Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai

A month ago, transfer student Kodaka made a really, really bad first impression on his first day and is now widely regarded as a delinquent because of it. One day he overhears the normally standoffish Yozora uncharacteristically carrying on a conversation with someone who turns out to be an imaginary friend. Both soon admit that they have no friends and have trouble finding them, and both also admit that joining an existing club at this point would be an ineffective way to get them, so Yozora does the only logical thing: she starts a new club, one which will essentially be a place where friendless students can connect and make real friends. Surprisingly, the first person to respond to their advertisements for the Neighbors Club is Sena Kashawizaka, the seemingly perfect daughter of the school's Chancellor, who always has a gaggle of boys in tow but claims that she has had difficulty actually making friends because of that. Yozora and Sena instantly get on each other's nerves despite Kodaka's efforts to mediate.

This light novel-based series really, really wants to be the next Oreimo, and is even made by the same branch of AIC as Oreimo. While this one's concept has nothing to do with otaku, its more conventional concept is an interesting one which has even more potential: the notion of creating a club for the specific purpose of allowing friendless people to make friends, something which could easily be inserted into just about any high school anywhere in the world. The discussions that Kodaka and Yozora have about forming friendships are also remarkably insightful.

The first episode shows two fundamental problems that limit this one's potential, however. The first is the presence of Sena as the club's third member. She was doubtless deemed necessary from a marketing point of view, as stories about the kind of true social rejects who would genuinely want/benefit from this kind of club simply wouldn't sell as anime (those type of stories seem to work much better in live action anyway), and she does seem to have a legitimate reason for wanting to join, but her perfection harms the integrity of the concept and the credibility of the story. That and opener scenes which suggest that Kodaka may end up being the only guy certainly raise the specter that the series will hedge in a harem direction.

The other and bigger problem is that the caliber of writing simply is not there, especially not compared to Oreimo. Insight is a plus but isn't enough. The writing makes the mistake of letting Kodoka become more a hanger-on than an active participant, does not make Yozora an interesting enough character, and does not even come close to getting the same kind of combative chemistry out of Sena and Yozora as Oreimo did out of Kirino and Kuroneko. This could improve over time, and the artistic merits are reasonable and the series does have a pretty cool closer, but already it is starting out a couple of steps behind.

Thanks to ANN