Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai (2011) 🌟

Info

• Title:: Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai
• Title_EN:: Haganai: I don’t have many friends
• Studio:: AIC Build
• Year:: 2011
• Format:: series
• Episodes:: 12

Log

2024-08-17: ep1–5

god i’m really loving this? but what does this say about me?!

a found family can be dysfunctional too perhaps, and i’m glad it recognizes that.

is it bad that i was a little upset that rika taking all her classes in the science room wasn’t supposed to imply that she’s actually special needs? like, i thought that would actually be a valuable development of the societal reject theme, but instead we have yet another genius girl who’s forced to bear the curse of high iq. sigh… at least there’s always fanfiction to fix this…

2024-08-18: ep6–9

announcement that rika is absolutely my type. i guess that’s to be expected, since harumi’s pretty similar in temperament and ambition – it’s just that rika ramps it up to 11, like everything in this show does.

2024-08-25: ep10–12 + ova

rika gets me so horny it’s unreal. though i feel like i’m kinda taking the easy bait by doing so?

and maybe yozora hasn’t changed, but instead has just discovered the power of discretion and choosing easier targets to pick fights against.

2024-08-31: s2ep1–5

god i wanna smash rika every which way the good lord affords us.

anyway,

if i were to rate these characters by how sympathetic i feel towards them, sena would be pretty high up on my list. sure, she’s a spoiled rich girl, but everything that’s come from this upbringing seems to be maladaptive.
she may be bright in some respects but absolutely idiotic when it comes to interpersonal affairs, and that’s how she gets outplayed every single time.

anyway, were it up to me, i’d date sena but keep rika as my secret mistress (because i feel like she would find that hotter), then just jump ship to rika after that all falls apart.

2024-09-02: s2ep6–9

the episode where they all celebrate kobato’s birthday together is so cute and charming!! it honestly almost made me tear up… but maybe small birthday events just do that to me. it just feels so personal and meaningful that i can’t help but be moved.

2024-09-07: s2ep10–12

i guess forcibly removing yourself from the central love triangle is one way to resolve it, though rika suddenly jumped into the lead as the next active contender, and she at least has the forthrightness to actually go through with it.
not sure if pelting him with ball bearings was the right way to resolve this issue, storywise, but i guess it gets the job done.

but also, this ending feels right with yozora’s character. it really feels like she has tried the hardest to actively resist character growth – to whatever extent the characters in this show have grown.

homo hole (or yaoi ana)… oh wait, apparently the yaoi hole is actually a thing in japanese culture?! is their sex education really that anemic?!
but this now makes yukimura’s comment about how his penis just hasn’t grown in yet make sense: he developed the yaoi hole, and now he’s just waiting for the cock to come in.

tier list of who i would fugg

• true ❤️ love
  • rika: if kodaka had any sense then he would’ve taken this late-game third option to resolve the love triangle, but maybe i’m just projecting my own desires. but she would be perfect for me, huh? smart, sensible, passionate, eager, depraved, so passionate… i think i’d feel comfortable to be myself around her and i’d respect her for her interests too. and we would be fucking like rabbits, no doubt about it
• expand polycule
  • yukimura: i have a type. i don’t think i’d like that type too much if he actually went on hrt and tried to masc up, but i think it’d be ok to try to push him toward an atypical masculinity. i could love a soft boy, and i would ravage his yaoi hole too
    • plus, i feel like rika could be open to us making this a throuple
• take your pick
  • sena: i find her easy (easier) (easy-ish?) (possible) to empathize with, and i (naturally) find her attractive, but i also don’t know if i’d be able to put up with her for very long. but i could never hate her
  • kobato: she’s just a cutie, and she hits the moe moe part of my heart. i like the kobato who lights up with affection toward her brother, but don’t really like the kobato who uses her chuuni identity as a defense mechanism. i sincerely wish that she finds happiness
• no opinion
  • maria
  • maria’s sister
  • kodaka: seems nice enough, but i don’t swing that way
• no thanks
  • that red-haired girl: she just seems annoying is all
  • yozora: both sena and yozora are characters who are defined by sob stories that, upon reflection, are hard to take seriously. yozora is a bully-who-is-bad-at-it whose tragedy is that she lost her best friend and then never was able to make another for ten years due to having a shitty personality,¹ sena is a poor rich girl who is unable to make any friends due to being too pretty and too talented and too rich and eager to flaunt it in everyone’s faces because she believes that displaying superiority over other people is the key to making friends. the difference, then, is that sena has the capacity to learn and grow; whereas with yozora any personal change feels like pulling teeth to her and, when taken to task, she’d rather run away than actually confront herself. i’d genuinely like to watch another season just focused on her,² but i’d be too scared to come within ten feet of her personally

