ANIME: SNAFU Review Again

I re-watched SNAFU again. And once again, I am struck by how uncharacteristically honest it is. My Teenage Love Romantic Comedy is Wrong, As I Expected (aka SNAFU) is a master work on independence in a culture where people pretend to fit in. This is really important to understand Japan's hive-mind mentality. Refusing to fit in, and making a show about characters that refuse, is a big deal. It's an even bigger deal because it won anime of the year for each season it ran, and remains popular and talked about. Its a lot of pressure on the author since he was only just finishing the novels as they were turned into anime in the second season. He has to write a lot more for there to be a third season, particularly when considering where its been left at this point.

And where its been left is rather important. In traditional teenage boy anime, a guy chooses from several girls and they all fawn over him and their love triangle (or bigger mess) provides drama. In American drama, the boy will sleep with each of them under various circumstances, but they don't even kiss in Anime. They'll see her boobs, but they won't kiss, because public displays of affection are largely taboo. Meanwhile, hourly rental hookup hotels, literally called Love Hotels, allow couples a private place to get it on, often in the middle of town. You pay cash or use a credit card, the machine drops the key. No interaction with other people. No witnesses. That's very different from here. In a traditional anime, he'd pick one of the girls and she'd be his, it fades to black, that's the end of the show. Done.

In SNAFU? I like to think that the bad end is in the title and that this story is a memoir from the future reflecting on his high school years rather than a developing romance. I think his commentaries reveal this in a subtle way.

I hate nice girls. Just exchanging pleasantries with them makes me curious,and texting each other makes me feel restless. If I get a call, for the rest of the day, I’ll keep checking my call history with a stupid grin on my face. But I know the truth. They’re just being nice. Anyone nice to me is nice to others too. But I always find myself on the verge of forgetting that. If the truth is a cruel mistress, then a lie must be a nice girl. And so, niceness is a lie. I would always hold expectation. I would always misunderstand. At some point, I stopped hoping. An experienced loner never falls for the same trap twice. A lone warrior, surviving hundreds of battles. When it comes to losing, I’m the strongest. That’s why, no matter what happens, I will always hate nice girls.
Hachiman Hikigaya (My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU)

He's not going to get either girl. Its always been about him learning to fail, and to accept that failure, and even with him opening up to them a little during the latter parts of the second season, I still think he'll get stomped anyway. This is about how he learns and justifies his dead eyes, frequently mocked during the entire course of the story. This is not a story where he'll succeed. It's never been about success. That's a very unusual situation for a show for teenagers. He isn't supposed to succeed. There's no happy ending. In this way, it's a more Asian story than we typically see with love comedies. In Asia, all stories are tragic, merely reminding you how awful life is, and the moments of beauty always cursed by pain.