Oh man. I didn't realize that I could still be so let down by an ending, but here I am. Though I guess Oregairu should at least get kudos for setting my expectations high enough that I was able to be let down this much, so it's a mixed feeling. But seriously... blech. Same as probably 80-90% of LN/anime with any kind of a romance angle, you can peg the ending just from the initial setup. In this case, unpopular protagonist, through an external inciting incident, meets a girl. Stuff happens. They get together. Happy ending. I do think it's funny that the S3 OP was essentially about this, about watching a movie where they just tack "and they lived happily ever after" to the end and you're sitting there watching the credits roll, thinking, "Wait, where the hell is the rest of it?"
Of course, in Oregairu's case, the "stuff happens" aspect of this synopsis is 100% of the interesting content, in regards to how it addresses social behaviors, relationships between people, fakeness/genuineness, etc., so the ending shouldn't undo that just because I don't like the cliched romance aspect, right? Yes, but also, no. The ending makes me feel like I was completely mistaken about what I was watching/reading prior to that -- I take a lot of pride in my reading abilities, so to completely miss the mark of what the author was trying to communicate is an uncomfortable feeling. I most definitely thought that the "something genuine" Hachiman was searching for was human relationships without any of the pretension that is part-and-parcel of most relationships in society, and therefore the central progress to the story was the tearing down of those social barriers between Yukino, Yui, and himself -- friends that he could be truly open and honest with. But the ending makes it clear that the "something genuine" he was searching for was, in fact, a girlfriend. That's already thematically iffy, but going by my mistaken interpretation, then, it would have been impossible for him to date either Yukino or Yui, because it would destroy the dynamics between the three of them that I thought made up the central arc of the series, but that's exactly what happened. So, I felt like the ending didn't connect to the central themes of the work, and disliked it on that basis. In retrospect, I was wrong about what the series was trying to communicate, which was why I liked it so much, so I'll have to go back and reevaluate the earlier stuff with the hindsight that it was typical romcom schlock all along. I saw somebody rebrand the title as, "My Youth Romantic Comedy is Normal, As I Expected," which is amusingly on-point.
Other than that, I am also disappointed that the side characters I liked so much amounted to essentially nothing. Aside from Yukino, who is an extremely typical standoffish, capable beauty who is revealed to be insecure and cutesy as the story goes along (I would estimate you find main girls like her in ~30% of similar works -- the defrosting ice queen trope. Probably another 30% are your violent/difficult tsunderes, and another 30% are saccharine, idealized waifu trash, leaving maybe ~10% featuring interesting characters, imo), I liked almost every character, but most of their interesting traits are hinted at and then dropped with little to no story relevance. Like, Yui was infinitely more interesting to me, as an obvious third wheel in a typical love triangle setup, as the girl who looked sweet but also said she wouldn't wait around doing nothing, was selfish and not nice, and would take everything -- but then proceeds to sit around until the ending is "set in stone" (her words). Ultimately, she's a yappy little dog following the main pairing around because she doesn't know any better, and they're just as well off without her. Hayama Hayato seemed so interesting -- the perfect guy from outward appearances, who nevertheless intentionally kept his relationships shallow, and felt an inferiority complex to someone who looks to be in much lower standing than he is, based on a traumatic incident with the main girl that informs why both of them are the way they are... but it's never elaborated upon, so we're kind of stuck just accepting these outlandish character traits of theirs as they're presented. In the end, his role seems to be a strawman to acknowledge that Hachiman is better than him. Iroha was cool, but even putting aside the anime favoritism, she got a lot of characterization and development and I thought hit on a lot of the central themes of the story, in terms of putting up a facade to hide her true self from others, and (seemingly) moving past her superficial draw to Hayama, but in the end, her role is doing a lot of farting around in the background and setting up the final obstacle for Hachiman/Yukino for reasons that are, again, not really brought to any kind of closure. I liked Haruno, but in hindsight, she's a plot-driving troll with no motivation who liked to swing around to drop esoteric nonsense on Hachiman and Yukino to keep them broody. I do think that Wataru was good at creating characters who were more than they seemed (e.g. Miura looking like a typical mean queen bee, but earnestly caring for her friends; Hina blatantly acting out the fujoshi role to hide her true self; Tobe's an idiot, but he earnestly means well most of the time) -- but that just makes the central plot suck much more, because it's much less than it seemed. And while I'm writing this to say how disappointed I am, I'd be remiss to not point out that the Hachiman/Komachi sibling dynamic was really great, even in retrospect.
TL;DR - expected too much out of romcom LN/anime, was let down |