Quote

watermoon — 09/09/2024 11:53 PM
(if i dated yukimura, i don’t know if my constant joke references to nobunaga’s ambition would piss him off or if he’d take them really seriously and believe that i have a deep appreciation for sengoku-era culture too)
sheepb puppet — 09/10/2024 2:15 AM
I think yukimura would think you’re trying to inspire him with those references, he doesn’t seem like the sharpest katana
watermoon — 09/10/2024 5:18 AM
i’m imagining it backfiring and getting yukimura hooked on koei games in the same way that sena is hooked on eroge

2025-10-17

oopsie poopsie i’m at it again. i figured that this would become a comfort watch in time and, well, it kind of is!

season 1

not many thoughts here, since i let myself vibe through it. but:

• it’s interesting that such an overtly bitchy show managed to become one of my favorites. but maybe the catfighting and pettiness are just that over-the-top
• ok so yeah kodaka does initially assume that rika staying in the science room was a disability accommodation, hence why he noticeably softens up toward her once he hears that
• rika outright confessing that she swings both ways if it means that eroticism is involved gives me hope that we would be a good pairing after all
• yozora is fashion goals for me, both pre- and post-haircut
  • yozora honestly has a lot that’s charming about her. she’s witty, clever, passionate, and every single one of these traits is applied toward unproductive ends. it’s really quite incredible
• i genuinely love the op. it’s so unhinged! and the bassline absolutely drives the song

s2ep01

• if kodaka has a main flaw, it’s that his compulsion to be easygoing (so as to not stir up any more shit than his existence already does) leads him to adopting a kind of non-confrontational insincerity. so, like, when he walks in on sena wearing a bald cap and she asks him how she looks, of course he’s gonna reply that it suits her well. and i can just hear the thoughts flowing through his mental circuits: well, this is a bizarre new look for her, but she seems to be really proud of it, so i’ll just act supportive. which turned out to be the wrong thing to say, but how could he not!
  • admittedly, i probably would’ve done the same thing too, though…
  • kodaka is what you get if you take the sycophantic kindness required by the Undertale (2015) pacifist route and apply it to the real world. in practice, you just end up stuck in a lot of entanglements, with no easy way of getting out of them without disappointing someone. so instead you just slowly disappoint everyone!
    • ask me how i know!
• going off my memory of how the season develops, i think rika grows the most as a person throughout this season specifically
  • throughout season one, she’s a bit one-note: endlessly and indiscriminately horny, with an understanding of humans that is a mix of ethological and tvtropesical. but i wanna say she develops rather quickly to being the voice of reason within the group. maybe this is just her genius iq at play, or more likely, maybe it shows that her curiosity to learn extends to learning from her actions too
  • case in point: the apology that she and yozora give to sena after they tag-team her into having the most ridiculous hairdo they could imagine. i want to believe that rika actually meant it
• kodaka and sena are so clueless together and it’s a little adorable

s02ep02-03

wherein the homo game club anime, and perhaps any world where you can’t freely express your love is a messed-up place!
also wherein kodaka uses an indirect kiss to wriggle out of another potential landmine issue.

