Haganai: I Don't Have Many Friends

tl;dr: A manga that has some really strong aspects, but is incredibly rushed towards the end so squanders quite a few of them. Haganai as about a group of high school students that don’t have any friends but really want to. They come together in what is officially known as the Neighbors Club, though really they don’t really have any sort of proper mission. They basically just hang out and occasionally do something with the vague pretense of “once we have friends having experience with this will be important”. It starts off pretty light hearted with a strong emphasis on comedy, though as it progresses itgets a lot heavier with a focus on character arcs and the development of bonds. The Neighbors Club ultimately has seven members. The protagonist, Kodaka, is a guy that’s pretty easy going and reasonably kind, but because he naturally looks like a violent delinquent bad rumors have always followed him around and resulted in people staying away from him. Yozora, the club president, is a girl that’s aloof with an incredibly sharp tongue and wits to match, who has a hard time getting along with pretty much anyone. Sena, the daughter of the headmaster, is a girl who’s always been naturally hyper competent, which combined with her being a somewhat spoiled and a bit of an airhead has resulted in her being pretty arrogant and looking down on everyone which causes people to either worship her or stay away from her. Rika is a girl who was given permission not to attend class because she’s a scientific genius and thus just sticks to herself doing fujoshi things. Yukimura is a guy that other guys have generally stayed away from due to how effeminate he is, and thus he wishes to become a true man by following in the steps of the famed delinquent Kodaka. Then there’s Kodaka’s chuuni little sister Kobato who is technically in middle school, but hangs out with the club anyway. And lastly, there’s Maria, a ten year old girl that despite acting even more immature than her age would suggest, is apparently a genius working as a school affiliated nun thus serves officially as the Neighbors Club advisor, though she got tricked into it. These seven are introduced pretty early on and though as the manga progresses a lot of side characters are thrown in, the journey of these seven remains the core. With such a varied cast, the manga is able to pull out a lot of varied but pretty consistently solid comedy. It also helps that all seven of them are very likable and interesting in their own ways. While a significant portion of the early parts of the manga is just the cast doing random things without any sort of sense of progression, it’s still enjoyable and works well in building up investment in the characters and their relationships. And though it doesn’t get too serious, it does manage to flesh out the cast considerably well. However, ultimately the manga changes tremendously, with the turning point being about 2/3 of the way in, which corresponds to roughly where the anime ended. After that it starts taking itself much more seriously. There’s still a good amount of comedy interspersed throughout, but the ratio is considerably less compared to what came before. There had been a lot of things that had been building up over time over the course of the manga that it tackles head on and it manages to hit some really strong emotional beats. The bond between Sena and Yozora is ultimately the highlight of the story and thanks to it being a key aspect of what I would consider the climax, the Christmas Party, the manga is able to be incredibly impactful when it needs to be. Still, the last third of the manga still felt incredibly rushed, with the last two volumes especially just being a blur. While the bond between Sena and Yozora overall did come across well, it still felt like it was moving too fast during key moments. The end game of the other bonds in the manga fared much worse and ultimately did not come across well. The key theme of the manga is the power of friendship and the different types of friendships that can develop, but only Sena and Yozora’s friendship was properly fleshed out. It touches upon similar dynamics for Rika/Yukimura and Kobato/Maria, but doesn’t spend enough time on them for them to come through properly. The manga also touches upon various other relationships, such as the relationships of the members with their parents or certain other students outside of the club, but these come through even worse, with it basically feeling like it’s just glossing over them despite how important it feels they should be. Romance is also a pretty big element of the manga throughout, but it hits a stand still at some point and then never progresses so it doesn’t really feel like it was given proper closure. It essentially indicates that progress will definitely occur after where the manga ends and isn’t subtle at all about it, so it’s not like it’s an open ending or anything like that. However, that doesn’t change that it never actually shows said progress so while logically it’s solid, at an emotional level it feels lacking. The writing in this final third also felt pretty off, with it jumping around a bunch and skipping over a lot, resulting in bizarre tone shifts and the atmosphere feeling pretty off at times. It really felt like this part needed to be twice as long in order to handle everything it was dealing with properly. Ultimately the story is still really good, but it feels really disappointing that it wasn’t told very well, resulting in the ending feeling pretty unsatisfying. The art was also disappointing. It starts off somewhat amateurish in quality with a pretty generic style. Over the course of the manga, the mangaka clearly improves and becomes capable of much more impressive art. However, the changed art style doesn’t really fit Haganai really well I feel, being a bit too rough and grungy. Furthermore, while the mangaka does clearly improve, and this is very evident in certain parts like colored illustrations, there are also a lot of parts later on that feel low effort and thus worse than the earlier parts of the manga.