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The main male protagonist, and the best character of this anime.
This blog’s ‘Anime of the Year 2013’ audition kicks off with its first entry, an anime with an overly-long title Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru. This is a surprisingly good slice-of-life anime title, but whether it is good enough to win the audition remains to be seen.
Story:-
The greatly misunderstood main male protagonist, a loner who shied away from the high-school ‘society’, submitted a wrong essay to his teacher and found himself forced to become the member of the school’s ‘Volunteer Club’. The only other member of the club is the main female protagonist who is the most beautiful girl in school, and together the duo will have to HELP (emphasis added) the students in the school solve their problems.
If there is one reason why you should watch this anime, that would be just to watch the main male protagonist. Not unlike the K-On! series, this anime is so totally powered by his character strength. The other two club members, who was supposed to become his love interests, were truly made ordinary by him. His character development is tremendous, unlike the static development of the main female protagonist. Even the second big-breasted member of the club has a slightly better character development strategy than the latter. This imbalance between the two main protagonists’ character developments would have been a negative aspect for this anime, but somehow it isn’t, because of a reason that will be explained below.
Story-wise, this anime starts slowly. The plots in the first half of this anime is almost below average in quality, and only the aforementioned character strength of the main male protagonist helped carried the series at those episodes. But the second half of this anime, the plot improves tremendously, especially the summer camp and school festival arcs. The quality tapers off a little though in the final episode which is about the sport festival event. The two aforementioned arc is also where the main male protagonist really shines.
Still, I do have the feeling that only a little tiny bit portion of the storyline has been presented to the viewers in the 13 episodes of this series. Some of the scenes in this anime indicates to me that the main female protagonist do have her own character development strategy, but almost all of them seems to be hidden from the view of the viewers, and maybe the main male protagonist too.
This anime doesn’t really has a definite ending, and definitely can, and should be extended into a second season which this anime really deserved. If the 13th episodes is of any indication, that cannot be counted as an ending at all, it is more like a filler episode to me. This bring us to this anime’s presentation scheme, where the flow of the storyline is actually decent until that last episode. The last episode, what the hell is that? The pacing of the storyline is slow too, befitting the genre of this anime.
Returning to character developments, you should already be able to guess that the main male protagonist is this anime’s best character after what I have wrote above. The other two members of the ‘Volunteer Club’ is nowhere near him in this aspect, and so are the other characters, whether from his school or outside of it. But certain characters like the popular guy from the main protagonist’s class and also the older sister of the main female protagonist definitely has more unpolished potential that can be unearthed in a second season, or more.
Speaking of a second season, I have not heard any news about it yet as of writing. But if there are more extensions to this anime in the future, I sincerely hoped that this anime stays on the slice-of-life+comedy genre combination, and without any romance especially for the main male protagonist.
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Quoted for Truth!
Character Design:-
The characters design in this anime is simply ordinary, and nothing to shout about. In fact, calling the designs in this anime as unoriginal will even be a fair accusation. In this anime that takes place in modern Japan, black hairs are common though, which is a good thing. Unoriginality seems to be the theme of this anime though…
Voice Acting:-
The main male protagonist could have been more awesome, if only he has a voice actor that is on the same level as his counterpart of Ixion Saga Dimension Transfer or even Bakemonogatari. A lost opportunity in this anime that is naturally dialogue-heavy title. This is not to say that his voice actor is bad though; he has done a good job, but could have been much better just the way how Ixion Saga was greatly helped by its excellent voice acting gigs. The main female protagonist is just average and the other member of the club isn’t that different either. The only other good voice acting gig I have heard in this anime is the one for the fujoshi girl and one of the friends of the main male protagonist’s foil in his class.
Music:-
This anime is an utter failure is this aspect. The soundtrack is forgettable, and the OP and ED themes are uninspiring. There is nothing else I can say here.
Animation/Direction:-
One thing I noticed about the animation quality in this anime is that character animations can be atrocious at times. Not only that, the laziness in characters compositions that can be seen in the second half of Michiko to Hatchin can also be glimpsed here. General animation is okay most of the time, although sometimes the quality goes the way of the character animations too. Choreography did not apply in this strictly slice-of-life title. And as for the directing, let just say that he/she watch to much Bakemonogatari, to the point that I cringe when I watched some of the scenes in this anime.
Conclusion:-
9 out of 10. That’s how much I’m impressed by the Yui-like character that is the main male protagonist. The great second half of this anime helps too. This audition surprisingly starts off with a great bang, and as a reminder, the last year’s audition winner Another also has the same score. If even half of this year’s audition entries is as good as this one, then this audition is surely going to be enjoyable.
Shortlink: http://wp.me/prgSo-BR
Funny anime with especially funny dialogues.
Agree. This anime is so interesting and songs are beautiful too. Its story and characters are hard to understand but it’s the good point of Oregairu.
So if you read/watched Oregairu light novel/anime, if you wonder something about characters or story in ss1-2 (ex. “Y” of Hayama), you can explore in Oregairu analysis.
https://yaharibento.wordpress.com/bento-analysis
Yeah, this anime is great.It has it’s ups and down but still is fun to watch and good enough to make you wait every week for the next episode(I watched when it aired).
I kind of disagree with the music section since I personally liked the ED(touyama NAo ftw), but maybe that’s because of personal taste.
Anyways, good review and I hope for more great reviews like this(I want you to review Yuyushiki :P).