Story - 4/10
Usually I find animes based off of light novels are pretty good and I end up liking them a lot, but this was not the case with Haganai. Your basic outcast main characters is of course faced with the "trying task" of being surrounded by beautiful girls all head over heels with him for some reason, the reason at this point being all of them are weird and desperate for friends. The two main girls, those with the least wrong with them, I suppose, are both seriously in love and they set it up so that the anime might turn into one of those 'Who's he gonna pick', except he doesn't pick. Disappointingly, they blow it off in favor of an 'everything's back to normal' ending, therefore offering no good resolution to what seemed like a serious romantic plot. As well, the whole thing can't decide if it wants to be a romantic comedy or a slice of life or straight, suffocating fanservice. I have to wonder if the light novel was any better.
Art - 6/10
The animation is just fine, not the best I've seen, but tolerable. I'm not a fan of when their shirt is sculpted unnaturally to their boobs, and I'm also not a fan of ecchi involving seven year old girls, but I get that some people are so I don't count it as a big deal.
Sound - 6/10
Not a very noticeable soundtrack, and the title sequence was very loud and in-your-face. Just remember to keep your volume down so it doesn't blow any speakers.
Character - 6/10
The characters are made up of your basic tropes for a harem--the sister figure (there are actually like 3), the cold chick, the bubbly, big boobed girl, the pervy one...etc. etc. The main two girls your MC has to pick from are the cold, standoffish Yozora and the bubbly, loud cry-baby Sena. However, Rather than being cold and standoffish, Yozora spends the entire series bullying Sena, and comes off as nothing short of, for lack of a better word, a bitch. Yet, for some reason, our useless MC prefers her to the girl that is actually nice to him, just for the sole purpose of falling in love with the childhood friend. All in all, the endless trope make it tiring, and there is little to no character development anyway.
Enjoyment - 5/10
As for overall enjoyment, the series bored me. As a romantic comedy, it was lack luster and unsatisfying. As a slice of life, it was easily thrown off the deep end by all of the over-the-top character types. As a straight comedy, the jokes were all relationship or sexually based. I was bored. If anything, my enjoyment comes from it being over.
Haganai is not the worst anime I have ever seen, but it certainly doesn't scale very high. If you've been seeing the big-boobed blonde girl around the internet or her weird hair colored guy friend, that's basically all there is to the anime; 12 episodes of girls screaming and fawning over weird hair color guy, and there isn't a very satisfying ending as a reward for braving the series. Good luck.
