DGFischer

Due to HIDIVE's selective offerings, I could watch only seasons one and this third, entitled My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU: Climax.  I will offer due diligence to find that season in between, seeing that much has happened, almost to the point that the main characters were slightly altered.  Well, not so much Hachiman Higigaya.  He remains the cheerless curmudgeon.  He seems to be love-resistant.

Leave it to season three to finish off the cynic.  Well, maybe, maybe not.  But the guy definitely is reeling.

The plot of the third go-round is a tale of the Service Club doing something ambitious, organizing a prom for the school.  Check that, toss the Service Club ... Yukino is 100% committed to doing all this planning by herself.  She needs nobody’s help.  And this means Hachiman in particular.  Yukino has something to prove to her mother and older sister.  Yukino would love to inherit her father's business position, and elder Haruno wouldn't mind so much.  Mother is the hard person to convince.  Organizing the prom will be the evidence that Yukino will be competent in the family business.

Hachiman needs to be of some help to show his devotion to Yukino (something he will deny through all 12 episodes).  So he organizes a 'dummy' prom, to help the PTO see that the Yukino-version is far preferable to Hachiman's.  Yukino misunderstands Hachiman's intentions (Hachiman never explains ... why not?).  The confusion and complexities of the relationships of Hachiman, Yukino, and Yui leads to one tear-fest after another.

Episode 12 does much to simplify this 'love triangle which will never happen.'  Yui finds she has fallen in love with Hachiman, but she understands that the cynical Hachiman and the morose Yukino are a perfect match.  And Yui's friendship with Yukino will stand the test of time.  And Hachiman seems to have reservations about his former cynicism.  And while Yukino confesses her love, Hachiman pauses; love is a complex system for him.  But there are clues that the crumble, if it happens will have to come up in some OVA, or not at all ... we know how everyone feels.

I rarely mention anything about the voice actors, but SNAFU begs for the highest recommendations for Hachiman's Takuya Eguchi.  I had the chance with Climax to hear the English-dub.  The dubbed version lacked most of the cynical humor of Hachiman and the gang.  The Japanese has the right bite to the words.  Granted, you have to read like warp speed to take in all those nuances, but, sorry, Adam Gibbs was too soft a voice to reflect the cynical nature of the MC.

The music still reflects the solemn life of the loner, particularly the search for the friendship of Yui and Yukino.  While two varied personalities, these two are warming up as buddies.  Such tunes do much to mellow out the audience, and it matches well with the subdued color scheme SNAFU uses in …  at least two of the three seasons.

For now, I go on a quest to find the straying season two.  So much needed to happen in three's first episode to produce a series of 'what happened?'  Love was hard to find in SNAFU, even though you would easily see how close the members of the Service Club became.  Plus, it just might explain the new member Iroha Isshiki.  Now, there’s a girl with issues!