What can one expect from an anime focused around the concept of making friends, it could lead us to some funny moments, it could be deeper and focus more on the psychological aspect, or it could, as it happened in this case, just turn into a regular run of the mill harem anime. Not all is bad as you are to find out in the coming review.
Hasegawa Kodaka has transferred to a new school, but there he couldn't make any friends as he managed to make a horrid first impression and is now feared by his fellow classmates who think he is a delinquent. One day after school he stumbles across his solitary classmate Yozora who is having a conversation with her “air friend”. Both realising that they have no real friends come to the conclusion that the best way to make some friends is to form a club for people without friends, to try and make friends. New members slowly drip into this club, all united by their lack of social skills and consequentially friends, but even so friendships begin forming within the club.
The whole idea of the anime is great as, as stated in the introduction, friends are important but crafting real friendships is sometimes a chore, especially if you lack the social skills to do so. The first few episodes are great as well, but later on as more people start making their way into the club things start getting much worse. The concept while great veers off-course and the show slowly transforms into this strange harem anime. Normally I am not one who hates this kinds of anime as you can see by looking through my other reviews, but I hate to see wasted potential. Later on they also bring in some flashbacks to some childhood memories of our main characters and in my honest opinion they felt greatly out of place and the resulting story arc felt forced, especially because the direction the rest of the anime has taken by that point. The ending is not a particularly satisfying one, but there is a second season I haven't watched yet so that ending there is the important one.
The best part of this anime have to be the main characters and they are solely responsible for the overall relatively high score it got from me in the end. Our main character Hasegawa Kodaka is a really nice guy, but he always manages to make a horrible first impression and that coupled with his looks made his whole class afraid of him. He is by far the sanest character in the whole club and is the one the harem forms around, but surprisingly he is not completely dense and is actually able to figure out that they actually like him, but does practically nothing about it. Next we have Yozora, the mastermind behind the whole club. It is not weird she lacks friends as for most of the anime she comes off as a cranky manipulative bitch, but as we find out she is actually a good person. The next person to join the club is Sena, a beautiful, rich girl who fails to make friend because guys are either with her only because of her looks or are too afraid to approach her, while girls are jealous of her good looks and avoid her. Her being a major snob is also not doing her any favours in her friend making endeavours. These three are the series’ core characters and pretty much all of the memorable moments are based around them and not around the other characters introduced later down the line. We have a genius girl who is completely obsessed with erotic manga, Kodaka’s little sister who is suffering from a serious case of eight-class syndrome and believes she is a vampire, a ten year old nun that is a teacher at the school and Yozora managed to bully into being the club supervisor and last but not least we have a lowerclassman that is bullied for looking like a girl and wants Kodaka to teach him how to become more manly, but gets tricked by Yozora into crossdressing. The problem with these characters is that they serve no clear propose and are used more or less to serve as a distraction from the meaningful interactions between our main trio.
The animation itself is decent as all the characters look good and the background are detailed. The problem arises in form of fan-service. Normally I am not one to complain over fan-service, but when ten year old girls are shown running around topless I just find it tasteless. The soundtrack is decent as well as the voice acting, but I found the opening unbelievably annoying as it was played way too fast and I also found the singing to be just appalling.
All in all Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai was decent, but it wasted so much potential so it gets a really low 7 from me, but it is possible I am going to reevaluate the score after getting through the second season as some of the events here might be given some meaning. I have to say in never actually had to force myself watching this, as it was quite funny and so I have no problem recommending it to anyone, but do not get your hopes up to soon as you are going to be disappointed later on.
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