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Feb 21, 2024
"My Youth Romantic Comedy is a Lie, as I Expected" is very subtly an anime that lives up to its name. Its true nature is one of a critique; a show aimed at deconstructing a genre and its common tropes. Nonetheless, the author sacrifices anything, and everything, to showcase his views and ideas, as thought-provoking and creative they might be.
In the past seasons, the main character was known for unveiling the lies people told others and themselves. He hated kindness, for someone who is nice to one out of this is not so because they actually care. It is told to us he longs
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for something "genuine"; a gentleness born out of true, deep love and concern. His family situation almost screams his current social condition, and his past did him no better either.
Nevertheless, in this one even the storyline becomes his bait. His entire "youth romantic comedy" is a lie, as he told us from the beginning. There's no happy prom where characters can kiss themselves and enjoy their teenage years. There's no drama queen or lonely nerd either. He doesn't give the audience anything of what would be expected from the last season of an anime of this sort, but only "the real thing".
As a consequence of his determination though, the plot starts to suffer from its (real) premise: everything feels painfully inconsequential, the lies are obvious to everyone but the characters, there are no big surprises or turn of events. The narrative also becomes barely enjoyable, for it sort of martyrs itself for the sake of proving "youth is a lie", as Hikigaya's final speech. It's all about characters who try to fix themselves into something meaningful. In a sense, one might argue that's what adolescence really is about.
And as plainly beautiful the show's message could be, it doesn't measure the trade-back of sacrifice for actual delivary. It ends up being as unphilosophical as Hikigaya's words for the near entirety of the show. It sort of parodizes itself, thus Oregairu can be said to be an anime which accomplished to be both genius and braindead at the same time. It's certainly art, but not one that can be to everyone's tastes, surely.
Yahari Ore, in sum, does sort of gets near to its premise's level, but accomplishes it through proving the audiance it was wrong from the beginning. It's a work of art that defines itself more for what it isn't than what it is, telling us mostly what a romantic comedy shouldn't do than what it should. It ends up as a (self-)destruction almost more than really a deconstruction, for it barely leaves itself room for rebuilding from what it criticises. Two lies don't make one truth.
Neon Genesis Evangelion and Konosuba are much better examples of series which aimed to be different from their genre (despite my own criticism and skeptism towards the latter), for they believed in what was better for them, got attached to their ideals and kept going with it despite what was popular in their time. Yahari Ore, in the other hand, does in fact a lot, but conveys comparetively little with its narrative. It'll be intriguing enough for many people, but for others, just about lackluster.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 23, 2023
Asobi Asobase is known for one of the best and craziest batshit nonsensical comedies you're going to find in the otaku industry. The art contributes greatly to give you at first the feeling this is just another school manga, but oh, boy, this is one of the many ways it's going to troll you. In fact, as probably the series which made me laugh the most in my life, I regret all its qualities really end right there.
The author maintains a great pace up until the first 100 chapters or so, but then she starts adding some new characters who don't even add anything to
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the plot, are funny or developed afterwards. The comedy starts to suffer from ever more exaggerated tones and the story ends quite abruptly. Everything turns out therefore to be forgettable and like a waste of time.
As for the side plots (even a comedy must have one), one of the idyosyncratic paths this manga chose was for example trying to match one of the cast's members with a (transgender) woman. Well, the issue here is that it has no synergy with the flow or the mood of this series (like many of the sub-stories), and to make things worse, the "character arc" is, like I suggested, never concluded.
In short, it was all laughs, but no substance. Things got, as expected, eventually obnoxious and unsustainable. The author failed at the basics and gave all too much focus to the sidelines. The entire building finally fell apart and we were left with the feeling that maybe it wasn't so funny after all.
Verdict: 3/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Aug 7, 2021
"It's easy to be strong and rough; it's easy to be weak and gentle, but it requires the highest degrees to possess both strength and gentleness".
In this review it won't be intended to inform you guys of the obvious; the (seemingly not so much) common sense stuff: the protagonist of this mahnwa is a self-insert Gary Stu. What shall be discussed here is a more glaring issue though: the kind of character the fans and especially the author are self-inserting themselves into. Other people here have already done an excellent job discussing many of its vices (and qualities, e.g. the art).
Thus, let's start from the
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beginning: Sung Jin-Woo is a low-level young man whose mother is ill and, despite his noble efforts to pay for her medical fees through doing "dungeons", he's scorned by everyone around him due to his physical weakness. Nonetheless, he proves to have a different set of strengths; one seemingly uncommom amongst his colleagues: courage, braveness, selflessness and a pure heart. After showing us all his virtuousness, he's rewarded by his deeds with... "OPness", "Gary Stu'dom" and a ton of plot armour.
