Forum - View topicMy Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU (TV) (both seasons).
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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Goddamn, this is an uncomfortable show to watch. Episode 3 was particularly brutal in that there was very little comedy to leaven the scintillating adventures of Mr. Droopy Eyed Mope. Everything, right from his breakfast with his sister, to seeing people at school, to being at the restaurant was absolutely drenched in yuckiness.
One of the many things that bugs me about Hachiman is that he never, ever, ever, ever makes the slightest attempt to ease Yui's discomfort. Christ, would it kill you to throw a bone every now and then, Shithead? For all my irritation and discomfort there is obviously something compelling about this show because I'm still watching it. I wish I would become officially fed up so that I could just drop it without regret. |
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HaruhiToy
 Posts: 4118 |
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Could it be that you might actually recognize the reasons for his lack of self-confidence and found them actually plausible? As a result you want to see how he ultimately overcomes that. Did you feel the same way about Tomoko? She in fact is the same sort of disfunction but without Hachiman's perceptive abilities. I agree he shouldn't be leaving Yui twisting in the wind like that all the time. That's unmanly. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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Actually, that's part of my problem - it's not that I don't understand the reasons for his lack of self-confidence. I just don't buy them. Feel free to refresh my memory if I have overlooked something, but the only thing we really know is that for unspecified reasons he was very unpopular as a child and that trauma has caused him to believe he is essentially unlikable (and frankly I agree with him). The trouble is the show has demonstrated that he is a keen observer of human behaviour, yet somehow he doesn't seem to notice that he actually has at least three good friends at school. That strains my suspension of disbelief.
I adore Tomoko. Hachiman is not fit to sniff the glove that Tomoko uses to spoiler[cheat little kids at card games.] However, Tomoko's paralyzing social anxiety and inability to connect are very credibly rendered, imo. |
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BodaciousSpacePirate
 Subscriber Posts: 3017 |
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I'm still not entirely convinced that Hachiman knows Yui is romantically interested in him. For some reason, I get the impression that he's the sort of guy who thinks nice people are nice to everyone because they are nice. Sure, Yui's attraction to Hachiman is pretty obvious, but when Hachiman meets Yui, she already has a crush on him, so from Hachiman's perspective, the way she acts around him is simply her normal behavior.
Does he really have friends, though? I don't think he would really consider any of them friends. Any time a new character is introduced to Yukino and Hachiman, Yukino explicitly denies that she and Hachiman are friends. This is a jerk move on Yukino's part considering she knows about Hachiman's insecurities. I also seem to recall a certain scene in the first season where Hachiman accidentally bumps into Yukino, Yui, and Saika having a study session at a diner/family restaurant. Saika asks, "oh, so Yui invited you to the study session, too?" and Yui shoots Hachiman the meanest look she's ever made in the entire show. ...also, the first time he meets Yui, they get into a huge fight and he calls her a bitch. The Japanese version of that word is actually a lot worse than the American version... he's basically also implying that she has a lot of casual sex. He's so nervous around Saika that Saika sometimes thinks that Hachiman hates him. They aren't really capable of carrying on a meaningful conversation. I'm willing to believe that the scenes in the show where we see Hachiman talking to Saki are the only times he's ever actually talked to her. He finds Yoshiteru really annoying most of the time, too. Honestly, Hachiman thinks "friends" behave the way that Hayato's clique behaves. Most of the viewers know that Yui is closer to Hachiman than to Minako... but he doesn't get to see any of those scenes where Yui is sitting around with her dog, lamenting that she never got up the courage to give him the cookies she made for him. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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Oh, I'm far from convinced that Hachiman knows that Yui has a crush on him, either. What I meant by "throwing her a bone" is be aware of her awkwardness and embarrassment and try to smooth it over a bit once in a while instead of just letting her hang there.
