Oregairu @comic Manga Review

Oregairu is a story you’ve probably seen a million times before, or so you think. As a high school set romantic dramedy it wouldn’t take much thought to conjure up it’s peers, in fact I’d say this is the default setting and style for this medium overall. Fiction is fixated on this idea of high school being the zenith of normal human existence and given its cherished place as where we collectively grew up and out of our youths I can’t fault the system, but there’s just one thing. Youth is a lie, insofar as fictional high school is concerned there’s a noticeable, purposeful disconnect between reality and fiction in its representation, a radiant nostalgic and wholly successful version of youth sold to the masses. It’s saccharine and warm, full of extravagant personalities and romantic pursuits just waiting to be taken, in short animanga high school is as charming as it is fake. But Oregairu wasn’t written to sell the reader on a time well past, no it seeks to present the unvarnished messy truth of the place with all its nuance, all of its characters no dare I say people, all of it’s mundanities, it’s stupidity, and finally it’s passions. With its central trio leading the way we get a look at but one year of the lives of high schoolers with what I can only describe as the greatest perspective ever used. Let’s find out why this series becomes something real, this is a review of Oregairu the manga, the @comic version which I have to specify cos’ there’s 2 full manga adaptations of this story and both even have 22 volumes because why the hell not.

Oregairu is a story I’ve seen before, heck in its entirety even because I watched the anime and hey you probably did too. Modern classic amiright, Yui best girl of course am I right! When I watched the anime I myself was but a high schooler too, heck I was in the equivalent grade to these characters but unlike these characters my own romantic path went wrong as expected and proceeded to continue never existing. That’s one way of saying my first experience with Wataru Watari‘s story wasn’t very deep or thoughtful, I loved it with all my heart but it didn’t stick with me, it didn’t mean anything, it wasn’t real. I laughed at Hachiman Hikigaya, I swooned for Yui Yuigahama only because she was the cute genki girl archetype and Yukino Yukinoshita was basically just Saori Hayami doing her thing which I loved then and love now. I thought I cared for these characters and appreciated them but after seeing it again years later through a different, matured perspective I stand defeated. I didn’t get Oregairu before, heck I might’ve even missed the point outright. But I’m not mad about it because now I’ve listened to it’s voice clearly and I just… get it. And what a feeling that is.

Oregairu is the story of Hachiman Hikigaya’s second year of high school and what a impression he makes. Youth is lies he spouts, evil even and he’ll have absolutely nothing to do with it. In other words he’s an antisocial loser with zero friends and even lesser prospects, definitely not living it up which is why his guidance teacher Mrs. Hiratsuka slaps him down(literally). The first thing you’ll note is that this manga and franchise just generally has cracking dialogue, bursting with wit it remains as entertaining to read as well as informative, never missing a beat for potent, introspective monologues. We first get them from our main man Hachiman’s POV but slowly every character will get a time to shine, a chapter all of their own to really explicitly nail home what their deal is. Wataru Watari in what was only his second LN already has a strong authoritative voice, albeit a cynical one to suit his protagonist. For now. Anyway actually for now we get introduced at gunpoint to Yukino Yukinoshita as Hachiman is forced to join her Service Club by Hiratsuka and the sparks fly immediately between the two who genre convention states are the endgame for the rom part of this romcom. Except the sparks ain’t exactly romantic in nature, more so a product of a vicious verbal spat that they immediately get to work on because yup this “perfect” girl has about as much patience as a sports car on a highway. Behold everyone, the romance side of this story, look how sweet it is…not.

Oregairu‘s protagonist Hachiman is almost certainly it’s defining feature and that means something in this space because what other romcom can boast that. The reason is quite simple though, Oregairu is only very loosely a romcom and if you’re here for the love you’ll probably be put off by how subtextual it is for a long time, a veeeery long time. Instead Oregairu is basically lonely loser therapy because Hachiman is most definitely a loser and while he’ll never admit it he’s definitely lonely. See Hachiman isn’t kidding when he says he hates youth, he lives and breathes to oppose its expectations and unfortunately for someone so obviously lost he thinks he’s better than them, the normies that can go die in a fire. He sees their awkwardness and casts instant judgement upon them, ignoring his own terminal case of it. He sees their inefficacy in fixing difficult problems and solves them with ease, what does it matter if he sacrifices his own reputation each time because that obviously doesn’t matter to someone like him, it’s not a form of self harm what are you talking about everything is going to plan. Hachiman Hikigaya is a cynical, rude, aloof person who tries not to care about everyone and everything but when he fails at that as a human being would obviously do he suppresses those feelings because it’s the only thing he knows. With no friends, no close relationships beyond his younger sister Komachi who he can only tell so much too Hachiman lives a life without any support group of his own making, nobody stands in his way when he hurts himself, nobody is there to oppose him and make him realize the error of his ways. That is, until the Service Club.

