What the fuck is wrong with you kids? Why can’t you let yourself embrace happiness for one goddamn second? Why you always gotta be martyring yourself for the sake of social conventions you don’t even fully understand? What is so wrong with having a good time with the people you love!?!?

Jesus cripes this show drives me crazy sometimes. The challenge to Yukino’s prom has been circumvented, yet our heroes are actually even more distraught than before, more certain they’re doomed to majestically drift apart. Kids, you’re only seventeen, you could fuck up for the next five years straight and still be ahead of the curve. And why would you take advice about relationships from a woman who’s destroyed all of her own personal bonds, anyway? Sometimes I feel like Ray dealing with Little Nephew when it comes to these anxious little devils, but it’s hard to fault the realism of teenagers thinking they don’t deserve love. I’m really hoping this is the low point of their journey, but I’ll be sticking by them regardless to the end. Let’s dive back into Oregairu!

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Alright Hachiman, what’s the plan? You’ve wormed your way back into the prom preparations, but how are you actually going to triumph over the full power of Yukino’s mother? You’ve largely dealt with children or peers in the past, using your understanding of adolescent psychology to manipulate the actions of those around you. That’s clearly not going to work on an adult woman with institutional power, who knows exactly what she wants, and has no obligation to entertain the whims of teenagers.

His one real piece of leverage, which he was quick to point out last episode, is that the PTO wants the student body to voluntarily abandon their plans. If he can rally the students to his side, he could possibly create a conflict of a scale that supersedes Yukimom’s authority. If he can turn this conflict into a liability for her reputation, he might just win out.

Of course, even if he does that, it’ll still be an embrace of the old, limited methods he’s always employed. In fact, as of this moment, it feels like all three of our heroes are backsliding. Hachiman’s once more acting as a lone avenger, Yukino is refusing to relinquish her pride, and Yui is sacrificing her own happiness for the sake of her friends. It’s clear they’re all trying to reach a certain level of independence as high school ends, but it was their mutual friendship that made them strong, and without it, they’re relying on the same old habits as before. Can they successfully stand apart while still embodying the honesty, empathy, and humility they’ve learned together? Let’s find out!

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be returning to Oregairu, where we most recently witnessed Yui once again martyring herself for the sake of her friends. Though she’s been attempting to pursue a relationship with Hachiman since the very beginning of the series, she also feels that Yukino actually needs Hachiman, and thus steps aside with a smile the moment her happiness inconveniences their relationship.

Yui’s actions aren’t really unexpected. She’s been sacrificing her happiness for her friends’ sake all series long, and one of Oregairu’s fundamental lessons is that personal growth doesn’t progress in a straight or orderly direction. Sometimes we take strange detours on the road to adulthood, and frequently we’ll find ourselves backsliding into habits we’d hoped to escape from. Hachiman himself has experienced this process a few times, but at least with Hachiman, there is generally the intent to improve. In contrast, it seems like Yui has fundamentally accepted that her needs will always come second to those she cares about, and has no plans to impose her desires on anyone. It’s a very Yui decision, but not a healthy one; kindness is a virtue, but everyone has the right to seek happiness, and Yui’s friends would ultimately want her to be happy as well.

Meanwhile, Yukino is busy locking horns with her mother, in what appears to be a proxy battle representing her overall quest for autonomy. I’m not sure how Hachiman plans to address this situation, but I’m content to watch the sparks fly as these battleships collide. Let’s return to the emotional battlefield of Oregairu!

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today, we are at long last returning to Oregairu, where things are currently going so well that it’s making me nervous. Normally, watching Oregairu is a sensation not unlike being tortured on a medieval rack, where each new episode’s awkwardness and drama stretches your limbs just a few centimeters past their breaking point. But recently, pretty much all of our principal characters have been getting along, and supporting each other with their various endeavors. What does this mean? 

It’s pretty simple, actually: these kids are finally growing up. Yukino is learning to set aside her brittle pride, Hachiman is becoming more comfortable admitting he cares, and Iroha is earnestly committing herself to the projects she’s passionate about. The crew have grown so much that they might not even need Yui to act as a social moderator anymore – a fact that Yui herself is keenly aware of. With the end of high school approaching, the artificial closeness of the Volunteer Service Club will soon end as well – and at that point, our stars will have to decide what they truly mean to each other. Let’s return to the rich drama of Oregairu!

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Oregairu is a special property for me. I started writing episodic criticism about anime all the way back in 2013, and Oregairu was one of the very first shows I tackled that spring. Presenting a young man with a deep well of sadness and a vastly inflated sense of his own perceptiveness, I saw my own teenage self – bitter, lonely, genuinely pretty smart, and desperately wondering why other people seemed so happy, but I felt so empty.

Hachiman, like many lonely boys, chose to comfort himself through pulling at the uncomfortable seams in the relationships of others, while claiming that he himself chose the “path of the bear,” and willfully accepted isolation. But seasons have come and gone since then, and Hachiman has learned that genuine human connection, as painful as it often seems, is the only thing truly worth seeking. Mutual understanding may be impossible, but in Yui and Yukino, he has found two friends who are at least willing to seek it with him, embracing the pain and the joy of leaving yourself truly vulnerable.

Yui is no stranger to this process; she’s been accepting the pain of seeking honest connection all along, even when Hachiman and Yukino’s emotional defense mechanisms led to them stonewalling or lashing out at her. Without Yui’s strength and kindness, Hachiman and Yukino would never have reached this point – but now, her tendency to sacrifice her own needs for those of her friends is leaving her incapable of pursuing the relationship she truly wants. Yui has had a crush on Hikki ever since they first crossed paths, but knowing what that relationship might do to Yukino, she’s learned to bite her lip and suffer alone.

Finally, Yukino’s problems are the most intractable of all of them. Though she has consistently struggled with the same sense of social isolation that haunted Hachiman, and felt similarly disdainful of her peers’ superficial relationships, unlike him, she chose to rebel through excellence. Acing every test and challenge placed before her, she made herself a living example of her brutal standards – a tactic she undoubtedly learned from her family life, where actively failing was out of the question, and only proving her isolated excellence allowed her to maintain any sense of autonomy. But now, just as Yukino is reaching out for genuine connection with her friends, that family has appeared again, demanding their prodigal daughter return to the fold. As we enter season three, Yukino’s family situation looms overhead, while the end of high school lurks in the distance. Can this fragile bond survive the upending of their entire social paradigm?

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