Forum

Hatchiman is gonna be screwed if Yukino isn't doing well with the organising of the real prom. We've had nada indication of how she's been going

I got the feeling that Yukino's Mom was testing Hachiman, and that he ended up doing pretty well in her book. He displayed guts, quick thinking, and resourcefulness. He was so determined that he resorted to basically blackmailing her right on the spot. When she held her hand up to her face and looked at him, it seemed like she was seriously studying him, a mere high school student.

I won't comment much about the rest of the episode, but I thought it was a really good episode. Really, this whole season has been pretty amazing, IMO.

Just as episode 8 of Re:Zero tore me to pieces, episode 8 of this series did a similar number on my emotions. The only other romcom anime that had me so involved in each characters motivations was Toradora. For me personally, I couldn't help but root for Taiga and Ryuji's relationship and I'm hoping somehow Hachiman and Yukino find a way to end up together in the end. But my gut says..... Crying or Very sad

njprogfan wrote:

Just as episode 8 of Re:Zero tore me to pieces, episode 8 of this series did a similar number on my emotions. The only other romcom anime that had me so involved in each characters motivations was Toradora. For me personally, I couldn't help but root for Taiga and Ryuji's relationship and I'm hoping somehow Hachiman and Yukino find a way to end up together in the end. But my gut says..... Crying or Very sad

Funny as this was the episode that made me truly hate Yukino. So Yukino's mom can make an basic apology to Hachiman but the daughter, who supposedly is in love with the guy, can't? Won't? Or does she just doesn't know about the event or does she just not care?

Hachiman finally got Yui's cookies this season and he finally got some sort of apology from the car's owner this season but the car's occupant who is trying to be his friend or something more? Nothing but tears for herself.

What an awful human being.

I'd wouldn't mind hearing about Yukino being hit by a car, I'd sooner see the show go that way than any sort of relationship between the two.

Animegomaniac wrote:

njprogfan wrote:

Just as episode 8 of Re:Zero tore me to pieces, episode 8 of this series did a similar number on my emotions. The only other romcom anime that had me so involved in each characters motivations was Toradora. For me personally, I couldn't help but root for Taiga and Ryuji's relationship and I'm hoping somehow Hachiman and Yukino find a way to end up together in the end. But my gut says..... Crying or Very sad

Funny as this was the episode that made me truly hate Yukino. So Yukino's mom can make an basic apology to Hachiman but the daughter, who supposedly is in love with the guy, can't? Won't? Or does she just doesn't know about the event or does she just not care?

Hachiman finally got Yui's cookies this season and he finally got some sort of apology from the car's owner this season but the car's occupant who is trying to be his friend or something more? Nothing but tears for herself.

What an awful human being.

I'd wouldn't mind hearing about Yukino being hit by a car, I'd sooner see the show go that way than any sort of relationship between the two.

What would an apology accomplish at this point? Hachiman clearly doesn't care about it anymore, to the point where he's willing to joke about it to use as blackmail against the owner of the car.

Ultimately I find it hard to really access episode 8 because we don't know how the fallout will manifest. I want to see what this "ended relationship" looks like first.

The scene between Haruno and Hayama is probably my favorite in the episode because it shows them (for the first time in the show?) alone, with both representing the extremes of what Hachiman must avoid. Hayama's group has always been a comparison for Hachiman and what he wants to avoid. I argue the same goes for Haruno, as she represents the cold side of relationships, where she has become incapable of fully trusting and revealing her vulnerabilities to another (this is how I view her "I can't get drunk").

Quote:

Haruno, like Hachiman, wants to see something real. Her problem is that rather than building something real, she wants to tear everything down until she finds it.

This is the point of departure from Haruno that Hachiman and Co. need to follow. While Haruno may be correct about the relationship being "codependent" or something similar, she is not right about everything regarding their relationship. Hopefully these three will tread their own ground rather than succumb to Haruno's take. Their relationship did not start out fake, nor is their relationship irreparably damaged. Feeling is still there, and so is care. It just needs to be defined in a way that leaves no room for doubt or dodge.

