[Light Spoilers Ahead]
Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru, or My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected is many things. A pilgrimage destination for people who set out to quench their thirst for finding something genuine masterfully created genre-breaking romantic comedy full of ironic tension and witty dialogue, a journey exploring the themes of self-realization, inferiority complex, cynicism, and social awkwardness.
At least, that was what we were promised. The first two seasons of Oregairu did this well by introducing its characters, showing how each of them interacts with each other, unpacking everyone's secret desires and motivations with a conclusion of a competition overarching this entire series/
So now, after five years of waiting, we get our conclusion, and all I can say is that Oregairu Kan (meaning climax in Japanese by the way) is one massive letdown.
Let's break it down, shall we?
Story: (3/10) Starting with the positives, the most remarkable aspect of Oregairu is how deep the superficial scenarios are. I'm not going to spoil anything because I want you to read this knowing nothing but a general analysis, but many scenes in the stories, if you look hard enough, have profound significance all surrounding one central concept, "there is no happy ending for everyone in a romantic comedy." So if you're going to watch Oregairu Kan, keep a mindful eye and notice how the characters interact, the environment around them, and the relationship dynamic everyone has with each other to notice trends you don't usually see in romance dramas.
Now we get to the bad stuff. As good as Oregairu is at making their scenarios have deeper meanings, it also screams melodrama. The main goal of the entirety of Oregairu Kan is nothing special, planning a high school prom, but they made it seem like a life or death scenario that it was almost laughable. The worst part of it was that the whole planning of the high school prom lost focus and at some points, forgot about what they were trying to do. At one point, it jumped quickly from "we're concerned about how this will turn out" to "okay, it's fine let's just do it" out of nowhere. I thought I missed something, so I went back, but no, I was right that it jumped the gun on the prom idea without much resistance with the "main antagonist" saying that "you know, the people will still get mad over this", which is basically saying that the conflict was never even resolved in the first place.
The story also focused way too much on one character and essentially, the story became about her when she shouldn't have become the focus because she's not the love interest in the end. A lot of the story evolved from a story about acceptance about losing your love to becoming a cry bait for audiences over the fact that she lost. But I'll talk more about this in characters.
Characters: (2/10) Not enough Saika this season? Automatic one.
Okay, but on a serious note, my statement has some truth in it. But not just Saika, just everyone else. A lot of the characters we saw and were built upon in the previous seasons were all rendered useless in this season. Either the characters have no plot significance or impact, plot devices to remind Hachiman of one fact that he forgot, or literally background noise to what's going on.
But the largest offender was that Yukino, the main girl of this story, was pushed to the sides. No, the main focus of this story was Yui, or as the light novel readers will say, "Yui cry bait." I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, a few episodes dedicated to that should have been good enough, but the worst part was that so much of the airtime was dedicated to Yui and Hachiman together, implying that they will be together in the end. But no, in the last-gasp effort, Studio felt realized that this story was entirely about Yukino and quickly wrapped it up towards the end with no buildup at all of the chemistry between Yukino and Hachiman.
Art: (10/10) As for art, I can describe it as "unnecessarily beautiful." We saw it with the drastic art style change in Zoku: the subtle facial expressions from the characters, ESPECIALLY Yui, the sunset shading on all of the characters' faces and setting, even the iconic finger/hand animations, all of it is unnecessarily beautiful. I understand the fantastic animation is to bring out how tangible the emotional scenes are between the character interactions, so I'm going to keep the art at a 10 because of how effectively Studio feel pulled it off, but it still doesn't take away the fact that Oregairu is unnecessarily beautiful.
Sound (9/10): I think out of all the OSTs even from the first and second seasons, this season definitely stood out the most. The opening and ending themes doesn't only sound good with the seiyuu singing spectacularly, but the lyrics as well have a special connection to the message of the anime itself. Take the example from the opening theme: "One after another, Happy ever after, At the end credits roll, What I hoped for, Won't appear on the screen, No matter how long I wait" just talking about how Oregairu needs a conclusion, but it won't damn right be a happy one. I also can't mention sound direction without talking about the ending theme. The cherry ending theme with both Yukino and Yui sings speaks volumes, especially when the more mellow single seiyuu versions of the ending theme plays in the more emotionally impactful scenes. And oh, do those scenes hit like a truck(-Kun)!
Besides the openings and endings, the rest of the OST was also really good, even at times calling back to some old themes and OSTs from the past Oregairu seasons.
Enjoyment (4/10): All in all, I can say that Oregairu Kan could have been great. The art and sound direction were impeccable, the past two seasons had good buildup to this point, all for it to be "destroyed" in the final season, the "Kan" as you can say. It wasn't bad by any means, the emotional scenes hit hard, the art was outstanding, the soundtrack was great, and everything was wrapped up very nicely. I'm just saying that this season could have been so much better.
Now would you excuse me while I go read the light novel so I could have a better experience with a writer that actually knows how to write a good buildup to a good conclusion.
My Equation Total Overall: 4/10
