Aharen-san Is Indecipherable

(For anyone coming from the anime and want to start with the manga-only content, you can start with chapter 68.) Aharen-san wa Hakarenai is a mix of comedy, wholesomeness, and a little romance that may not appeal to everyone but very much appeals to me. The premise of Aharen-san wa Hakarenai is simple. Both Raidou Matsuboshi and Reina Aharen are two characters who both start off having trouble making friends at their new high school. Raidou for being tall, and imposing with his stoic face. Aharen for being shy due to having issues at a previous school for people avoiding her for having a habit of gettingtoo physically close to friends. Raidou and Aharen happen to be put in the back corner of the classroom, hit it off with Raidou accepting Aharen despite her quirks, and they slowly become BFFs. Aharen-san wa Hakarenai at its core is a quirky comedy story with most of the comedy around the main duo. Reina Aharen is... quite different. She's very stoic and blunt, initially starting off talking so softly that almost no one can hear her, with Raidou trying to think of creative ways just to consistently interact with her. She's also openly willing to cling to Raidou's arm when walking together, and will walk into school in weird ways either with her hair sticking up or just wearing some outfit that's kind of out there. Raidou himself is definitely weird as well. On the surface he's similar to Aharen, a stoic and deadpan but ultimately nice open-minded guy. However his open-mindedness harbors a VERY vivid imagination. A lot of the humor has Raidou essentially making up some strange story in his head about Aharen whenever she walks up to him in an unexpected way. For example, if she were to walk in with her hair all messy he would assume she's secretly a metal band singer complete with hand banging. After his personal fanfiction of the chapter is over, Aharen proceeds to immediately correct him on what's really going on, which is usually something pretty normal. A good amount of the comedy is around the deadpan quirkiness of the two's interactions. A good amount of your enjoyment of the series will be if you can handle their quirks for 160+ chapters. Thankfully I quite enjoyed their quirky interactions since the comedy is very unique. The unique comedy isn't limited to those two though. There's a decent amount of likable and funny side characters who take part in the quirkiness. To give an example, there's a chapter where every character interacts with each other like they're in a dramatic play that persists till the end of the chapter. There's a teacher character who seems to enjoy the "poignancy" of Raidou and Aharen always being physically close together that she gets constant nosebleeds from seeing. While Raidou has the highest amount of vivid fantasies, a few side characters match him in turns of how imaginative these fantasies turn out. If the series was just this comedy I think it'd just be pretty good. However what makes Aharen-san wa Hakarenai amazing and my current favorite manga title is the surprising amount of excellent wholesomeness. As early as chapter 1, one of the major themes of the series is communication and friendship, despite someone's quirks. After Raidou accepts Aharen despite her initial fear of scaring him off, Aharen gives a direct, genuine heartfelt thanks of Raidou accepting her with a blush on her face. This was the moment that really hooked me on the series. While not as frequent as the comedy, Raidou and Aharen consistently mutually giving each other little heartwarming exchanges on how much they appreciate being around each other, and always trying their best to give back to the niceness the other did, is what really makes me love this manga and kept me hooked chapter to chapter. The wholesome friendship themes are not limited to the main duo either. A recurring female side character, Riku, who appears later on in the manga, has similar desires like Aharen to want to make friends but goes through own mini-arc of enthusiastically appreciating the little moments of hanging out with others. There's a very late chapter about how a certain character is hiding her interests from other friends for fear of being judged. However, through a pep talk from someone else, not only was this character able to publicly sharely the interest with no shame, that characters' friends ended up making a new hobby. These are just a few examples but there's plenty of wholesome side arcs among the various characters in the story. I mentioned at the beginning that there's a little romance in the series. While minor compared to the comedy and friendship, this aspect is still done excellently. The main duo actually get in a relationship relatively early in the series, a huge upgrade compared to other slice of life and even more romance focused series. There's no harem stuff, no wimpy simpy main character, and the couple is fairly communicative. One thing that people may consider a flaw is that since romance is a minor aspect of this series, there's not much overt development or drama. In fact the main duo's interactions are mostly the same as when before they got together: the mix of quirky comedy and wholesome interactions, and they take their relationship kinda slow. However, this was not an issue for me as there were more subtle ways on how the relationship changed their interactions, which adds on an extra layer of excellent wholesomeness. There is a later chapter where Aharen lightly giggles about how she was able to finally get a reaction out of Raidou since he's generally very stoic. There is also a chapter around the common "indirect kiss" trope in many anime and manga series. Since the couple are already together at this point, this indirect kiss part just makes it a goofy aspect to their relationship, instead of the usual cringe jokes usually done in harem romance series. But that's not to say the romance doesn't have an arc. Far from it. The end of the manga has an amazing conclusion to the romance, in one of my favorite chapters in the manga, which is saying a lot cuz I have a lot of ones I really like. I've gushed a lot about this series, but it's not without its flaws. As much I generally love the comedy, I unfortunately thought Raidou's imagine spots got a bit too repetitive and predictable as the series went on. The other recurring jokes have enough variation where I still thought they were hilarious, but Raidou's imagine spots ended up getting a sigh instead of a laugh from me more often than not. It's unfortunate since Raidou is a cool guy and has some great jokes not related to imagine spots. It's to the point where I skimmed pages where it was just more of his typical imagination stuff and only just looked at the goofy Aharen outfits. I'm not into the whole 'trap' (aka male -> female crossdressing) joke thing, so when a character was introduced purely for the trap factor I was heavily annoyed. This is unfortunate since that character is actually likable enough otherwise. While we're on the topic, while I ended up not minding the middle school side characters, they easily could have just been limited to 3-5 chapters at most. They were easily the weak links as far as recurring characters go. Even with these flaws, they do not prevent Aharen-san wa Hakarenai from easily becoming a personal "peak fiction" of mine. It has just about everything I want: * Really unique and goofy comedy that has almost none of the typical overused tropes of many comedy in anime and manga. * Really simple yet wholesome themes around friendship and being yourself. * A couple that gets together relatively early enough to have actual romance screentime. * Very solid main duo who could carry the manga on their own. * Mostly likable recurring side characters that give some nice variety of interactions and jokes. Really the only thing that could have made this series better if there was a whole arc about the characters being college or even adult age. I've watched and read so much Japanese fiction; I'm done with the country simping for high school stories. The icing on the cake for me is that Reina Aharen, the main heroine, is now my personal favorite anime and manga character. She embodies all the glowing praise I have for this manga: delightfully unique and weird, hilarious, wholesome development, and good interactions with every character. If you're interested in the series based on the premise, I would suggest trying out the first 3-5 chapters. If you like it and don't mind seeing 160+ chapters of similar content, just with more characters and romance added on as the series goes, I highly recommend it.