I think we got more insight into Yui's wish last week. Yes, she wants everything, and she is greedy. But her embrace of Yukino at the end of 7, for me, signals Yui's choice. Even though she wants it all, even though she loves Hachiman, her emotional bond of friendship with Yukino is what gets her to breakdown in front of them. Hopefully Hachiman and Yukino can give her the strength to let her film end either by the end of the next episode or two.

Animegomaniac wrote:

Funny as this was the episode that made me truly hate Yukino. So Yukino's mom can make an basic apology to Hachiman but the daughter, who supposedly is in love with the guy, can't? Won't?

She's apologizing through her actions. She's trying to fix how the car accident got him off track.

Her mission from the very start was to re-write his circumstances so he's not socially isolated, has friends, and perhaps even a girlfriend. She's broadcasted "fixing him" as her goal several times.

https://imgur.com/WRkqnPw

Where are we now? Saika and Zaimokuza as friends for one, Yui as a prospective girlfriend for another. The popular kids don't pick on him anymore, and students broadly better accept him.

Mission accomplished. Get this girl an aircraft carrier, Abe.

The only thing that's unclear is whether Yukino started this under her own initiative, or at Sensei's prompting.

Quote:

Hachiman finally got Yui's cookies this season and he finally got some sort of apology from the car's owner this season but the car's occupant who is trying to be his friend or something more?

She denied her ability to be his friend in episode 1. Because she was engaging him from the start under undisclosed pretenses, which were further compounded by the "bet".

Then things were compounded again when Hiki started sacrificing himself to fix problems. This ran contrary to her goal to fix him, yet she realized that she was the thing driving him to do it.

Finally, her discovery that she had built a co-dependent relationship with him only solidified in her mind that being friends wasn't on the table.

Sisyphusson66 wrote:

Their relationship did not start out fake, nor is their relationship irreparably damaged.

It did start out fake; that's part of the problem in Hiki and Yukino's eyes, as they're conditioned to hate superficiality.

Yui is ahead of them in realizing even if the circumstances for the relationship were forced, that doesn't mean genuine desires and dynamics can't arise.

She knows that, in part, as sees that in her other group.

Ultimately what makes a relationship genuine is the two or more sides choosing to come together simply for each other's company. Being genuine is a process, an action, not a state.

Whatever "fakeness" hangs about these relationships doesn't automatically make them lack value.

===============

OP was a blue sky in ep. 8. Since Yukino is emotionally wrecked, I guess it just signifies progress?

So what if 8man had done an unlikely 180? What if he had indeed decided to let Yukinon do things on her own and just stared from the sidelines as her prom train smashed itself into the PTO wall and been there to support her AFTER? Obviously the codependency hurdle would have been clearded, but would both of them have been able to realize it? Would it have made it possible for Yui to simply spill her guts? Regardless of the love outcome, would this have been the “real” thing they were looking for and finally allowed their relationship to move forward?

I don't understand why I'm still supposed to root for Hachiman. It was a season ago that he had his defining moment with his Genuine speech, saying that he'd start improving as a person from then on and work to make his relationships honest. And yet here he forces Yukino to break up with him because he's still just an absolute coward who refuses to take responsibility for anything or give consideration for the feelings of those around him.

And this was right after being stupid enough to ask Haruno, a woman who has done everything in her power to establish herself as the biggest obstacle to Yukino's ambitions and relationships, who has said to Hachiman's face that she wants Yukino's life destroyed because it's what she believes is necessary for her growth into adulthood, for advice on how to sway Yukimom. Shock of all shocks, Haruno's response is to tell Hachiman to screw off, and he seems to buy into it. Hachiman is a lost cause at this point - stubbornly refusing to mature or adapt and outright demanding to be miserable just so it can be misery on his own terms, a total backslide into the behavior that got him all resentful of Yui's friendship back in Season 1.

The only person keeping me buoyed into this show is Yui. Not because I'm expecting her to win - she obviously won't, the writing is all over the wall for a Hachiman/Yukino ending - but because I want her to be the reason both Hachiman and Yukino stop being idiots. And hopefully not by taking the cheap route of going "OH I'M STILL IN LOVE WITH YOU HACHIMAN BUT I'LL SACRIFICE MY LOVE SO YOU CAN HAVE YOURS AND MY HEART SHALL BE BROKEN FOREVER AS PUNISHMENT FOR MY LOVE" like some crappy fantasy novel or modern Fire Emblem game, but by telling her fellow idiot teenagers "We don't need to be apart to grow up, we suffer just as legitimately if not more when we're together, that's the real meaning of love" so they get back together and Yukino fulfills her ambitions on Yui's behalf.

