What They Say:
So exactly what’s going to happen when Hachiman Hikigaya, an isolated high school student with no friends, no interest in making any and a belief that everyone else’s supposedly great high school experiences are either delusions or outright lies, is coerced by a well meaning faculty member into joining the one member “Services Club” run by Yukino Yukinoshita, who’s smart, attractive and generally considers everyone in her school to be her complete inferior?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As with seemingly almost every high school based show, we’ve entered the period where we have to deal with the culture festival. As can be expected, Hachiman gets shoved into the position unwillingly and he’s just quickly resigned to it as the teacher makes it clear he’s not going to get out of it. Of course, they let people volunteer for the female representative, but it’s still not a really great job to be involved in. Especially when you have to work with Hachiman and most people have a view, rightly so, that he’s going to slack his way off on it and the girl will have to do most of the work. There’s also the added pressure coming in that people are suggesting Yui for it since she and Hachiman have been seen around a bit lately. It’s comical in how it turns from one target to the next, all while Hachiman watches on.
Events turn in an unusual way and in the end, it’s Sagami that ends up as the female representative for it as she promotes it as a way for her to grow as a person, something that Hachiman has a great internal retort about. Sagami is certainly playing up the role with a whole lot of enthusiasm that leaves you wondering if she has another goal going on here, especially with the way she has her hanger-on friends that are encouraging her and have a look about them that just says conspiracy. With others drawn into it with Yukino and Yui being involved, which also involves suspending the Service Club temporarily because of the individual activities that will take up a lot of time, there’s a growing tension between all three members, but more so between Yui and Yukino with the way Yukino still has that kind of distant feel to her when she interacts with others.
As the committee work starts to kick in, you see more and more clique aspects taking place as various members start conniving and plotting away. There’s that layer of sugarcoating on all of it that is rather comical, but the sharpness of particular comments and style of speech is most definitely there, especially as you see more and more how Yukino is being treated and the way Sagami is putting her plans into motion. There’s an interesting flow to the events here as it gets down into the nitty gritty of things, more so than a lot of anime series do, but it draws in the way that Hachiman looks at things and some of the understandings that others have in regards to how the work is being parceled out and how others are being taken advantage of. And the way it’s just simply accepted by some of them, which is the damning thing about it all.
In Summary:
This series has taken unusual turns from the get go, but having an episode bogged down in committee aspects? Well, that’s certainly new and different. It does factor into things rather well in some ways because it gets underneath with what the characters are dealing with, feeling and the manipulations going on. And it draws in on the complicated relationship aspects of the main trio while having others that are manipulating things in that area as well in social shaming kind of ways. There’s a lot to like here, but it’s the kind of episode that really does need the overall context of the series and the surrounding episodes to be watched in close proximity to see how it all blends together to get us to understand these characters all the more.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
