Another one of those very long titles, we have “My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU” also known as “Yahari Ore no Seishun Rabu Kome wa Machigatteiru. (“My Youth Romantic Comedy is Wrong as I Expected.“). This one is a caliber of nothing show, but things do happen, just very slowly.

Hachiman Hikigaya (the sweaty one, second from left) is a caliber of loner and a pure cynic. He feels that youth is simply an illusion created by hypocrites, for hypocrites, born from the ashes of past failures. Well, he is not going to get on any popularity lists. Yukino Yukinoshita (dead center, flowing black hair) is president of the Service Club, a group that helps out people in distress. Sadly, she is the only member, so has to blackmail Hikigaya into joining, much to his irritation and distress. He doesn’t need to belong to any club. Well, he does belong to one, but it’s the going-home Club. And then he is pressed into service to do something he has never really done before: be helpful!

This show has similarities to “Okamisan” and “The Good Job Club”, in that we have people trying to help others out, but, in an open sense, are helping themselves out in trying to improve their own lives. It’s just that there is a lot of running in place and a lot of overarching efforts to reach a simple conclusion. We are trying to teach Hachiman that you have the rest of your life to be cynical, but your youth only comes once, but I felt that wasn’t the goal they wanted to pursue and let a lot of opportunities for character development and growth fall by the wayside

I watched the show, as I wanted to see all these grand and glorious plans try and workout. I mean, their club room is a storage location for extra desks, so the ambiance and the desire to WANT to come to the club room are strained. But I felt kind of out of place with this. Maybe it’s how the show was constructed, but I felt things had to be made more complicated than was necessary. It’s not a bad show, but it’s not as good as it could have been. Sometimes a show misses; a failure to connect. This is one of them for me.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork 7 (Typical approach)
Plot 6 (Rather standard)
Pacing 6 (Works for itself, but not overall)
Effectiveness 6 (Too much in the way)
Conclusion 7 (It reaches a ‘coupler’, but doesn’t really end)
Fan Service 3 (A similar show would be “Wedding Peach”)

Overall 6 (Too brief for me)

And remember, it’s first run until you’ve seen it. Wrong, as I expected.