And then Yukino kicks Hachiman in the crotch 100 times so he never tries to white knight for her ever again.

Ah, a fellow 8man hater I see... Ironic that I really like him as a character but completely despise him as a human being. Yui deserves much better and Yukinon would have grown up much more without him. Right now he’s up there with Subaru pre-episode 18, and I really hope that the upcoming ramen talk with milf sensei will make him see his (wrong) ways.

Birriaman wrote:

Ah, a fellow 8man hater I see... Ironic that I really like him as a character but completely despise him as a human being. Yui deserves much better and Yukinon would have grown up much more without him. Right now he’s up there with Subaru pre-episode 18, and I really hope that the upcoming ramen talk with milf sensei will make him see his (wrong) ways.

I don't hate 8man. I just hate what this season is doing with him by refusing to have him develop in defiance of the promise it gave a whole season ago.

Also, on the subject of Subaru, I just hate him period. The guy whines and moans for 17 horrendously padded episodes, then in episode 18 the entire episode is just him screaming like a spoiled brat and giving up without even trying, until next episode he's magically competent just because a girl whose single-minded devotion he never earned or deserved tossed a title-drop at him. It's not natural, I'm not infatuated with either Rem or Emilia, and it doesn't make me like him, it makes me feel like I just wasted 10 hours of my life that I could've used on better shows.

Delphisage wrote:

I don't understand why I'm still supposed to root for Hachiman. It was a season ago that he had his defining moment with his Genuine speech, saying that he'd start improving as a person from then on and work to make his relationships honest. And yet here he forces Yukino to break up with him because he's still just an absolute coward

Old habits die hard. An epiphany isn't enough to overcome yourself, and as Hiki himself says, even given the same situation over again you're likely to make the same choices as it's the only one you know how to pick from.

Hiki is choosing imperfect ways to continue the relationship because he doesn't know what a better one is yet. They are both behaving as if the club, and the bet, were the only things sticking them together.

At this point he would need a hear-to-heart with Sensei again to sort out what he should do, and to better understand what his desire means.

Quote:

And this was right after being stupid enough to ask Haruno, a woman who has done everything in her power to establish herself as the biggest obstacle to Yukino's ambitions and relationships,

Relationships? Maybe, as Haruno wasn't given healthy models for building relationships herself, but ambition? I have to disagree.

She wants Yukino to affirm herself. She makes this very clear; she pushed her to run for student council, she pushed her to be Cultural Festival committee chairman, and when it came to the Prom, she backed her 100% in front of their mother.

It's not entirely clear what result Haruno wants from it; maybe a peer to be less lonely, maybe just a relationship with her sister again, or maybe just for her sister to have the ability to go for what she wants.

A freedom Haruno herself was denied. A freedom she will continue to be denied even if Yukino gets chosen to be the successor to the family business.

Regardless, she does not want Yukino to go through life with no ambition. Her teasing takes on harsher edges whenever she thinks Yukino is getting complacent, or over reliant on someone else.

alaskaslim wrote:

Old habits die hard. An epiphany isn't enough to overcome yourself, and as Hiki himself says, even given the same situation over again you're likely to make the same choices as it's the only one you know how to pick from.

Hiki is choosing imperfect ways to continue the relationship because he doesn't know what a better one is yet. They are both behaving as if the club, and the bet, were the only things sticking them together.

At this point he would need a hear-to-heart with Sensei again to sort out what he should do, and to better understand what his desire means.

But at that point, we're just retreading the events of Season 2. Hachiman decides he knows better than Yukino, he interferes with her plans and gets his way, and then it turns out Yukino resents him for it, so then he has to deal with consequences, get a chewing out from Hiratsuka-sensei, and then apologizes to Yukino and Yui to do better.

