- Last OnlineFeb 18, 4:53 AM
- Birthday2002
- JoinedJan 3, 2024
RSS Feeds
|
![]()
Feb 10, 2025
A story of a young man who wants to experience everything out of his college life, but who is bound to his own reality. What is a rose-pink, perfect college life, when you can have a whole galaxy inside your mind, rerolling possibilities, all stored inside four and a half tatami's worth of space? The rejection of a choice's limitations is a choice in itself, just like the denial of its consequences is. Reality gives The Possibility—and while you may not be able to explore the whole galaxy, you always possess the right to accept your own path.
"Tatami Galaxy" is a slow burn. Its
...
first half can leave a dry aftertaste with its repetitiveness, but the closer you get to the ending, the clearer you can see the whole image—not that sophisticated, but simply beautiful; humanly warm, like a holding pair of hands, or laughing in unison. Each episode adds one more piece to a small and obvious puzzle of life—and the finale bravely puts it on par with those great, simple at their core, yet so life-affirming series about coming of age.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
What did you think of this review?
Nice
 0
Love it
 0
Funny
 0
Confusing
 0
Well-written
 0
Creative
 0Show all
![]()
Feb 3, 2025
A teenage frenzy of absurdity, filled to the brim with vibes of lovely and horny. The characters may not break the stereotypes, but don't remain cardboard cutouts either: the shy nerd turns out to be not as spineless from the get-go, the cheeky gal is genuinely kind—and genuinely willing to kick her enemy's ass. Both of them go wild the instant adrenalin hits, matters ghostly and alien intertwine into a bizarre cocktail, everything (& everyone) goes insaneo style, and the hyperactive troupe gradually grows in numbers—not just with teenagers, but lively grandmas, too.
I so want to shake the hand of whoever picked the wizards
...
of Science SARU to adapt this unbridled story—the drive of their animation is so explosive it makes you feel like it will fly out from the screen in a moment, very so in the spirit of the manga.
And yet, behind the acid cover of a pubertal trash lies teenage romance, gentle and awkward. The relationship is approached rather atypically, in a sense that the almighty static high school harem does not occur. A silent love triangle seems to be forming by a later part of the season, but it quickly gets destroyed by hormonal warfare, which is fresh and quite bold for mainstream anime. The Japanese media critically needs a living contact between boys and girls, and I want to believe the Land of Rising Sun will keep embracing unfiltered teenage cringe instead of running away into the demographic pit.
It doesn't even need to be as extreme as in this anime. This one hits the gas to the max, with absurd layered upon absurd, but it's the core of the story that matters—a truly teenage story cannot escape the teenage cringe. As for Dandadan? It rushes right towards the cringe, rushes with speed of a cheetah and imagination of a middle schooler—and, upon crashing into it, slows down and lets their protagonists' relationship blossom. Slowly and genuinely. And then gets rushing again, with acceleration of morbillion jokes about balls per second squared.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Jan 14, 2024
'Youth is a lie. It is nothing but evil.'
Two short sentences with an off-putting aura of cynicism kick-start a soliloquy. A high school loner's verbose observations on surrounding life. He bashes the so-much-praised spirit of youth his peers disgustingly reek of, bashes it with consecutive logic, no hesitation in his words...
'If failure is truly the proof of one's youth... is there not something abnormal about one who fails at making friends if he is not still in the midst of his youth? But I am sure none of them would admit to this. It is all a double standard. My conclusion is this: all you
...
fools who delight in youth, drop dead.'
... And Hachiman Hikigaya's wit, sharp as it may be, is at mercy of his withdrawn distress. No person content with life, well-integrated into society, would write this. His teacher understands this too -- the young man wrote the rant as a homework essay and actually sumbited it -- so the sensei appoints him to a school club on (in)voluntary accord in hopes of his social rehabilitation. The Service Club's one and only other member, elegant and sophisticated Yukino Yukinoshita, doesn't hold herself back from instantly (and later constantly) roasting the protagonist's asocial, in-his-head, lone wolf behavior, in an ironic juxtaposition to her cold, collected demeanor. Half the time Hachiman manages to answer back with excuses of self-made reasoning, other half the time just bites the bullet (but still plays it off with some logic blabber) -- he's not only keenly aware of everything and everyone, but also himself.
Shortly after the third member joins, bubbly and sociable Yui Yuigahama (Mind the alliterative names? Author's name is Wataru Watari, so it must be hereditary). The dynamic of their club becomes akin to a marshmallow sandwich, two dry crackers mellowed with a soft middlewoman. The trio starts helping other students from the school with various problems and tasks, bringing themselves into different situations of varying comedy and drama, all the while discovering that, bizarrely enough, they had already bumped into each other before the story even started, in one accident.
Three-dimensional people in a 2D world
The story's setting is nothing special for a Japanese rom-com: an anime high school. Anime high school with classical hijinks of school festivals and sport events, populated by common archetypes of an ice queen himedere, always-cheerful genki girl, a teacher who almost rages like a tsundere when her age gets poked at; a chuuni writer who comes to school dressed up like a shonen protagonist, magnetic charmer who aces academics, sports, and social interactions alike; a yaoi-obsessed oddball who gets nosebleeds every time she sees two boys interact in just a mildly suggestive manner; and, of course, a femboy classmate who borderline makes the protagonist question his sexuality. Don't forget to throw in a cute younger sister, invisible anime parents, and girls throwing a racket at the guy for accidentally walking in on them while they're changing.
'Of course. Now this is how a rom-com should be. Well played, gods of rom-com.'
