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)
With a bit more of a connection exposed between Hachimn and Yui in the previous episode, he’s still doing his best to keep his distance from everyone. While there’s obviously some level of complaint coming from him with how he was kept separate from everyone upon his late return to school after his accident, he’s since taken it to be a badge of honor of sorts and revels, inwardly and privately, about his being an outcast. Even when the group does some decent things along the way, he’s still glad to have that kind of feeling about him. With things now somewhat tense between him and Yui, even Yukino has picked up on it a bit, though he just plays it casual and blows her off on it all.
Unfortunately for Yukino and Hikigaya, their advisor has informed them that they need to increase membership in the club in order for things to continue to be legitimate in the eyes of the school. Neither is particularly keen on having more people around, but there are options that Yukino has, which combines with wanting to do something special for Yui since her birthday is coming up. That leads to an awkward moment when she asks him to go shopping with her on their day off, which goes for quasi-date material. Of course, Hachiman is going to be smart about it by bringing Komachi along and she does her best to reinforce things the way they should be done, together, as opposed to Yukino and Hachiman’s desire to spread apart and shop separately.
There’s some real adorableness to the way Yukino and Hachiman shop together, especially since they realize that nobody is there that they know so nobody can get the wrong idea. The two are such distinct quiet personalities that spending time together like this just heightens it. It’s really enjoyable to see how the pair get along, but it gets cutely weird as it goes on and Yui stumbles upon them and Yukino tries to clear up all the problems in her quiet and almost deadpan way. There’s some definite fun bits to this overall as the trio finally do circle all back together towards the end, which is expected, and the small celebration for Yui is spot on, especially with how Yui is just so excited about the thought that went into it. Hachiman is a little rough with it though as he tries to put everything behind them and comes across as a bit dismissive, but I like that different approach to his tone and words from the usual mewling we get from lead male characters.
In Summary:
The nature of this particular group continues to be one of interest just because it does avoid the usual dynamics we see. Especially with so many club-based shows out there these days where everyone just gets along fantastically well or there isn’t much going on in terms of actual events, tension of dealings between them. The core trio here does work well together but they also have their problems and issues as well because of how life has treated them. It’s still not the best put together show out there, but it brings in some different tones and continues to give us more layered and intriguing characters that are crying out for some changes to happen that shakes things up. I don’t expect those, but I do think we’ll continue to get some good internal monologues going and an expansion of who they are.
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.
