Oregairu 2.11

Two firsts in this final arc: a Hayama-centric episode, and seeing him angry for the first time. Someone saw him and Yukino together at her birthday party, and started a rumor that they are dating. That's the camel's straw, and Hayama reacts with a death glare. Normally the spirit of sunshine (is it a carefully constructed front, like Iroha's cute and clumsy act?), it's refreshing to see he's capable of fury. 

Yukino reacts precisely the way we'd expect ("Just like human trash to have their minds in the gutter"), but that's nothing new. Rather, it's another confirmation that there's a lot more to Hayato than meets the eye. Yumiko, for example, seems nothing more than a fairly superficial girl whose most attractive quality is that she's in love with a good guy, and that makes her a bit more likable. But we don't know Hayato hardly at all, and only know Yukino as well as Hachiman does. We don't know her poisonous family, for instance, and we never get inside her head the way we do Hachiman's. It is why the different characters, beloved protagonist aside, are so difficult to read: because we read them through Hachiman, and only through his experience. That is why it's much easier to understand the interactions of others than it is to understand your own. That's why we can only really guess at what Hayama's relationship with Yukino is or was like, since the latter refuses to discuss it. 

Back at summer camp, Hayato let slip he was into a girl with the initial Y, which could either be Haruno or Yukino. Uncharacteristically, he does not date and hasn't his entire time in highschool. "It just seemed like Hayato belonged to everyone," quips Iroha. But his family is close to the Yukino family, they've known each other for ages, and it's hard to imagine upper-class families like Hayato and Yukinoshita not considering that their daughter and son would make a good match. So there was probably something like grade-school crushes that went on. Normal and unremarkable. 

As the series has emphasized time and again, the trio and Hayama's clique are practically the same. Yumiko is trying desperately to keep her friendships from deteriorating after graduation, and the same desire animates Yukino, Yui, and Hachiman. How their friendship is expressed of course changes and will change constantly, but they want that friendship to stay the same, even (especially) Hachiman. Social sadists like Haruno don't help of course (she's dropped the nice act and is simply demeaning and belittling her sister now. It's ugly to watch. If someone I knew treated me like that I would cut them off completely - never meet or speak to them again. I don't know how much lower my opinion of her can get), but nobody wants what's beautiful to end. 

Because we never get inside anybody except Hachiman, we have to play his game of reading between the lines to understand other people. He notes (correctly, I'd argue) that Yumiko made other girls keep their distance from Hayama, so she was useful to him. Normal popular highschool boys would pursue relationships, so the reason Hayama isn't points in one direction: Yukino and Hachiman, whom Hayato claims to see as a hateful superior. In a roundabout way, he also tells Hachiman Yukino's in love with him (does he really not know yet? It's stamped all over her face, especially when they're alone together), and chooses the same college field as her. For her part, Yukino is courteous and polite to Hayama, the very model of what her parents drilled her to be, but is entirely genuine. Even so, there is no hint she feels for him anywhere near what she's feeling for Hachiman, and Hayama, who's probably in love with her, easily intuits this. Hence his statement that he does not intend to lose to Hachiman. 

On the other hand, all that could be entirely wrong and I'm completely missing the mark. It could be as simple as Hayama wanting to live up to his own expectations instead of his family's, just like Yukino, or some combination of the two. But there is no way to tell for sure. Other people are and remain a mystery. Hachiman is one of the most well-written characters I've encountered, and even he's a mystery, given his talent for self-sabotage and self-deception. How much more then, are characters (like Yukino) who are mediated through their interactions with Hachiman. It's the opposite tack Monogatari takes, where several arcs (Sodachi, Hanekawa, and Sengoku, for instance) get you into the very souls of the respective characters, yet it works perfectly to help us understand ourselves and others.

Oregairu 2.10

Despite Iroha being one of the most false-seeming of all characters, second only to Haruno, Hachiman is able to have extremely fun conversations with her, able to dissect her elaborate social constructions. He observes that she was trying to make herself look like a love-struck fool in order to win over Hayama (no good: shot down at once), and wonders aloud why she bothered: "You knew it wouldn't work." Clever camera angles emphasize that their two trains of thought are parallel without ever meeting, because what got her excited, worked up, and caught up in the moment was not a romantic time with the most popular boy in school, but overhearing Hachiman's plea to Yui and Yukino. In a rare second of openness, she reveals that "I'm starting to want the real thing too." And just like that, becomes a little less hateful. 

Of course, there's still plenty of facades left, and Hayama, whose intuitive intelligence continues to impress, had already picked up on that, claiming Iroha isn't really interested in him at all, right before moving into a entree-size compliment for Hachiman being able to change people around him, giving us a clue to his unstated opinion. Whether or not he's right, Iroha promptly tries to hide behind her own cynical, manipulative calculations - after all, it's familiar territory. At least some miniscule progress has been (maybe? Hopefully?) made, but odds are it's infinitesimal.

