Shownotes
Welcome to Manga Monday!
This week we're diving into My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected, Wataru Watari's light novel series better known as OreGairu, with a manga adaptation by Io Naomichi.
Hachiman Hikigaya is a high school loner who's turned cynicism into an art form. He thinks youth is a lie, friendship is performative, and romance is a scam. So naturally his teacher forces him into the Service Club, where he has to help other students with their problems alongside Yukino Yukinoshita, a girl who's brilliant, beautiful, and has the warmth of a freezer. Then there's Yui, the bubbly, kind hearted girl who genuinely wants to be friends with both of them.
What starts as a comedy about a bitter kid slowly becomes one of the most psychologically sharp character studies in the genre. Hachiman's self-sacrificing methods of solving problems by making himself the villain work, but they hurt everyone around him, and the series never lets him off the hook for it.
Three seasons of anime, 14 volumes of light novels, and over 10 million copies sold.
If you want a rom-com that actually interrogates what it means to connect with people, this is the one.
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