I never felt there was a need to have a second season, but I have to assume that it scored so well with others that we had to cash in on the popularity. So, here we are with “My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, Too” (”Yahari Ore no Seishun Rabu Kome wa Machigatteir”), subtitled “My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong as Expected” and abbreviated as “Hamachi’ and “OreGairu”. Now, I always have the suspicion if you can’t agree on a title, there are bigger problems afoot. But this show has always been kind of like that.

The show starts off in all-too-familiar territory, as Hachiman Hikigaya is still a Class-A grumpy slacker (in the middle, the Class-A grumpy slacker), but we see a kind of evolution as chinks appear in his armor, so the truth comes out. He seems to be getting pushed around by the other members of the Service Club, Yukino Yukinoshita (left) and Yui Yuigahama (right). It starts out with basic help for people with basic problems, but it is done is a rather ‘let’s get it done’ manner, just to get it done and not to resolve things properly.

The big drag is that it takes about six episodes for a real plot to finally show up and it is at that point the show not only gets interesting, but starts to pick up, both in vitality and intensity. Until then, it is merely going through the motions, unless that is the intent of things. We also start to see that Hachiman is really to blame for how he feels, as he doesn’t really know how to express himself to others and himself, but lashes out at others for these failures and he makes some doozy failures (the love confession episode).

The series gets interesting when Soubu School tries to coordinate a Christmas event with Kaihin School. You have never seen a bigger bunch of tinfoil plated phonies, who talk in gibberish, nonsense and pointlessness than the nitwits at Kaihin. In order to solve the problems generated by the first meeting, we have another meeting which only deepens the problems and no action is ever taken, as we talk about having another meeting to resolve an ever-increasing amount of logistical problems. This is when Hachiman, by hook or by crook, has to get involved in his own life to make things works as they should by doing something and not sitting around, listening to dullards jabbering gobbledygook and bland platitudes.

The series ends with the rifts between all the members of the service club repaired, but this is not some kind of spoiler giveaway; the very nature of these shows points us in that direction and we just wait for one person or the other to make the declarative statement to this effect. I was actually surprised by the turn of events for the second season. I did not want to see this, but it came at a time where there was a slack area for new shows to watch and it wasn’t that large of an effort to see a second season of a show I had already seen the first season of, so no new characters (more or less) to be introduced to. Sure, there is a caliber of superficiality to the whole thing, but, again, I wonder if that was intentional.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork 7 (Standard anime style)
Plot 7 (Takes too long to show up)
Pacing 6 (Initially, moves along fitfully)
Effectiveness 7 (Again, not until later)
Conclusion 7 (It reaches a ‘coupler’, but hasn’t ended)
Fan Service 2 (A similar show would be “Okamisan”)

Overall 7 (Still all the flaws of the first season)

And remember, it’s first run until you’ve seen it. Do I need to come to club?