He keeps up with his work after the introductionary events until we get to the 20th chapter or so, wheareas he teams up with a group of jerks who try to leave him for dead inside the dungeon. In this situation, one could've thought: "Ok, it's time for him to show yet again his kindness and mercy to those who did him wrong à la Viland Saga". No, he cold-bloodly kills every single one of them in the most cruel way he could. The plot follows like that for a few more chapters without any chance of redemption.
Instead of developing sympathy, forgiving others and maybe trying to help the world by doing more difficult dungeons now that he is so "strong" (alas, only physically), the path Sung Jin-Woo decides to take is one of seeking solace to his bitterness in others when he can only find it within himself. Once "reawakend', his death instinct is unstoppable (as in "Light's Syndrome") and the author starts desperately trying to create different convenient situations which allow him to release it without much moral consequences afterwards. He adds a ton of "garbage" human beings across his path so Sung can have an "excuse" to show his real, genuine face. Although truly hurt inside, our mangaka keeps supressing his feelings and even endorsing his actions without realising that, in real life, it would only be leading him more and more towards doom.
It should go without saying that what the protagonist of "Solo Leveling" really needs is not getting more powerful so he can completely destroy his already poor mental health, but a psychotherapist. He has good friends and also people who worry about him, thus I don't understand what's so glorious about seeing him waste his life for the sake of revenge when he could be... better than that. It's not realistic, but sad, morbid and distateful. This depiction of strength leaves brains and morals completely aside. It's indeed "Solo Leveling", but levelling down nonetheless.
Self-insertion would be more excusable if felt towards a honourable man; not an edgy young adult who thinks he's badass whilst in fact being the wolf in sheep's clothing he is... Look at yourselves in the mirror and see whether it's really this you'd like to look like; otherwise don't waste your time following his journey.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Feb 14, 2021
This review will mostly be discussing the ending of this manga and not the whole work itself. The reason for that is that basically everything that happens here quickly goes stale with the conclusion and I'll try to convince you why. If you don't want any spoilers, some people on here have alredy done a wonderful job in sumarising what this manga is all about for newcomers. Besides, this review is also not suited for those who haven't watched the original, since most of what I'll be discussing here will be in comparision to it.
--- The Finale ---
If you've already watched the anime, this manga
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shares a very similar plot with it until the last few chapters. The only things I'd consider major are Kaji's and Rei's added character development (which alone already justify you reading this even if you dislike these two characteres... Or better: they're the only ones that justify you reading this). Every other character though (except for Shinji) lose their development by the end. I'm not kidding, they LOSE it. I never imagined I'd ever experience something like that in my otaku life, but that's it.
What Sadamoto seemingly tried to do here was mashing up the original's and the movie's endings. The attempt could seem interesting at first, but I can't say the same about the result. What basically happens is that Shinji (apparently) creates another reality with the powers of instrumentality and starts living there as the boy he always wanted to be. He still learns to accept others and... Well, he's basically the same guy, but eveyone around him lost their memories. As a consequence, we never see Asuka having the chance to redeem from her past and learning how to accept others, nor do we see Katsuragi face how emotionally miserably she is inside.
You can argue that "Oh, we lost some, but gained some, so it's okay". It isn't. The show was yet unable to live up to the its own theme. As one can notice by the term "Neon Genesis Evangelion", NGO was an anime about having a new beginning in life and thus it's never too late to start things all over again and have a happy ending. The manga's ending wasn't a new beginning, but a total restart! Evangelion isn't about going starting things over, but working for the answers in the present itself.
Another thing that doesn't favour the "character development tradeback" is the fact that this focus Rei gained was actually what caused the manga's downfall. Not that it's her fault at all, but the reason Shinji denied instrumentality in this one was because Rei taught him how to love others and, therefore, Shinji creates another reality to keep up with this feeling, unlike in the End of Evangelion, whereas when he gets into intrumentality, he denies it not only bacause he still doesn't feel loved, but also because he hates eveyone. He leaves it so he won't have to be close to Asuka, but once she's still there, he immediatily goes on killing here and changes his mind when caressed in the face and notices that he does can feel and be loved by others. That scene was the biggest character development for both Asuka and Shinji and yet it's totally missing here.
After all this rant I gave you, you may be thinking I hated this manga. I didn't. Is the premise broken? I'd say almost so. As I said, this review would be in comparision to the original ending, so in this point... Yeah, the manga is worst. Is it shit? No. Evangelion has way too many qualities to be completely downgraded by an unfulfilling ending. If it wasn't for the last chapters, I'd straight up score it a 10, but for reasons already mentioned, I now can't say it's good, but I can't say it's downright bad either; therefore I give it a 6.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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