Yukino Yukinoshita is a character I don’t “get”. Yes yes I know I said off the top that I get this story fully yada yada but Yukino is an enigma, an ice queen so cold that even at her most open hearted it’s hard to get a feel for her. Which is by design because she’s not really in touch with her feelings herself, she distinctly lacks a grasp on who and what she is. So she stays cold and withdrawn, using her studiousness to keep others whom she simply doesn’t know how to interact with at arms length. But when Hachiman Hikigaya is forced into her life everything starts to change. Though she hates the very notion of such a comparison her and Hachiman aren’t so different, sure ideologically they clash but the end result is the same. Both have no friends, no social skills, are decisive and competitive and will get carried away to achieve their goals no matter the personal cost. Where Hachiman sacrifices his reputation and mental health Yukino sacrifices her time and physical condition without a second thought, working herself to the bone to make up for any shortcomings of her peers instead of asking for help. She’s arguably worse off than Hachiman because unlike him she has even less of a support system due to a strained family life, outside of school she doesn’t come home to a warm home but an isolated apartment. So the Service Club that they run ends up being her “home” and while this story had it’s dramas that will tear the club apart the goal is always to reform and reforge that special place and the relationships contained within. Yukino’s sister Haruno, a woman with a snake’s tongue, memorably described her as a “normal girl” and despite who that description comes from it stuck with me. I never found Yukino to be special because honestly she isn’t and this narrative while certainly shining a light on her doesn’t give her the focus you’d expect of the supposed main romantic lead and I took me until Haruno’s fateful words to come to terms with it. Yukino IS a normal girl, one who’ll always be mysterious and alluring but one who never requires much in terms of exploration or screentime. She serves her role as the expected and earned endgame partner but this isn’t your normal romcom, this is one where the main female lead…loses!?!

Oregairu despite it’s full title including the words romantic comedy…isn’t much of a romantic comedy. I used the word dramedy instead because it’s much more fitting as this isn’t a story with romance front and centre, instead it’s about how human relationships can even approach that level of intimacy and I gotta say hell yeah to that. Do you understand how much better this series pacing feels when unlike other romcoms you’re not waiting on a confession but instead are free to be fully invested in the characters in the moment. It’s incredibly refreshing and ends up defining this above all else as an exceptional high school slice of life where the whole wider cast gets to be explored not as walking tropes but people with their own struggles that intertwine in the unique social culture of formal education.

From their position as everyman helpers the members of the Service Club despite their antisocial tendencies end up getting involved in every aspect of school life, from the high stakes mess of Student Council under it’s puppet leader Iroha Isshiki to the main “in group” lead by the perfect jock that is Hayato Hayama. From boring cabinet meetings where students try to convey their thoughts in a way so up their own ass they’ve basically turned inside out to the love life of a perpetually doomed but perpetually cheery lackey the Service Club finds itself with its hands in all the pies. Heck you could call them the shadow government and it wouldn’t be far off but the main point of this constant entangling is how it breaks down the barriers that every student puts up and forces them to show who they really are. Hayato’s the coolest guy in school but it’s all an act, he has to maintain everyone’s expectations and faith in him no matter what even if it leaves him empty inside. Iroha’s similarly not a book to be judged by her cover, underneath the harmless veneer of a cute junior is a calculating girl who knows exactly what she wants and won’t stop at anything to get it, her sass filled rapport with Hachiman being the closest we get to see behind that curtain. Oregairu makes great strides to avoid it’s cast becoming shallow cliches not from any desire to simply subvert expectations but a wholehearted push to present every character as human first and foremost. This has certainly been done before but not on this scale and not in this depth, Oregairu is THE high school story of all time.

Yui Yuigahama is a heroine leading a romcom who never stood a chance at winning her love’s heart and that choice is something only a story like Oregairu would do. Why, why write a character who’s destined for an unrequited love when you could focus on the requited love story, the one that the people want!? Well because it’s real, when feelings are involved people get hurt through no fault of their own, most teenage love dies on the vine and for this story to be authentic it had to pull off that balance. With Yui it did, with Yui Oregairu can stand tall as having not just the best male MC in a romance but the best female lead too and I mean that from the bottom of my heart, there is no debate over which girl is the leading lady in this story. At a glance she is the stereotypical harem romcom leading lady, well endowed in body but not in brains, endlessly cheerful to that exaggerated genki girl archetype only Japanese fiction can stand, a hopeless romantic yet an obvious losing heroine. She’s about as basic as a character concept could be in any other low brow low effort series but in Oregairu she stands out even more, her frankly ridiculous energy completely at odds with the cynical grounded nature of her surroundings. Hachiman probably speaks for many when he initially writes her off as someone pleasant to look at but with nothing to offer, shown by how empty his dialogue exchanges are with her in comparison to the fire and oil way he and Yukino bounce off each other. But Wataru Watari in all his wisdom had a plan and a stubborn focus to use this walking trope you’d swear you’ve seen a million times before into a character of immense worth and essential value.

