Anime Review: My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU

 School anime can be a drag. Sure, you might find one diamond in the hapless piles of blandness and shallow story telling, but for the most part I don’t like this genre all that much. I tend to find the comedy repetitive, the drama to be melodramatic at best, and the characters are almost always stereotypes. Now you’re all probably thinking, “If that’s the case, why do you like Ouran, Nisekoi, and Clannad so much?” Well, those are exceptions; Ouran had its phenomenal cast of characters, Nisekoi is just so engrossed in how clichéd it is that I actually find it charming, and Clannad has After Story. Even though I love all of these shows, I wouldn’t necessarily call them “deep” or “groundbreaking”, not even Clannad, which I view to be just a well-executed drama (in all honesty, that’s another review for another time). Then there’s My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, or SNAFU for short. People seemed to really like this show, so I decided to step out of my boundaries and check it out. Did it break the mold of a typical school anime or did it remain clichéd and shallow? Sit back, relax, and read on as I review My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU.

The Setup:

SNAFU takes place in, where else, a high school. It follows a student named Hachiman Hikigaya, an outcast who absolutely revels in the fact. One day, his teacher has had enough of his friendlessness and forces him to join the Service Club. The club’s only member is the beautiful ice queen Yukino, and her job is to help students solve their problems. Eventually, the kindhearted Yui joins them, and the three Service Club members help out their fellow classmates with social issues. First impression: generic. Yeah, there’s nothing really all that special about this premise. In fact, here’s a game: name a high school anime that’s not a harem that doesn’t involve joining some sort of club. So, my first impressions weren’t the greatest, but they could’ve been worse.

The anime follows the Service Club as they go around helping students

The Characters:

For this section, I’m going to do something a little different this time around and talk about the main character last. With that in mind, let’s talk about the side characters. They’re not all that original, but not really bad by any stretch. Yukino and Yui do their jobs. Yukino is practically the female counterpart of Hachiman, being cold, distant, and unwilling to make friends. Though, her snark and sarcasm is probably the reasoning for that, making for some pretty hilarious comedy. Yui is the typical “nice girl” archetype; not to say that she’s not likable, but I feel like I’ve seen her character ten million times before. I will say that she’s probably one of the better ones I’ve seen, and I do like the dilemma she goes through in the first arch of the show, so kudos to that. I literally don’t remember the names of anyone else, but this is a strange case where I wonder whether or not it was intentional. This leads us to the discussion of the main character, Hachiman Hikigaya. He is my favorite anime character of all time, even more so than Edward Elric or Kurisu Makise. I found him to be truly fascinating and relatable, with his pessimistic monologues concerning high school life and his ideologies towards human interactions. He’s also someone who’s brutally honest, because he doesn’t believe sugarcoating someone’s problem will get him or her anywhere. He’s almost like a psychologist, noticing all the clichés in life and how everything seems to be run by a system. There’s a lot more to him than I’m mentioning here, but his state of mind is so relatable and makes so much sense despite its pessimism that I just can’t help but name him as my favorite character period. This is why I think the clichéd nature of the characters works in the show’s favor; it’s all to prove Hachiman’s points towards how he thinks of high school. Regardless, while that is a creative twist, the characters are average. Click here for a character analysis and better explanation of why I like him so much (with spoilers) of Hachiman Hikigaya.

From left to right: Hachiman, Yui, Yukino

The Story:

Being a school anime, there isn’t so much of a plot as much as there is a premise that the show builds off of in various ways. As I mentioned before, the story follows Hachiman, Yui, and Yukino as they help the other students with their problems. The anime is split into arcs, with each arc focusing on one student, person, or group of people. This leads to a lot of various themes and ideas concerning communities and the internal motivations of others, which I found to be very interesting. Also, for a show called My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, there isn’t all that much comedy orromance in this show! Granted, I have yet to read the light novels and a second season has been announced, so I could be proven wrong, but this season doesn’t. Sure, the exchanges between Hachiman and Yukino are pretty funny at times, but the show focuses a lot more on human drama. This focus on drama and not on the romance also eliminates the melodrama that seems to hover over every single school anime coming out nowadays, which was refreshing. The drama can also be rather harsh. As mentioned earlier, Hachiman doesn’t like to sugarcoat anything, so whenever he’s trying to help a student he can be almost unbearably brutal to them, even if it is for the best. This does make for some uncomfortable scenes, but at the same time, I applaud the anime for it, especially since I haven’t really seen an anime tackle any of the issues within SNAFU before.

The story is split into arcs, each focusing on the problems of a different person

The Animation/Sound:

I will summarily abridge this section by saying that everything within this section is painfully average, which is disappointing considering the production company behind this. I mean, come on Brain’s Base, you can do better than this! The animation, while it has some nice designs, isn’t really that good and looks kind of plain. The only character design that felt new was Hachiman’s, whose “fish-eyes” stole the show every time he was on screen. The soundtrack is also nothing to write home about, but the opening is pretty good, so check that out. There is no English dub (thankfully, because I dislike Sentai Filmworks dubs), and the Japanese dub is average except for Hachiman (jeez, it’s becoming a theme), whose voice actor nailed him to a T.

Opening: