with even Araragi and Senjougahara. I did feel like Yukino got shafted a bit throughout the runtime, as it was very clear that the director was a Yui stan with the amount of random screen time he gave her, especially in season 3, while Yukino rotted and got so little development. It was really a weird situation because we spend like four to five episodes in the middle of season 3 with solely Yui it feels like and then we slingshot back to Yukino and Hachiman and suddenly Yukino has progressed? From everything I've read and heard of Oregairu, there's so much more Yukino and I feel like we got cheated of that a good bit.

I don't even know if there are any true negatives that I can levy at Oregairu beyond that. Season 1 had the artstyle that wasn't the best and I think season 3 was slow in the middle, with very little actually happening. It felt more like the inevitable conclusion, whereas season 1 and 2 felt substantially more intense. In fact, Hachiman's genuine speech felt like the climax of the series and everything afterwards was more of the pieces falling into place. I think many of the side characters got a poor representation later on too, Hayama being the best example as his storyline just kinda ends with no resolution. Also, wow, the shipping wars were insanly frustrating during the long waits. I'm just going to say that the Yui and Iroha stans actually made me really strongly dislike both of them, especially Yui as I still kinda like Iroha. But that's something that I won't go too deeply into.

I think it's impossible for me to put all my feelings about Oregairu into a few words, much like Hachiman with Yukino, ironically enough. To just say that I love Oregairu is such an understatement that I feel as if I should write at least a couple more paragraphs to explain more of why but I think I've already said enough. If you like deep character dramas, dry humor, irony, compelling characters, and want to witness one of the greatest and most unique protagonists that anime has ever seen, you won't want to miss Oregairu. It's the genuine article.