With the announcement that a third season of the hit school romance drama Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru, aka Oregairu or My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, is coming, I’ve been re-watching the first two seasons. On the surface a harem anime (anti-harem? post-harem?) about a cynical boy who avoids all social situations yet finds himself forced to join a club dedicated to helping other students deal with the pressures of fitting in in high school, its a great show filled with characters who can teach a lot about Japan and life is general. Let’s look at the Oregairu anime.
First, there’s a scene where Hachiman explains that the character for “person” in Japanese (人), which is written by hand so that the left side is being propped up by the right side. The idea of “person” is that no one can stand up without being supported by other people and that it’s unavoidable that some will rely on (cause inconvenience to) others more than is fair. It’s the willingness by those others to be sacrificed at times that makes people and society possible.
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In another scene, Hachiman and Iroha are in a meeting where the student council constantly make use of buzzwords in English, like “brainstorming,” “logical thinking,” “outsourcing” and “win-win,” while poor Hachiman and Iroha sit there not knowing what anyone is saying. This is something that happens a lot in Japan: people who want to be seen as intelligent, peppering their speech with fancy English or French words, to the point that no one knows what they’re saying. Japanese politicians do this a lot, borrowing the British idea of a “manifesto” (an outline of what the party plans to do if elected), despite this word not being understood by most. The issue of too many foreign loan words being imported into Japanese is such a problem that there are specific katakana dictionaries for these words.
Finally, we learn about the concept of 八方美人 happo-bijin or beauty-in-eight-directions, which is someone who projects their best face to everyone, trying desperately to be liked. The character who does this is Yui Yuigahama, who tries to please everyone and have the maximum number of friends possible. I used to do this too, fret about whether people liked me, until Mrs. J-List who pointed out what I was doing. Now I don’t care much whether people like me or not, and they probably like me more than they did before.
What have you learned from the Oregairu anime? Tell us on Twitter!
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