I agree that his relationship with Yukino is fraught and so I wouldn't blame him for not considering her a friend or not believing that she has anything but feelings of dislike for him. But he can't credibly, imo, have that notion with Yui. |
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BodaciousSpacePirate
Subscriber Posts: 3017 |
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It certainly would make the show less believable if he did. I wonder if the novels, which I know are all from Hachiman's perspective, make his opinion of Yui more explicit. The only one I've read all the way through is #8. Regardless, this show does a great job making its protagonist look like a jerk. That was one of the biggest problems with last season's How to Train a Boring Girlfriend, in my opinion: all too often, the show made the main character seem like a reasonable person, when it was so clear that he was consistently awful to every girl who tried to get close to him. Also, I can't bring myself to feel any kind of sympathy for Tomoko. She actively, maliciously, and repeatedly makes spoiler[Kotomi's] life a living nightmare in the manga. Like if the protagonist of Kimi ni Todoke was actually some girl who murders Shota's dog and then frames Sawako for the crime. |
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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Credibly (actually excellently) rendered, yes, but never credibly explained. Nothing in the story explains how she ended up like she is, unless you posit she was dropped on her head as an infant. What a psycho. Hachiman, on the other hand, is well explained. Certainly he isn't the first guy to be shot down by a crush or socially marginalized, but he does have certain attributes that made those experiences affect him much more than it would a "normal" person. Or not. I think a lot of Hikikomori are manufactured this way given the pressure Japanese kids seem to have to both conform and excel at the same time, all the while being stoic. So I would give Hachiman credit for not ending up like that at least. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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I have not sullied my Tomoko experience by reading the manga. I'd heard that the anime had at least made some attempts to alleviate the misery but that the manga was a more unfiltered experience. No thanks.
By the way, BSP, welcome to ANN. I've read a few of your posts now and you seem to be an intelligent and thoughtful commentator which is always appreciated. @HT - see, I don't feel Tomoko's condition needs to be explained. To me, she seems to suffer from a real behavioural issue (social anxiety) even if I don't know the official name for it. As far as I'm considered, that doesn't have to be explained anymore than a character whose behaviour stems from being bipolar needs to be explained. Hachiman, on the other hand, comes off as an anime creation. He is the way he is because the premise of the show demands it, but it does seem particularly life-like to me. |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Tomoko's fits many of the symptoms of not only social anxiety, but ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), and the lack of a diagnosis and support have made things particularly hard. I feel like I have repeated myself enough times on that topic on this site how it is a real thing and many of her actions make sense, that I can actually create a lot of relation to my own experiences. Hachiman shows no signs of any particular disorder, which might make his isolation harder for other people to believe. I do see myself in both Hachiman and Tomoko, both that I can suffer from anxiety quite strongly, and many a time I had some of Hachiman's inner dialogue. Although from my experience I can probably say that Tomoko's is strangely more real, but I can see where Hachiman is coming from. |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
 Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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I may be projecting here (as Hatchiman and I are, I think, a lot alike in some respects), but my guess is:
As I've said, I think Hatchiman is definitely aware of Yui's feelings towards him, at least to a degree. He's way too keen an observer of others to not notice, he has also stopped her from confessing to him on at least 2 occasions I can think of (when he was walking her home, Yui was about to confess to him (probably taking him by surprise) when her mother called, and he cut short whatever she was going to say afterwards, and then later when they were at school, he did it again, more obviously this time). I think the real issue is that he doesn't *want* anyone to get too close to him. Either because he doesn't trust the genuine nature of their feelings, or because he's afraid that he'll hurt anyone who gets to close to him (as well as the reverse). I think he asked Yukino those times because he felt she was tough enough emotionally to handle whatever abuse might come her way (from external sources) as a result of getting close to him. It's not just "I don't want them to get hurt" but "I don't want to hurt them." He *wants* Yui to lose interest in him, but doesn't want to tell her to stop chasing after him (either because he can't make himself say it, or because he doesn't want to hurt her by rejecting her, or both). So leaving her twisting in the wind is an intentional act on his part, but he thinks he's being kind (or as kind as he can be) by leaving her that way, and maybe getting to be more cautious about others in the future. He doesn't do this with Yukino because he doesn't have to. Yukino likely realizes what he is doing (to a degree, anyway) and is probably annoyed with him over it, but can't do much to intervene due to the group dynamics of between the three of them -- I'm pretty sure she has feelings towards Hachiman, too, but keeps them suppressed (most of the time) far more deeply than Yui (which is one of Yukino's problems as it makes her seem like an ice queen). If things continue as they are now, I'm pretty sure that Hachiman will never obtain a single close friend, let alone a girlfriend. I think he's willing to accept this outcome, but others might not be so placid about it. I'm interested in seeing how it turns out. |
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BodaciousSpacePirate
Subscriber Posts: 3017 |
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Thanks, Blood-.