Yui’s perspective is completely at odds with her Service Club fellows because of her whole hearted extroversion, where Yukino and Hachiman reject others Yui reaches out with total confidence in her emotional and social maturity. Yui’s actually part of the in group for the school, standing not beside but still in close quarters to Hayato Hayama and it’s all because she’s fully in touch with her feelings and those of others. Yui’s competence is a useful tool to have in every negotiation that the Service Club ends up in but she already proves necessary before anything else because to put it bluntly there is no Service club without her, to put it even more sharply there is no Hachiman x Yukino without Yui. Theirs is a relationship of constant doubt but keen interest, both characters don’t have a clue how to act around the other and are so awkward they can’t even admit that they appreciate the relationship. This obviously leads to strain and unintended pain that causes them to break apart constantly over the course of the story and given their antisocial attitudes there were times where it seemed like it would be over. Caught in the middle of Yui makes the same choice time and time again, the choice to selflessly push for their reunion because she won’t stand to lose the special relationship they have over immature squabbling, she loves them both so much that she’ll stop at nothing to keep them together. Selfless doesn’t seem appropriate here, obviously she’ll benefit from having everyone around her right? Well there’s just one issue here, Yui’s in “love” love and she plays to lose.

A full year prior a young man saved her dogs life on the first day of high school and ever since then she’s seen him as a hero but never got close enough to tell him how she felt, that is until she walked into the Service Club and came face to face with Hachiman Hikigaya. Yup she’s hopelessly in love with this guy from day 1 and if anything sells you on her ability to judge character it’s that she always believed in his potential, she saw through the rude cynicism to the genuine and selfless man behind it all. Through her and her alone romance remains a undercurrent in this long journey, her attraction to Hachiman ever present and only growing. She isn’t shy about it either, dropping hints to the man and causing him to get flustered day in and day out but there’s an odd flavour to them that soon takes a different form when she realizes what’s happening before her eyes. There isn’t a defined moment when Hachiman realises he has feelings for Yukino but the story’s presentation makes it an inevitability because through his POV we see his thoughts and by golly its all Yukino, all the time. This keen attention and constant internalised discourse over her is a clear sign of interest that tellingly Yui never receives so while explicit feelings only really come to the surface much later in the story the groundwork is very firmly established early on with Yui never in contention. And while it hurts you can tell Yui knows this, she knows her feelings won’t bear fruit but she also just cares too much and seeing how her friends struggle to realize themselves she keeps the fire alive for their sake.

Yui is the one who keeps this story’s pace going, it’s her acting on her feelings for the others sakes that begins to push them out of their comfort zones and eventually into each others arms. Yui is the one who will hear them fully open their hearts for the first time and it’s through her mature, almost maternal push that they gain the confidence to move towards each other. As goofy as it sounds she’s the red string of fate that holds them together even when they give up, when the prospect of something real feels too far away Yui’s undying glow stands tall and won’t accept failure, she never gives up on them and eventually they’ll never give up on each other. Yui doesn’t see herself as anyone special though, she’d describe herself as a bad girl at heart due to her selfish desire to have everything but when that desire in action becomes the glue keeping two lost souls together I can’t see it as a negative. Yui Yuigahama does lose the war for Hachiman’s heart but she fights it on the opposing side at all time’s, a traitor to her own desires, a genuinely good person in every active sense of the word. She’s the beating heart of this whole story and it’s safe to say she succeeded at stealing mine, I hope you to will learn to appreciate this genre defining character on your own,

Oregairu is an act of storytelling almost unmatched in how its plot progression is intrinsically connected with its authors growth as an artist. Believe it or not but if you remember this is actually a review of the manga and everything I could say about original LN writer Wataru Watari could also be applied to mangaka Naomichi Io. Both began this work as rookies without much to their name and that specific youthful cynicism shines through loud and clear. The first act of this story has an almost angry feel to it in no small part to its protagonist whose greatest accomplishments are nevertheless messy in execution and never go to plan. In Watari‘s case we get that it the rather unfocused plotting that wants to cover everything but hasn’t quite figured out how to make said everything land, he’s at times spiteful towards the genre while unconsciously falling back into it’s tropier tendencies. On Naomichi‘s end of things we have an artist who takes quite a while to settle on his designs, with characters that no.1 just don’t look terrific and no.2 aren’t drawn with an attention to detail I’d expect of a story that really only has that element to nail, I mean it’s high school what else is visually interesting to portray. His more ambitious view on panelling is a joy to behold which immediately made me confident that this was gonna evolve into something great, even though some early pages look outright ridiculous in layout.

