Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai

When Kodaka Hasegawa finds out that he will be transferring to a new school, he is determined to make a positive impression, and maybe even some friends. However, Kodaka discovers he is out of luck when he immediately gets labeled as a violent delinquent due to his blond hair and intimidating expression. Although a month has passed, Kodaka is still alone thanks to his notorious reputation. However, his life begins to change when he finds fellow loner Yozora Mikazuki talking to her imaginary friend in an empty classroom.

After sharing stories of their lonely high school life, Kodaka and Yozora decide to overcome the difficulties of making friends together by starting the Neighbor's Club. Created for people who don't have friends, daily activities involve learning social skills and how to fit in, which will hopefully allow them to make friends. Joined by the eroge-loving Sena Kashiwazaki, and other eccentric outcasts, Kodaka may finally have managed to find people he can call friends, in this club filled with hilarious oddballs.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kashiwazaki, Sena Main

Itou, Kanae Japanese

Mikazuki, Yozora Main

Inoue, Marina Japanese

Hasegawa, Kodaka Main

Kimura, Ryouhei Japanese

Hasegawa, Kobato Supporting

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Shiguma, Rika Supporting

Fukuen, Misato Japanese

Takayama, Maria Supporting

Iguchi, Yuka Japanese

Kusunoki, Yukimura Supporting

Yamamoto, Nozomi Japanese

Kashiwazaki, Pegasus Supporting

Okiayu, Ryoutarou Japanese

Redfield, Stella Supporting

Yuzuki, Ryouka Japanese

Nagata, Yukiko Supporting

Yahagi, Sayuri Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Futami, Yousuke Producer

Tanaka, Gou Producer

Ougi, Jiyuu Producer

Reviews

Dec 22, 2011

TheArchangel

Recommended

With Christmas fast approaching, I can safely say one thing: All I want for Christmas is Meat. Delicious, delicious, Meat.

Ahem.

What do you get when an ambitious and rather oddball girl drags an unwilling male into forming a club for whatever reason? You get the "Save the World by Overloading it with Fun (SOS) Haruhi Suzumiya Brigade!" Oh wait, wrong show. You alternatively could get the "Neighbors Club." Yes, that seems about right. This fabulous club is composed of Kodaka and Kobato Hasegawa, Yozora Mikazuki, Sena Kashiwazaki, Rika Shiguma, Maria Takayama and Yukimura Kusunoki. Watch as this rebellious group takes on one of the ... world's most challenging of tasks: making friends!

"Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai" follows the misadventures of our assembled group of social misfits as they chase after the ever elusive rose-colored campus life of "popular" people. And what a daunting task this seems to be. After all, when your club is made up of such interesting people as a misunderstood "Yankee", two girls who assert themselves as goddesses (though only one of them is truly worthy of the title), a gender-confused-full-of-fighting-spirit-samurai and many others, the task of making true friends would seem quite difficult. Unknown to them, however, perhaps they will make friends with the very misfits they set out on this journey with.

Let us quickly get this out of the way. The artwork in "Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai" is flat out awesome. Those familiar with "Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko" will immediately recognize the similarities, since they were done by the same artist. And how fortunate that is, because depictions of Meat are as glorious as they can be. Backgrounds and characters are very colorful and animations are fluid enough, giving the viewer delicious eye candy. Look at those sultry lips on the females for instance...Check out official arts if you are having doubts.

"Haganai" (which is what I will be calling this show now) gives us the rather touching message that it is not necessarily the number of friends one has, but its about the one friend that is worth a hundred. The de facto leader of the Neighbors Club, Yozora, once wisely proclaimed this as a child, but now has trouble even maintaining normal conversations with other people. She above all wants to make friends, along with the rest of the club. However, most of the show is focused on comedy that usually arises with clashes between Yozora and Sena, and not actually making friends. I mean they try, and by that I mean Kodaka tries, but they usually end up having their share of laughs without establishing that close connection they desire. The club is already in trouble in the beginning, seeing as we have two tsunderes with a liking to the main character, Inde--Maria and Kobato fighting for Kodaka's brotherly affections, and Yukimura and Rika, who are both plain weird. Rika more so.