I understand why people are drawing comparisons between Tomoko and Hachiman, but their situations are very different from one another. (Since this is a My Teen Romcom SNAFU thread, so most of this is about Hachiman). Also, standard disclaimer: I don't have my doctorate yet, so if you have a child like Hachiman, do not interpret this as professional advice (I guess I have to get used to writing stuff like that if I'm going to talk about this show). Hachiman is an academically talented student. We know that he's one of the most promising students in the whole school. More importantly, none of his problems get in the way of his ability to display his talents, so his teachers know that he's gifted. Sure, he writes weird essays about how he wants to be a bear for science class, but he knows he can get away with it... he's the sort of kid who likes to push boundaries and see how his teachers respond. He's a "gifted" student. Did you know that in the United States, some "special education" degrees now qualify teachers to teach "gifted" students? The reason is that whether you're teaching students who are either well above average or below average, you will be employing less-commonly used pedagogies, like multiple-intelligence theory (wikipedia link), instead of the time and cost-efficient strategies used to educate most school children. It takes a lot more work to teach kids like Hachiman, and not all teachers know how to deal with their "problems." Hachiman doesn't have a problem understanding what society expects him to do, and he doesn't have a problem figuring out how people make friends with each other. Actually, he could easily make friends if he really put his mind to it; for all his faults, Hachiman is articulate, well-read, reasonably attractive, and (if season one is any indication) has great taste in formal wear. I'm willing to bet that if Yukino needed to convince her parents that she had a fiancee, Hachiman could act like a normal human being for long enough to convince the Yukinoshitas that he was dating their daughter. If this was Haganai, I'm sure that would be the plot of an episode. How we'd laugh when Hachiman accidentally walks in on Yukino in the bathroom, and she slaps him! However, as Tuor mentions, Hachiman has no interest in becoming the protagonist of Haganai. He doesn't think having friends is really that important. To be fair, there are a lot of people who can have perfectly happy lives without friendly interaction or intimacy... Hachiman is not one of those people. His guidance councilor knows that, and she's come up with a revolutionary new system of therapy called "stick a bunch of problem kids in a room every day and force them to interact with each other."  It's somewhat hard to see if you don't work in the field of education, but this whole show is basically an anime version of an average article from something like the Journal of Behavioral Eduction... maybe something with "behavioral problem trajectories" in the title.
Hachiman has actually made a lot of progress in the past two seasons. He has a long way to go, and I doubt he'll ever be a "happy" person. However, he's a lot better off now than he was in middle school. On the OTHER hand, Tomoko is not receiving valuable help. After watching the OVA, I think she has some sort of disorder - either psychological or neurological - that developed while she was a middle school student. I would guess that her problems are the result of a single, undiagnosed neurological disorder like ADHD-PI, which when untreated can frequently cause the depression, poor impulse control, social anxiety, and insomnia that Tomoko experiences on a routine basis. The saddest thing is that even if Tomoko was a social butterfly, she might have ended up the same way, because recently (manga spoiler) spoiler[ Tomoko's brother, a well-liked jock, has begun to exhibit all of his sister's symptoms.] On the average day, Hachiman goes to school, pays attention in class, toys with the emotions of a female classmate, goes home and plays with his cat, then goes shopping with a friend for cute clothes. The worst thing that happens to him in his whole life is that he gets hit by a car, and even that causes a girl to hopelessly fall in love with him. He's two or three tropes away from being the protagonist of Toradora. Meanwhile, Tomoko's problems are degenerate, and she's already at the point where talking to strangers terrifies her. Edit: how did the spell-checker not catch that I mis-spelled "trajectories"? |
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Stark700
 Posts: 11762 Location: Earth |
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Season 2, episode 4:
This spoiler[election arc has gotten quite interesting now imo with Yui and Yukino being part of it as members. The double date this episode was kinda cute I guess. Hachiman looked bored as hell like usual though lol.] And anyways, I smell some spoiler[drama to brew up soon. Guess we'll see what Hachiman's next move will be. Oh and I thought Yui/Hachiman's chemistry this episode was adorable.] |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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When Yui said that spoiler[she loves the club, it was obvious what she really meant was that she loves Hachiman.] I wonder if he noticed.
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Season 2, Episode 4
It had actually been on my mind that spoiler[Hayato had some responsibility for pushing Hachiman into the situation that has caused problems for him]. It looked like he was spoiler[using Hachiman but really it turned out that the whole thing was actually for him]. Hayato has a really spoiler[hard time getting others upset, he is always trying to make people happy], but he actually spoiler[allowed himself to make the two girls upset by defending Hachiman and showing that he does give a damn for him]. And it seems to have really actually shaken his resolve. Although it ultimately led to a situation where spoiler[Yukino has been guilt into running for student president, something she does not want to do. One aspect of her decision is also to stop Hachiman from even trying]. Yui knows that this will spoiler[destroy the club that really kind of gives Yukino and Hachiman a place]. Yui's decision from the spoiler[confession like scene is that despite everything the club actually kind of makes him happy, and she is doing it to keep him happy]. Truth is that it is hard to see any of the decisions as right, we need a choice D. |
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BodaciousSpacePirate
Subscriber Posts: 3017 |
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FYI, the light novel version of Episode 4's opening scene was incredible:
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