Oregairu was a story a decade in the making for both of the versions in question and that is its biggest asset, it’s creators had basically all the time in the world to improve their craft and by golly they made use of it. Tonally speaking the maturing of these creators shines through brightest because this story matures strikingly from a angsty teenager into a measured and graceful adult that knows exactly what it’s doing and exactly how to pull it off with pizazz. Hachiman’s own arc best exemplified this change because he just fundamentally feels like a different person by the end, he’s so much more warm and genuine, done being isolated and angry he pushes himself out of his shell and now has people ready to welcome him into a more normal and fulfilling life. Drawing a single manga for a whole decade is gonna lead to interesting changes for any artist, give them a monthly serialization and their potential for growth only further explodes which is exactly what happened to Io during the course of this work. It’s a similar story to Hajime Isayama, creator of my beloved Attack on Titan who was anything but a good artist in the beginning of that aforementioned serialization. With character art that looks like a elementary schooler drew it he only initially had talent in his instantly iconic spreads but over that gargantuan run he would become unquestionably one of the greatest to use a pen. Io‘s specialty was always his panelling which has that exact cinematic perspective to it that Tatsuki Fujimoto is famed for today, and this guy was doing it long before my man. His rather unimpressive character art would take time to pin down but once he really figured out how these characters looked and emoted he began pairing them with his commanding layouts to form a truly magnificent act of manga creation.

This story being based off a wordy LN immediately creates the specific issue of telling instead of showing, a pitfall many a mangaka fail to avoid with Yoshihiro Togashi notably regressing to the point that I doubt his choice of medium to continue telling Hunter x Hunter when his drawings generally hide behind mountains of text. I have not read Watari’s original version so I don’t know what was sacrificed for the manga but with utmost praise I declare that Naomichi Io in adapting a completely text based work demonstrates a better understanding of visual storytelling than the vast majority of artists in the business. I do not understand how he balances the monologue heavy nature of this story’s contents with a show don’t tell mentality but he inarguably did just that. Don’t get me wrong there’s plenty of text at hand but it’s kept to natural dialogue that doesn’t overshadow the characters on page whose emotions are clearly conveyed through the drawings. It’s a perfect harmony that is carried throughout because even when the story necessitates lore dump levels of dialogue Io will acknowledge that by giving us many pages of just art focused storytelling, using his masterful panelling and increasingly gorgeous character art to say even more than what was actually said. He can get more carried away in his imagery than necessary, tears being shed is often accompanied by rain beginning to fall and other on the nose visual metaphors but honestly I love it, it keeps this series feeling like it’s heart is more on its sleeve as things progress and that just works. His ambitious storytelling reaches a zenith on of the greatest manga chapters of all time, a 20 page first person Hachiman POV so perfectly in sync with its subject that the switch back to a normal perspective hits like a truck, reality as we’re used to it crashing into focus with the weight of what will become a turning point in the story. There’s another example of his artwork taking center stage in the story, a certain touch where no words are spoken but everything is said, unquestionably the greatest moment of intimacy captured in a manga’s pages. He takes the rote generic visuals of a high school romcom and turns it into one of the most visually electric manga I’ve ever seen, what I say next should come as no surprise now.

Oregairu @comic isn’t just another version of the story but when faced off against the anime that first brought me into this world stands as the definitive version. Not only is its greater length conducive to a superior adaptation of the original novels as it gives so much more time to the little moments that make the characters tick but frankly speaking it’s presentation ends the conversation outright. Oregairu‘s anime adaptation’s 2 studio’s did a great job handling the series no question with the angsty first act matched by a charmingly fugly aesthetic of Brains Base before the real maturity and gravitas of the later material getting a fabulous uplift by Feel. Add on a voice cast who absolutely own these roles, iconic openings and endings and you have an anime experience you’ll never forget and I won’t ever stop recommending. Except today because Naomichi Io‘s manga version is simply better in every way, there’s a sophistication to his work that only a Kyoani level studio could do justice and even then it’d have to be an ambitious project because my man is nothing if not ambitious. Only in the loudest emotional outbursts can the anime even come close to the impact of his version of events and even than there is no single moment that holds a candle to the peaks of this manga, one which has no valleys might I add. It’s so much more refined, visually interesting, thoughtful and I hold absolutely no fault to the anime. When one version has more time to tell more of the story it’s kind of a no brainer, when that version uses every second to improve itself in a way most anime productions by design can’t the comparison becomes strictly unfair.