• while i still haven’t played tokimeki, i think its implementation of the bomb mechanic is that, if you neglect a particular girl for too long, then she’ll blow up and destroy your reputation with everyone, right? though i guess kodaka’s case is one where being nice to everyone is just priming them all to be bigger and bigger bombs that he then has to spend all his time defusing

2025-11-10 - s2ep04-05

• the fact that so many scenarios through this show involve them interacting with media is perhaps a little telling
  • it’s hard to know how neurodivergent the characters in this show are,³ but i think projecting through media is a big part of autistic relation
  • and beyond that, the norm of the show is just parallel play. it’s implied that they all just hang out in a room together, not really talking to each other, doing their own things!
  • although, if i remember right, that’s kinda how club meetings for the sos brigade went too, and it’s hard not to notice the haruhi influence peeking through at times
• the reza subs sure like translating baka as the r-slur huh
  • if anything maybe i should remember to pick and choose translations here as creative ways to get at expressions that i’d think to translate otherwise. like 発見しました as “target sighted:” yeah that actually works really well at feeling distinctly military. “kenja time”⁴ as “DIY fun” works less effectively, though my fesh pinced brain would instinctively want to translate that as rika saying she’s going to Calm herself
• it really kinda feels like the show is stumbling ass-backwards into its trans-positivity message, especially with yozora’s support for yukimura now being motivated primarily by a desire to strike him from kodaka’s dating pool
  • still, i’d let rika feel me up like that if it kept me on her path

2025-11-24 - s02e06-07

• despite rika landing directly in kodaka’s strike zone, he sure isn’t doing anything to make that play.
  • i’m starting to get pissed off for rika.

2025-11-30 the rest + the light novels?

vol. 9

wherein kodaka actually confesses to sena! makes a limp-dicked confession about how, even though he really wants her, he nevertheless must refuse to go out with her in order to protect the status quo of the club he cherishes so much.

• i don’t think you necessarily need testicles to feel blue-balled, and every single member of the neighbor’s club is evidence of that
  • but i can’t really fault kodaka too much for that though, because it seems like his sexuality is either low-valence (despite how carnivorously he describes sena during that confession) or made by him to be low-valence
  • really if his goal was to just get a girl then rika is both the quickest route toward that end and actually really great once you wash off the desperation god i love her so much
• so both yozora and rika are chan-poisoned. or, i’m not sure how much of a difference there is between 2ch’s flavor of braintoxin and 4chan’s, but i have a suspicion that there’s a decent amount of overlap
• yozora befriending kobato makes for a cute pseudo-love triangle between sena and those two
• goth girl randomly appearing and being obsessed with yozora could make for a nice path towards resolution

although, from here on out, it looks like the rest is untranslated, which means that once i’m done with this set i’ll get to see just how surmountable light novels are…

Notes

paralogue: comfort media

Quote

Haganai: Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai

maybe this shouldn’t count since i first watched it last year, but since i finished it i’ve had this constant urge to rewatch it, and i finally gave into the urge recently.
 
for some reason its portrayal of a dysfunctional found-family sticks with me, and i find the show’s non-judgmental commitment to letting these characters express their strange desires to be reassuring. and i love them. i love all these freaks. i want to be friends with them and pursue some of them romantically. i too want a place where i feel okay to be myself – messiness and all – so maybe this show is a vicarious outlet for that desire.

Footnotes

1. and then the only person with the patience to handle her in the first place was that friend she met originally! she reminds me of ████, honestly: eager to dish it out but unable to take it, and then carries a grudge toward those who do retaliate which can last years. ↩

2. i do, however, believe that the ending she got was the one that thematically made the most sense for her. ↩

3. from most to least: rika >>> yukimura > sena > maria > kobato >> yozora > kodaka. wait shit isn’t that also roughly the order of the characters i’d most want to date? ↩

4. “sage time” or “philosopher time:” slang for post-nut clarity ↩