Neither does the main character give an impression of a unique character at first glance. Similar introverted, sardonic characters have already been introduced in more popular titles, like Haruhi Suzumiya's Kyon or Hyoka's Oreki. Even the premise is the same: independent protagonist joins inordinary girl's school club, his life turns around forever. The rom-com gags are usual, and even Hachiman's speeches, while having some insight, often fall off into a pissy loner's territory.
That is, until you realize: all of it is intentional, and the story is well aware of it. The cliches and tropes are a platform to build upon. The characters, the plot itself -- a mask to be peered into, to get shattered. The ice queen is not just soft on the inside (that's a given), she possesses a whole closet of insecurities that've made her such an overachiever while also stumping her emotional growth. The outgoing bubbly girl cannot express what's truly on her mind because she reads the room too well. The protagonist is cognizant of people around him and himself, and he lies -- to others and to himself. That he knows too. His teen romantic comedy is wrong, as he expected. Flat archetypes unravel as dimensional people.
Mind of a loner, heart of a champion
'I will now disclose one of my 108 talents: human observation. Only about 30% of human communication is language. The other 70% is gathering information from eye movements and other subtle gestures. In other words, paradoxically, I can achieve 70% of communication alone, without talking. Okay, that's not how it works...'
Hikigaya knows it all. He can give you a lengthy take on anything you may ask him about, and anything you may not. He has a knack for reading people and a masterful understanding of social dynamics. Combined with his ingenuity, he makes a great asset for the service club -- he masterminds most of the solutions for problems at hand with his intuition and oddly useful loner knowledge, be it solving a troubled friend group's dynamic or winning a tennis match for his classmate by knowing the flow of wind around the school, using timing of breeze to deflect the ball with a trajectory no one could counter (he knew that because of his lonely lunch breaks outside). Still, despite his self-awareness, he sometimes misses the mark on obvious cues, like believing a middle school classmate who always answered only the next day after he messaged her early in the evening because she wasn't interested in him, lying that she was asleep at the time. 'She was a health nut, and very refined', he pridefully says and gets deservedly roasted by the clubmates.
The sharp grasp on the world doubles down on Hachiman's loneliness. By the beginning of this story he already has a defeatist mindset, accepting his position in the school hierarchy, wanting to simply ditch people. Hikigaya practices by himself while everybody's in pairs during PE with a bit of unnecessary social engineering, tries to dip out of the Service Club by attempting to join the tennis club (to later fade away from there too), gives a logically-philosophical babble to excuse himself from his social misdeeds, like arriving lately or abandoning people, or picking his own house as a place to visit for a career field trip to stay at home for a day -- after all, he says he wants to be a stay-at-home dad in the future -- 'To work is to lose'.
Yet he keeps working at the Service Club. Assisting people with their problems, planning and executing hilariously intricate scenarios. Paying with his already low reputation nonetheless. A wise scholar summed this as 'Hachiman's school of self-sacrifice'. The fan wiki has a dedicated list of Hikigaya's social suicides, all consciously utilized to mend other people's relationships and issues. The uncaring mask stays on, but by the end of the first season you understand: the kid cares. Cares like nobody else in the world, and that is why he is so bitter. He's not an actual edgelord; he's coping with his isolation by putting on the facade. It's not entirely false either. Real people are made of both truths and lies, intertwined with complexity only God comprehends.
'So you can actually be thoughtful, Hikki.'
'Huh? Stupid. I'm super thoughtful. I hang out quietly in the corner and avoid bothering anyone because I'm so thoughtful.'
'That's not what I meant. I mean... well... you're nice, I guess.'
'Oh, so you noticed. That's right. I am nice. A lot has happened to me, but I've carried on without taking revenge on anyone for anything. If I were a normal person, the world would have ended long ago.'
Sensei's support worked. The protagonist has revealed himself through the club activities, and it was the teacher who gave him this chance. Every loner deserves a Hiratsuka-sensei, somebody who doesn't just give a fisherman a fish but teaches to fish. But there is no end to the depths of the human psyche. Another issue emerges: Hachiman's self-esteem, or rather, its absence. Hidden so well by his high-and-mighty remarks that it becomes easy to miss how much he unconsciously beats himself up.
'Hikigaya, helping someone else is not a reason to get hurt yourself.'
'It's not like it really hurt me.'
'Even if you are used to pain, it's about time you realized that there are people who hurt when they see you hurting.'
That's why Hachiman doesn't believe he can have any friends, or that a girl may fall for him. Even when he deduces it with his mind, his heart still denies the idea. He's been shunned his whole life. It's a given. Force of habit. He's used to being rejected and ignored by now, might as well put it to good use. Except somebody may get hurt from his own hurting, and he can't understand why. Not yet.
'Why is that the only way you can handle things?'
OreGairu SNAFU's season 1 does a great job at introducing its main characters and setting up the stage with comedic flair before the drama of the following seasons entails. What starts as a humorous story of an asocial boy turning over a new leaf becomes a discussion about people and relationships, facades and true feelings, lies and truths. The main characters gradually show themselves as rounded people with their own human flaws and strengths. The writing takes the usual anime high school archetypes and humanizes them with layers of personality.
Plenty of the source material has been cut and hasn't made it into the adaption. This decision comes back to bite the show in the next seasons, when the changes start to come off as sudden because of the choices made during season 1's production. Still, Brain's Base adaptation has a certain cozy charm to it that gets lost in the ensuing seasons, and this tone allows for a great introduction into OreGairu's world before the show takes a deep dive into drama later on.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
|