The sound of "Haganai" is quite enjoyable in its own charming kind of way. The opening theme is "Zannenkei Rinjinbu" by all the female members of the cast, and is an extremely cheesy J-Pop song detailing aspects of friendship. It is upbeat and disgustingly catchy, with a good indication of what the show is about. The ending theme is "My Feelings "by Marina Inoue (voice of Yozora) and fits well enough. It is yet another disgustingly catchy theme accompanied by a very enjoyable sequence of Yozora and Sena interacting in a rock band...The voice acting is excellent, and Marina Inoue's deeper voice for Yozora is quite enjoyable, in particular when she is on one of her many rants and shenanigans concerning Sena and general social values.

"Haganai"s comedy is generally pretty funny. Most of the comedic scenes are the club's fruitless attempts at making friends, such as establishing connections through multiplayer gaming, karaoke, and keeping in touch via cell phones. Of course, these attempts go horribly wrong, such as griefing each other and keeping things too literal....It is a fun and rather cheerful series, but Yozora is usually there to give the brutally sarcastic remarks she characteristically has, giving glimpses of her underlying attitude. I did not dislike her, but I certainly wished that she had tried a bit harder in making friends with the others, rather that step all over Sena and try to get closer to Kodaka. She may even have become much closer friends with Sena if she did not act that way, giving her just one more friend. The last episode just might change your opinion of her however...

There was a slight plot interwoven throughout the episodes, but it does not really leave much of an impact, at least not on me. You will have to be the judge on that. I however, simply watched "Haganai" for my weekly servings of Meat and shenanigans of the "Neighbors Club."

"Haganai" is an entertaining show depicting the doomed attempts of the "Neighbors Club" in making friends and ultimately becoming popular. Even though most of their attempts fail, it gives a rather nice message that friendship can come from the most unexpected of places. It covers basic methods of interacting with others and the hilarity that follows. The comedy is good, and the delicious eye candy may be enough to draw you into the series. Check it out if you ever need an anime guide on how NOT to make friends!

Oh, and to those who have bothered to read this far, I am a Sena fanboy. Sorry, Yozora, move over for the REAL goddess. She, along with a certain brigade leader, will be the only Gods I'll ever worship!

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Jan 2, 2012

Detective

Mixed Feelings

If you have strong feelings about this anime, please don't read any further. I just noticed there was an abnormally large amount of overly positive reviews for this show and thought it would be best if there was a second opinion readily available.

Haganai was not an enjoyable anime for me. I did not find it funny past a certain point. For the first three episodes the show revolves around the mistaken delinquent and the two "heroines" of the series - Yozora and Sena. These episodes for the most part were quite sharp, and as Sena and Yozora's antics grew and grew, Kodaka's role as the ... straight man would be stressed further and further.

So it makes sense when dolloping even more characters into the show would have scary consequences. Kodaka's cosplaying sister, a perverse scientist, a ten year old sister of the church who says poop IN EVERY EPISODE THEREAFTER, a cross-dressing maid (whose original gender I can't even remember) - and you know what? There's a line that is drawn eventually where you're just sitting there watching your Mazui subs on your home computer and go "why do I give a shit about any of these characters?"

Your rhetorical question is not easy to answer. It's a bitter reality, but Haganai is just another generic ecchi harem. Kodaka can do nothing to save the show any more. The craziness gets too out of hand for a single straight man, and amidst the chaos you lose the ability to sympathize with any character. Do I root for Sena? She was just so mean in that last scene! But now Yozora's being illogical! Who am I supposed to side with? Thank goodness the nun got naked! That sure helped alleviate tension!

