|
Digital
|
|
Wednesday, 18 January 2012 00:00 |
|
Page 1 of 2
Too many titles, this show has. In full, it's Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukanai - that shortens to Haganai, which is also the name that FUNimation are streaming it under, although you'll often also see it referred to by the English translation I Have Few Friends. And when you've got an attitude to others that's as bad as Yozora's, it's not a bit of wonder...
Kodaka Hasegawa has just transferred to St Chronica's Academy and he's having a hard time making friends. With his naturally blond hair and fierce looking eyes, people constantly mistake him for a delinquent. One day, he runs into his bad-tempered loner of a classmate, Yozora, while she's talking to her imaginary friend, Tomo. Since neither of them have any friends, Yozora decides they should join a club and use that to make new friends themselves - and so the Neighbours' Club is born. Initially not too keen on the idea, Kodaka finds he's not really being given a choice in this...
Yozora, to be blunt, is not a nice person. Cold and rude, and with a strong sense of her own superiority over others, it's no surprise at all that she's had trouble making friends. Quite why she latches on to Kodaka in the way that she does is a mystery that isn't explained until the final two episodes, when all becomes clear, but if there's a problem with this series, Yozora is it. Fortunately, the Neighbours' Club soon gathers a selection of other dysfunctional characters that on the one hand give Yozora more people to be mean to, and on the other give the show other people to focus on and take the attention away from Yozora with. There's the daughter of the school chairwoman and eroge game fan Sena, who's tired of the fake friends that her "school idol" status brings her and wants some real ones; nymphomaniac genius Rika; foul-mouthed ten-year-old nun Sister Maria; gender-ambiguous Yukimura, who's trying to become more manly by behaving more like a girl at every opportunity (no, I couldn't figure the logic of that either), and Kodaka's little sister Kobato, who believes she's a vampire. I wasn't kidding when I said "dysfunctional".
If the name of the series didn't give it away, this lot are all far enough to the edges of the scale of normality that finding friends willing to share their interests is difficult, but through a series of contrivances the series brings them and their fringe interests together, mixes well, and tosses out the results. Yozora and Sena end up with a personality clash that could start a world war - and given Yozora's domineering personality, there's only ever going to be one winner; Rika finds the one boy she's met willing to give her the time of day, and instantly wants into his pants; Kobato finds a group of humans who she can bend to her vampire will (if it existed); and so on. They meet up in their clubroom, they have fun bouncing off each others' insecurities - and find proper friendship along the way. With the possible exception of Yozora, who was looking to get something else out of the club when she first hit on the idea of setting it up.
At the start of the series, the prospect was dangled of it being a show that held up all sorts of otaku failures and had some fun with them, and for the first few episodes that is what you get. As it goes on, though, and more and more girls rally to Kodaka's banner, it slips into something more like a typical harem series - which doesn't work quite so well. That's a little disappointing, as the setup of the series gave it the chance to do something a little different, but at the same time the range of characters we have to play with still bring things to the series that make it stand out, with some individual scenes set to be real classic moments (Yozora turning a foot-massage for Sena into a scene more in keeping with a master making her slave submit, or Rika's interpretation of what should have been an entirely innocent scene in a mecha manga that turns it into x-rated robot porn).
The end result is more enjoyable than it should have been, but at the same time not quite as good as it could have been. I had great fun watching it, with it being one of the 2-3 shows on the simulcast schedule that I would head for as soon as it was due to be available (although as with all comedy shows, mileage is going to vary depending on your own sense of humour). But it is a shame that they didn't follow through on the otaku lifestyle humour as well as the early episodes made it look like they would. Still well worth checking out, though.
<< Start < Prev 1 2 Next > End >>
|
Reviews Archive 