We're recycling plots and being told to deal with it because the stakes are arbitrarily higher this time. Say all you want about how "realistic" it is that an epiphany ended up meaning nothing, but the fact remains that I've already seen this happen, and it's boring to see it repeat. DO SOMETHING NEW!!!

Going back to Episode 5 for a moment, it strikes me that "not wearing my eye strain-reducing glasses because of my feelings about the person who gave them to me" is the sort of low-key self-destructive behavior that makes Yukino feel like a believable teenage character to me. At 18, I would have totally not worn glasses and suffered the eye strain, but now I'm pretty sure I'd just go out and buy a new pair, and wear those instead. A broken heart will heal on its own, but life's too short to screw up your eyesight.

Delphisage wrote:

alaskaslim wrote:

Hiki is choosing imperfect ways to continue the relationship because he doesn't know what a better one is yet. They are both behaving as if the club, and the bet, were the only things sticking them together.

At this point he would need a hear-to-heart with Sensei again to sort out what he should do, and to better understand what his desire means.

But at that point, we're just retreading the events of Season 2.

Not quite, as covered in the review of episode 6:

Quote:

The big difference between these two events is that for the prom, Hachiman actually knows what Yukino wants and why she is doing things the way she is—because instead of just assuming, he actually had an adult conversation with her. Moreover, this time, they are actually working towards the same goal (as opposed to last time where Yukino's goal was to fulfill Iroha's request while Hachiman's was to make her withdraw it). Both of them want the prom to happen.

Further, Hachiman was acting to protect something inauthentic in S2; his belief that his loner persona kept him safe. That safety is what he genuinely wanted rather than a connection.

Here in S3, he has been pursuing his genuine desire, but through inauthentic covers. Something no less than three people have pointed out to him. Hayama, Ebina, and Haruno.

I would call that new; Hachiman is aiming at something genuine but still needs to evolve his methods. In his mind, choosing a bad option that still allows him to pursue a relationship with Yukino is better than choosing nothing. That's what he thinks the stakes are.

I would also include most of Yui's actions this season as being something new. She's never been more involved and it's her, not Yukino, Hachiman, or even Sensei who formulates the first true objection to Haruno's words.

Thirdly, Yukino is taking steps to not be co-dependent. She was co-dependent in season 2 right up until the last moment of the finale. This season Yukino is promptly going after what she desires. She's made her mother aware of what that is and she's heard advice from her friends but is not relying on it to decide what her desires are.

Yukino is not waiting, nor passively accepting what others want from her, but is paying her dues to properly chase after what she wants. What she hasn't determined yet is if letting Hiki go is apart of paying those dues. Haruno over says it, but there is truth to her words as adulthood does include weighing certain desires against others, and deciding which are more important. Can't blame Yukino for needing some time to piece things together.

Yukino's only rushing the decision she's made here because, well, Yui, and because it aligns with what she was planning to be for Hachiman all along. What the purpose of the Service Club itself was for. To be "the instigator" of an injury who restores him, not someone trying to keep him for herself.

Quote:

We're recycling plots and being told to deal with it because the stakes are arbitrarily higher this time. Say all you want about how "realistic" it is that an epiphany ended up meaning nothing,

Not nothing, just not instant. Which is perfectly human. It's still apparent Hachiman is not the same as in S2, as the "why" to his actions have indeed changed. As have the steps he took to getting to where he is.

The underhanded methods Hiki employed here were his of last resort, not the first. Also, they were not something he insisted on without Yukino's knowledge or consent, nor without first insuring he understood her motives.

It's not complete, but that is progress.

Forum - View topic
EP. REVIEW: My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU Climax

This Week in Anime - So, Is Sound Euphonium Queerbaiting or Not?

Wonderful Precure! Episodes 1-12 Anime Review

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: The Ways of Monster Nation Manga Ends Due to Artist's Health

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Dips to #3 in 4th Weekend, SPY×FAMILY Film Debuts at #5 at U.S. Box Office

Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction Part 1 Anime Film Review

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Game Review

The ANN Aftershow - What Anime Should You Watch Part 2 (Spring 2024)

Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU Climax

Forum

Forum - View topic
EP. REVIEW: My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU Climax