Haganai I Don't Have Many Friends Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Haganai I Don't Have Many Friends Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 14, 2013

Anime about misfit high school students are so common that some cynics might be predisposed to think that there are absolutely no well adjusted teenagers in Japan at all. Typically these anime play on the idea of the lonely outsider, and they quite frequently utilize that conceit to construct predictable, if at times sweetly comic, portrayals of the hazards of trying to fit in. And certainly anyone who’s managed to survive the sometimes brutal world of high school can relate to kids who aren’t “cool” or “popular” but who still have something to offer and who certainly deserve their own shots at happiness. And so on the surface, Haganai I Don’t Have Many Friends would seem to be just another entry in this ever lengthening list of similar series, and in fact if we’re being completely honest, there’s no denying a certain—well, familiarity to much of what this show has to offer. We have two initial misfits who are on the outside of high school social acceptance for different reasons. Kodaka is a young boy who’s a recent transfer student to what is apparently a Catholic prep school (one of this series’ unusual elements) called St. Chronica’s Academy. He’s shunned for a couple of reasons, the least understandable being his somewhat Caucasian appearance, which includes blondish-brown hair, due to his so-called “half breed” genesis. Perhaps at least a little more understandable is the fact that his appearance led to fear from other schoolmates on his first day of school, which in turn made a nearby girl just hand over her textbook to Kodaka when he discovered he had forgotten to bring his own, which then led to rumors of him being a textbook thief. Such are the misinformational ways of high school, as many can attest. The other main outcast of the series is a young girl named Yozora who doesn’t have the appearance “issues” that Kodaka does, but whose often sullen attitude virtually screams “leave me alone”, which the rest of the school is only too happy to do. An unexpected meeting of these two loners leads to the formation of a new group of kids who are bound together by their lack of social graces. Sound familiar? Of course it does, but rather surprisingly, Haganai I Don’t Have Many Friends manages to be reasonably amusing quite a bit of the time, even as it treads territory that most anime fans will have seen a thousand times before.

Haganai I Don’t Have Many Friends seems to hint at being a harem anime in its opening moments and especially with regard to its credits sequence, where Kodaka is surrounded by a bunch of scantily clad and quite buxom females. And while there’s no denying that Haganai I Don’t Have Many Friends indulges in quite a bit of (mostly pretty innocent) fan service, the series is almost an anti-harem outing, if for no other reason than that Kodaka is basically incapable of interacting comfortably with anyone, let alone girls. The other interesting aspect to this admittedly formulaic set up is that fact that the two main female characters, Yozora and Sena, the seemingly perfect “popular” girl who turns out to be more troubled than first blush would indicate, can’t stand each other and spend many episodes in fairly humorous screaming matches.

As familiar as the general setting and plot machinations of Haganai I Don’t Have Many Friends may be, the tired aspects of the show are at least somewhat offset by a gaggle of fairly colorful characters. While Kodaka narrates the show and the series would seem to be told from his point of view, he actually is something of a cipher. He seems to exist almost solely as a bridging character to unite the disparate supporting cast, a group which regularly provides more interest and humor. We first meet Yozora when Kodaka stumbles in on her talking to her “air friend” (meaning imaginary), where she’s forsaken her usual scowling demeanor for something approaching affability. Though she’s initially very embarrassed and therefore petulant about having been discovered, it’s obvious that she sees a fellow traveler in Kodaka, especially when an apparently innocent comment by him gives her the brainstorm to found her own school club for misfits, since neither she nor Kodaka feel comfortable joining clubs that have been in existence for years and where the social interactions are already well defined among the participants.

Once Yozora establishes the so-called Neighbors Club and recruits Kodaka as the first (initially unwilling) member, they are soon joined by Sena, and then in short order by several other rather weird characters. These include Sister Maria, one of the ostensible teachers at the Catholic school but who is in fact a child; potty mouthed Rika, an obviously intelligent girl whose mind nonetheless tends to wander pretty consistently toward the salacious side of things; Yukimura, a young boy whose feminine leaning behaviors have made him the object of ridicule; and Kobato, Kodaka’s little sister who is suffering from the impression that she may be one of the undead. There’s obviously ample material here for both humor and pathos, and if Haganai I Don’t Have Many Friends tends to traffic more exclusively in the former, it thankfully never casts disparaging glances at its own gaggle of misfits.

The series obviously is not very revolutionary in any large way, though it has its rather unexpectedly subversive moments. Some of these have to do with the unusual Catholic setting of the school. When Yozora is trying to convince Kodaka about the worthiness of starting their own club, she talks about how using a bunch of quasi-altruistic buzz words in their club application will speed the process. Kodaka is surprised by this, and Yozora, pointing to a statue of a saint, goes off on an atheistic rant that is like the anime version of Karl Marx waxing philosophical about the “opiate of the masses”. The overall territory of Haganai I Don’t Have Many Friends is indeed one which has been well traveled, but little viewpoints like this keep this series at least marginally fresh in dribs and drabs.

Haganai I Don't Have Many Friends Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Haganai I Don't Have Many Friends is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. While this series doesn't have an exactly innovative design aesthetic (where are all the characters' noses?), it's a rather nice looking outing with very bright, bold primary colors and crisp line detail, all of which pops quite nicely on this high definition presentation. The series utilizes some nice multi-plane techniques that also add a nice dimensionality, at least in small doses (scenes of the girls walking through the forest have clear depth of field with varying planes of depth). There are some transitory banding issues that crop up over the course of the thirteen episodes in this set, but overall this is a very nice looking presentation.

Haganai I Don't Have Many Friends Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Haganai I Don't Have Many Friends features both the original Japanese language track delivered via Dolby TrueHD 2.0 and an English dub delivered via Dolby True HD 5.1. Aside from the obvious language difference, the English dub is manifestly more "present" than the Japanese, with overall much more aggressive amplitude, and much more forward mix of both music and effects. The 5.1 mix also appends a much more noticeable low end than the Japanese version, as should probably be expected. However, both of these tracks are trouble free, with excellent fidelity and rather surprisingly wide dynamic range.

Haganai I Don't Have Many Friends Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

(So as not to beat a dead horse, I am going to start merely listing the participants in FUNimation commentaries. My opinions on these chat- fests are now well documented, so I don't need to keep repeating them. If I run across an unusual or unusually informative commentary, I'll note it appropriately.)

• Episode 02 Commentary features Jad Saxton, Whitney Rodgers, and Jerry Jewell.


• Episode 08 Commentary features Zach Bolton, Alison Viktorin and Kristi Kang.


• Blu-ray and DVD Spots (1080p; 3:40)


• Original Commercials (1080p; 00:50)


• Promotional Videos (1080p; 2:36)


• TV Spots (1080p; 00:49)


• Textless Opening Song "Zannenkei Rinjinbu" (1080p; 1:31)


• Textless Closing Song "Watashi No Ki-Mo-Chi" (1080p; 1:32)


• U.S. Trailer (1080p; 1:34)


• Trailers for other FUNimation Entertainment Releases

Haganai I Don't Have Many Friends Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Probably every anime fan out there has seen some iteration of Haganai I Don't Have Many Friends before, probably more than once. And so anyone coming to this enterprise should not have any rose colored glasses that they're about to experience some kind of groundbreaking new series that is going to completely reinvent the genre. But that said, the series is really rather nicely done, with some generally funny characters that have some enjoyable misadventures with each other. I frankly may have simply had my expectations set so low going into this show that I was pleasantly surprised, but as predictable and formulaic as this show is, for undemanding viewers at least it still comes Recommended.