On Thursday, September 24, one of my favorite anime and shows period, the unwieldly named My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, concluded with its final episode. Its 37 episodes aired over the course of 7 years, with the first season in 2013, the second season in 2015, and the final season in 2020. The show closely follows a series of fourteen lite novels by Wataru Watari, which were published from 2011 to 2019. The topic of this post will be an interesting statement from Mr. Watari after he completed the final volume of the lite novel series – wherein he stated that with the conclusion of the series, he was able to close the book on his own time in high school.
Before reaching Mr. Watari’s passage from the end of the novels, I will briefly offer introduce the series. First, I will discuss the story of how I came to follow the series. Second, I will give a very short and broad interview of the show to help place Mr. Watari’s quote in context.
This article contains no meaningful spoilers about the show. For those of you who are interested in seeing the show – which I recommend – you can watch for free by following the link to the show’s page on Crunchyroll in the concluding section of this article.
How I Came to Watch My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU
I only watched the first season a few months after it aired on a whim when it showed up on my free on demand cable service, having ignored it initially because of the show’s ridiculous name. To be sure, these sorts of absurdly long titles are not uncommon for Japanese lite novels. Perhaps they play better in Japan – there the series also goes by the shorter name Oregairu. The full name is sometimes translated here as “My Teen Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected” – which is also the name of the show’s final episode. They should have gone with the second name – who in his or her right mind would use SNAFU in a title (I look around shiftily). But I digress.
I came away impressed with the first season of a surprisingly good and serious show. While it did have its comedy, mixed with drama, there was actually little in the way of romance, despite the word featuring prominently in all configurations of the title.
The second season picked up where the first left off, but with a new studio at the helm, Studio Feel replacing Brain’s Base. The second season had a far more serious tone, and it presented a substantial increase in quality from the already good first season, taking its place as one of the better anime series of the decade. However, the second season ended in the middle of a dramatic conversation, and it was not at all clear whether the TV series would receive a final season to coincide with the lite novels that had then yet to be written.
Finally, a third and final season of the show was announced for the spring of 2020. I was ready to finally see the conclusion of the series when the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak caused the final season to be pushed back. It was not pushed back for too long, however, beginning about three months after its originally scheduled start, just in time for anime’s summer season.
General Overview of Themes in My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU
Because this is a topic I will likely return to down the line, I will keep this general overview brief, only providing enough context to discuss the author’s interesting line at the end of the final lite novel.
As its name suggests, the show takes place in a high school. The school is situated in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture, something the show is loath to let viewers forget. The main three characters are all second-year high school students, which is the equivalent of a high school junior in the United States since Japanese high schools cover grades 10-12. The main character, Hachiman Hikagaya, begins the show as a socially awkward loner who insists that everything around him is fake and worthless and that his being isolated is a way of being above it all. One of his teachers, after having seen one self-satisfied essay too many, forces him to join a “Service Club” that she created, wherein the members of the, Service Club help other students with their problems. The Club began with only one member, Yukino Yukinoshita, a very intelligent young lady who, despite her confidence and snarky lines, was even more socially stunted that Hachiman. They would eventually be joined by the kind and bubbly Yui Yuigahama, who, unlike them, fit in to social groups in the school.
The first season dealt primarily with Hachiman and Yukino solving problems, sometimes forthrightly and sometimes with Hachiman’s underhanded methods, which eventually made him rather unliked. In season 2, they began to disagree about how to solve problems, with Hachiman defying the image that Yukino had of him. The end of the season had the main trio trying to recalibrate their relationship and determine what exactly it was they were all looking for.
The final season takes place in the aftermath of the main trio’s first attempts to be honest, and finally reaches the “romantic” aspect of the series, with the resolution, or lack thereof, of the love triangle, or square, depending on how you look at another character.
On the whole, it is not unique in being a show about growing up. Its main themes, in the end, confront whether relationships based on pretense are enough, or whether the only worthwhile relationship is grounded in something genuine, whatever that may be. It deals with relying on others, and the good, bad, and complicated things that can arise from that. It embraces the immaturity of its main characters, lurking behind their facades, as they come to ask and try to answer these questions. In the end, a chapter of their lives is opened and closed, and the show ends conclusively while setting its cast off toward a future unknown.
Wataru Watari’s Personal Take on Concluding the Series
Mr. Watari spent nine years of his life writing fourteen lite novels about a single year in the life of a cast of high school students. As we know, the show was converted into an anime series and spun off into several video games that were only released in Japan. The series would be a defining achievement for any lite novel author, and it assuredly was for Mr. Watari. Over the years, his writing pace slowed, and there were several long gaps in the release of the final volumes of the novels, which likely played a role in the five-year gap between the second and third seasons of the anime series.
Although I have only read the first volume of the novels, and volumes 11-14 have not yet been published in the United States, I came across a quote from the final volume of the novels that had been translated to English on a blog, frogkun.com (link to the post – but note the link has extensive spoilers regarding the end of the series). Mr. Watari wrote the following in his afterword to the final novel:
It was so long ago when I was in my second year of high school, but now it feels like my second year of high school has finally ended. It was the longest year of my life.
-Wataru Watari from the end of vol. 14 of My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, as reported by Frog-kun of frogkun.com
While I do not personally relive my school years to that degree, there is something universal in Mr. Watari’s parting thoughts. While all of our school experiences were different, those years from middle school through college, and sometimes even earlier, leave an indelible impression on one’s life and development. In hindsight, one can readily look back and think of all the things that he or she could have done differently. The problem, of course, is that the knowledge of all those things that could have been done or handled differently comes with wisdom gained in later years and, indeed, hindsight. Those things one may regret can linger, for some more than others, and in certain cases like Mr. Watari’s, leave the chapter of one’s youthful experiences open well into adulthood. While I need not delve into it here, Mr. Watari’s work itself includes an adult character who seems to be suffering from the very affliction he attributed to himself.
Now it Feels Like My Article is Finally Ending
I will conclude by thanking Mr. Watari for spending so much of his life crafting the story that served as the base for one of the finest anime series of the past decade. In so doing, he carefully created many memorable characters and treated his own cast humanely as they navigated some eventful months in their youth, with many ups and downs. Mr. Watari himself surely had many ups and downs finishing the work and dealing with pressure in the form of expectations from readers and viewers as well as editors, publishers, and animation studios. It is good to hear that through the experience, as he poignantly stated, he was able to close the book on the longest chapter of his life, one that started when he himself was a second-year high school student many years ago.
I obviously wholeheartedly endorse the series. For those of you who are interested in watching for yourselves, all three seasons are available to stream from Crunchyroll (be sure to start with “My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU at the bottom – “TOO” is the second season and “Climax” at the top is the final season). I will have more to say about the series and specific events in it at a later date here at The New Leaf Journal.
Finally, in light of an earlier article that I wrote, I must note that I did watch the end credits after the final episode.
Related Content
January 2, 2021 Update: On December 29, 2020, I published a list of anime recommendations from 2011-2020. I selected My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU as one of the recommendations and discussed why on that list. See Content.
