It’s a new anime season, so I’ve put my anime blogging hat on to write about the best new series you should be watching this season. One show I’m enjoying immensely is Aharen-san wa Hakarenai (aka Aharen Is Indecipherable), an adorable and relaxing slice-of-life anime about a socially awkward smol girl and her male classmate who wants to be friends with her. It’s a cute and wholesome anime and one that can teach us a lot about how relationships work in Japan.
The Story of Aharen-san wa Hakarenai
Raido Matsuboshi is your average Japanese boy starting his high school life, determined that his slightly scary face won’t get in the way of making friends, as happened in junior high. He turns to the tiny girl sitting next to him to make some pleasant conversation with her and…gets totally ignored. She is Aharen-san, a mysterious girl who seems unable to speak…but this is just her voice being too small to hear, because of her extreme shyness and anxiety. Raido tries several times to make a connection with Aharen-san but comes close to giving up… only to be surprised when she opens up to him.
It turns out that Aharen-san has two modes: distant and “cool” (in the sense of showing no emotion), or ultra-clingy and totally unaware of social boundaries. She doesn’t realize that hugging and invading a person’s personal space and forcing bento down someone’s throat aren’t normally done in polite society. She prepares for Raido to reject her because of her lack of proper social awareness, something that’s happened to her whenever she’s made friends in the past, but Raido tells her he doesn’t mind her social awkwardness, and so they become instant best friends.
The anime is based on the popular web-based manga by Asato Mizu published by Shounen Jump+ and was animated by Felix Film, who also brought us Nekopara. The manga creator is from Okinawa, where Aharen is a common family name. Asato Mizu is the creator of Denki-gai no Hon’ya-san, so if you liked that series, you’ve got one more reason to watch!
Aharen-san is the Relaxing Slice-of-Life Anime of The Season
The great anime scholar Marin Kitagawa describes the slice-of-life genre as “Like, nothing happens, but that’s what’s so great about it. It’s nice and peaceful, pretty much. The point is to enjoy the characters’ tranquil, everyday lives. Slice-of-life stories make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.” In Japanese, the word for the slice-of-life genre is nichijou-kei.
I predict that Aharen-san wa Hakarenai will win the crown for the most relaxing anime of the season. Every scene of the first episode is peaceful and enjoyable, filling us with inner calm as we watch the relationship between the two characters unfold. It’s also a hilarious anime that had me laughing hard enough to wake Mrs. J-List, sleeping on the sofa beside me.
Also…I want to eat Aharen-san’s bento so badly.
The Archetypes of Awkwardness in Anime Characters
One reason we love watching anime is that it’s filled with characters who are relatable to us in one way or another. While we’d all secretly love to be super competent and heroic like Kirito from Sword Art Online, in reality we’re all struggling with various doubts and fears, which are well represented in the anime we watch. Some of the main archetypes of “awkward” anime character tropes include:
- They have extreme social anxiety and can’t easily talk with others (Komi-san, Tomoko from Watamote).
- They’ve got a scary manner that makes others hold them at bay (Ryuji from Toradora, Kodaka from Haganai, “Sadako” from KimiTodo).
- They’re infected with chunibyo, the “8th grader’s disease” that causes them to create internal fantasy worlds as a coping mechanism for dealing with the stresses of the world (Okabe from Steins;Gate, all the characters in Chu2koi).
- They’re “KY” and functionally unable to interact socially, which is common in kuudere character types. KY is short for kuuki yomenai or “can’t read the air,” describing someone who can’t pick up on the subtle social cues that are all around us.
- A full-on NEET, who has pulled back from society and has trouble leaving their house (Tatsuhiro from Welcome to the NHK, Moriko Morioka from Recovery of an MMO Junkie).
The core theme of the story is about how difficult it is to accurately measure the social distance between ourselves and others. Are we casual acquaintances or classmates, or actual friends? Are we close friends where sharing more personal information about ourselves is appropriate, or should we keep things slightly formal? These judgments are difficult to make under the best circumstances, but in Japan, where the language you use (formal or informal, using proper names with -san, or nicknames) literally shows how you judge your relation to the larger group, opening you to embarrassment if you get those judgments wrong. I’ve observed before that social interaction in Japan is a lot like the TCP/IP communications protocol that makes the Internet possible, but for humans.
A Chinese-Funded Anime?
In lieu of the standard “Copyright by the Aharen-san Production Committee” that we always see on anime series, the entire production for this show appears to have been done by Bilibili, the Chinese version of Crunchyroll that streams anime in mainland China. This is an interesting development as it shows how the anime industry is going through changes.
Of course, I’m in favor of any company that provides the funding for the anime that we all love and want nothing more than to have animators paid a proper salary. But as Chinese companies participate more and more in the anime industry, there are concerns it could lead to censorship issues, the way World’s End Harem blacked out huge parts of the screen to (presumably) avoid offending conservative elements in China. If Chinese companies are going to help fund the creation of anime, that’s fine, but I hope they have the sense to keep away from shows with more mature elements, so those of us living in “adult” countries won’t have to endure having the stories we love changed to suit Chinese streaming norms.
Thanks for reading this post about the new Aharen-san wa Hakarenai slice-of-life anime. Will you be tuning in? Tell us below, or chat with us on Twitter!
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