The characters feel too unbelievable for an anime that tries to deal with an actual issue. It's about a group of freaks trying to become friends, except said group is so eccentric that such personalities could never exist. There is no characterization to any cast member as each is treated as a joke. All other reviewers call Rika the "perverted scientist" because that's what she is; nothing more. She has no feelings, she has no emotions, she just has her gags. There is no insight into any of the characters of the show save Yozora and Sena, and the little that is given into them is so cliche and sparse that it's hard to separate Haganai from the thousands of other ecchi comedies.

Haganai just felt like a jumble of too many ideas, too many characters, and not enough depth anywhere. It is a shallow production laden with offensive language and poop jokes. And not the good kind of poop jokes, just repetition of the word "poop." The show struggles with trying to be realistic whilst adding so many unrealistic elements it just became frustrating.

I do not recommend this anime to anyone. It earns 5/10 (average) and has nothing interesting to offer beyond one or two jokes throughout it's 288 minute run-time.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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May 12, 2014

Nachteule

Not Recommended

Most of the things I get from harem anime without actually watching them is that as good as everyone is basically the same. From the basic premise, over the characters, the setting and most likely the whole conclusion, mostly everything has been done before. This is one of the reasons I don't usually get my eyes on such anime. Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai is an exception though because a very good friend of mine recommended it. "Might as well give it a try", I thought, "It only has 12 episodes, it's something different from the previous stuff I watched and it's on my HDD ... already".
So I managed to sit through the whole thing in two days even if I had huge prejudices against the show - most of them turned out to be justified.

Let's split up this review into the five categories as usual:

Story (4/10):

Boku wa Tomodachi is what seems to be a basic harem anime. You have the more or less dense main character, in this case an outcast who is seemingly "bullied" because of his foreign appearance. This is most likely referring to his hairstyle because he has blond hair while basically looking like everyone else in this show.
From this point on everything is pretty straight to say the least. Kodaka meets a new member for his "No Friends"-club, everything gets quite ecchi-y and in the end he has a whole harem surrounding him. Oh, while we are at it, how come that attractive young girls have no friends whatsoever? I know it's a harem but hey, every guy is popular now at school? It's mostly the male students having trouble finding friends from my experience.
The only thing notable and standing out was the background Kodaka had with his former best friend who he never got to say goodbye to before switching school as well as the little plot twist in the end which was rather predictable because they more or less gave it away a few episodes beforehand.

Art (6/10):

While the art does not offer lots of variety in terms of character design with everyone looking quite plain, also revealing lots of similarities in their design which is most noticable at the girl’s character designs. Pretty mediocre is also the animation as well as the backgrounds. What I did like a lot were the bright colors. They really gave a comfortable mood and fitted the comedy-ish approaches the show had to offer.

Sound (5/10):

The voice actors did a good job on acting the characters and also the opening and ending theme were quite enjoyable. During the watch I didn't really catch any outstanding pieces of music. Most of the time the ambient music was pretty standard.

Character (3/10):

The main issue I had with the show leaving the story aside was the rather dull characters. Again, I know it's a harem but what's wrong with having some standards? The characters were unpopular for quite no reason. The whole "talking to an imaginary friend"-thing seemed more like a plot device to get Kodaka and Yozora into bumping into each other than a real barrier on trying to establish social ties with class mates.
In general the cast was as generic as it could get with Maria being one of the most annoying characters I got to meet in anime.

Enjoyment (5/10):

Despite the shows obvious flaws in major categories I did enjoy it as a flat-humor ridden anime. I watched it in two days so I'd be lying to myself if I said I didn't enjoy it the least.
For fans of comedy shows and the harem genre there is no way they could not like this.

Verdict (4/10*):

I didn't start Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai with lots of expectations. I didn't expect the new messiah of anime itself but it still had some obvious issues in my two most important categories for me, which would be the story and the characters. It's not like it wasn't enjoyable - as said, I have been through it in two days watching five episodes after each other. Maybe I'm just not made for this kind of genre.
A recommendation to harem-fans everyone else should rethink twice if they are looking for a good story and characters. I personally didn't get lot out of it besides the revelation I don't like harem shows.

---------------------------------

*) Score is not an average

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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