"Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru" Anime Review

***This is a spoiler free review***

With the total failure of Date a Live and utter disappointment of Suisei no Gargantia, it’s a good thing there were other decent shows. While I lost interest in Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru in the middle of its airing, the amazing cast really brought this anime home.

Story: 5/10
So while the premise of the show really interested me, most of the content was just boring in my honest opinion. The show follows Hachiman, Yukino, and later on Yui as they help fellow classmates with their problems. While the cast interactions really made this show work, I was unfortunately just bored with what was going on. Essentially Hachiman and Yukino are somewhat reserved people who kind of have to be forced into situations in order to open up at all. This provides some really interesting banter between them but I did not like how other characters in the anime looked down on them. On the socially opposite side of the high school spectrum, you had the “cool” kids headed by Hayato and Yumiko who I despised immensely.

In pertaining to the actual plot of the anime, essentially it boils down to the club Hachiman is part of taking on different tasks set forth either by fellow classmates or the club monitor Shizuka. While some interesting moments come up in the show, it was overall pretty boring and average stuff. The final episode was pretty interesting and enjoying but overall the whole show just really felt like clever conversations with blandness in between.

Animation: 7.1/10
So the animation quality was entirely dependent on which ever character was on the screen. While the animation itself was fluid and good, the quality of each character was not. Characters Yukino, Shizuka, Haruno, Saika (I don’t care if he is a trap), and some others had great character models and looked great while on screen. Hachiman and Yui though each had certain things I completely disliked and was annoyed by. Hachiman had a very fish like appearance (which was probably on purpose but I still didn’t like it) and I found that in a lot of scenes his character didn’t animate as fluid as the others. Yui while very pretty in appearance had some serious hair issues. This might be an extremely superficial gripe but there was just no detail to her hair; it just looked like a mangled knot.

Resist...you must resist!

Sound: 8/10
The voice actors deserve a 10/10 but the generic soundtrack really brought this anime down quite a bit. Starting with the bad, the soundtrack really just felt out of place and not adding what so ever to the anime. It was just uneventful and average at best. Now for the good; like for all the –monogatari series, dialogue plays a huge role in this anime. The back and forth bantering between characters was very well done and the voice actors did an excellent job. Both Hachiman and Yukino were awesome from episode 1-13.

Characters: 10/10
Hands down the best cast of this season and possibly last year as well. Both this show and Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko had really well knit characters that made whatever was going on extremely funny and/or interesting. In Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru the stars of the show was Hachiman and Yukino. Every single conversation that was focused on them was either funny, interesting, exciting, and/or cute. Hachiman while not a very interesting person to begin with was a pretty good male lead. He worked well with all the characters including the super cute and super trap Saika. He really made whatever situation the team was in better due to his “unique” insight. Yui (while a complete ditz) had a pretty big heart and served as a medium between the club and the “cool” kids. The club teacher Shizuka also had a huge impact on how the show turned out. Her constant meddling provided most of the situations the club got into.

The cast overall just felt so in-sync with each other. Even though some of the episodes really felt like there was no direction, the conversations between each character made it somewhat interesting.

Overall: 7.5/10
While boring in some parts, I have to recommend this anime to everyone looking for some laughs and enjoyment in the slice of life realm. The characters just make this show so interesting to watch and while the animation and sound isn’t overly great, they are good enough to help you enjoy what this anime has to offer.