As if to emphasize that the whole Iroha Christmas party request was simply the stage to explore the trio's relationships, Yukino solves the dilemma in one sledgehammer dialogue, banters comfortably with her friend afterwards (who gives as good as he gets, Iroha being only a third wheel), and the event proceeds as a fait accompli. More important is the aftermath, where in the clubroom Yukino reaffirms her intent to fulfill Hachiman's request - something genuine. That room, bathed in rich evening light, is now the site of deep and comfortable communion between the three, which Yui intuits with a warm smile and Hachiman is just barely beginning to realize. Yukino has also realized it, and she is radiant in these scenes. It's like a long-lasting sigh of relief. The tension is (for now) out of the air. What's more, the chemistry between Hachiman and Yukino is incredible, and watching them together is matched only by Komachi and her brother, who have a small moment illustrating family at its best. 

Family at its worst is reintroduced by Haruno & Family. Seriously this woman is evil. Black heart incarnate. She manipulates Yukino by using her feelings for Hachiman to arrange an embarrassing meeting for her younger sister, culminating in Haruno getting her way and Yukino looking small and petulant by comparison. Her mother makes an appearance, and it is clear that Haruno exceeds expectations, whereas Yukino fails to meet them in her mother's eyes. 

Three episodes till the season (and probably series) finale, and the real work to be done is still relationality. Whereas the first season and a half focused on friendship, the rest seems destined to look at slow-burning love in the context of poisonous family - i.e. Yukino, Hachiman, and that domestic mess. The last two arcs demonstrated how easily bonds can be frayed and broken, and this last arc will be the biggest test yet. The three have moved beyond fear and insecurity with each other, and are growing in true freedom - but Haruno in particular is a paralyzing agent, easily capable (I hate that she's furiously smart and intuitive! I wouldn't hate her so much if she were dumb!) of ruining all the good progress that's been made.

Oregairu 2.9

If the tension had been slowly building over the past five episodes to Eight's climax, episode nine is a twenty-minute sigh of relief, concluding the conflict left over from the Tobe request and pointing towards the last material of this season: the relationship between Hachiman, Yui, and Yukino, particularly after their newly discovered watershed. 

Since the walls have come down, it's as if the three relationships have become new; there is a shy, slightly embarrassed awkwardness now, as if Yukino and Hachiman have entered unfamiliar territory. Naturally this does not apply to Yui, who is over the moon, letting us see what Yuigahama Unleashed is really like. She's everywhere, on cloud nine; effusively, honestly, purely happy. Even Hiratsuka-sensei is happier than we've ever seen her, and rewards her successful charges with a trip to a theme park; ostensibly to give them ideas for the winter festival from hell, but really just to give the three a chance to be together and have fun. 

And it's there that Yukino definitively declares she no longer intends to simply be a clone for her sister, but become someone different than Haruno, someone different from Hachiman. Hachiman finds this extremely attractive, and it's no surprise that the two have hit it off again, or rather that they've passed through a step-function, like when Hachiman told Yukino the truth about her sister in the first season. And in the most beautiful frame we've seen of her yet, she reaches out to her friend and asks, "Save me someday." What that means is unclear to anyone except Yukino, but even saying that, holding the conversation about her own weaknesses, would have been unimaginable just a moment ago. Her relationship with Hachiman is no longer defined by fear or insecurity, and vice versa (or close to it). These two make the perfect couple; they are fully themselves and compelling in their own right, but when they're together they come alive. Chemistry like this is rare. 

Not even Iroha is likely to throw a wrench into these works. Both Yukino and Yui notice her foxy behavior immediately, of course, and pick up that she's amusing herself by being flirty, pretending to be interested in Hachiman, but that will probably go nowhere. Hayama, the boy at whom highschool girls love to throw themselves, rejects her serious advances (if she's capable of taking anything seriously), and I doubt Hachiman has lost enough cynicism to be taken in by second-serving attentions. 

Oregairu 2.8

There have been a lot of beautiful, clever opening shots in Oregairu (Yui seated helplessly midframe between the Dolorous Duo comes to mind), but this one is currently #1: Hachiman sitting alone on a bench, allegedly in his element ("I'm a lone wolf!") but anxiously, desperately miserable. He's looking for a miracle, so of course who should show up but .... Hiratsuka-sensei. This is no teacher, she is guardian angel. She is ready to teach, and for the first time in his life, he is ready to learn. 

She asks him a leading question and gets an earful about the incompetence of the planning committee, but artfully steers it towards the heart of the matter: he, Yui, and Yukino. Hachiman has  a keen ability to know what people think, but "You don't understand how they feel. People's thoughts don't always mirror how they feel. That's why they sometimes make decisions that seem nonsensical. And that's why Yukino, Yui, and you jump to the wrong conclusions." In a way, almost identical to what Komachi told him earlier when they reconciled. This woman is incredible, but she's not finished yet. The problem in both circumstances (Christmas party and the two slugs) is the same: the human heart. Hachiman pleads ignorance before impenetrable mystery: "That's not something you can understand by thinking about it." He's promptly cut down to size: "Baka! If feelings could be processed like that, they'd be digitized long ago." He already knows the answer, and she helps him see that: "The last remaining answer, the one you can't calculate - that's human emotion." In a word, that is how you find a decision of the heart. 

Sensei is like a Yoda of the heart. It makes sense, according to her, that you try to avoid hurting someone by pushing them away - exactly what Hachiman and Yukino do to each other - though Yukino is better at it by far (probably because Hachiman has Komachi, who genuinely loves him). Not the pushing away, but the why of the pushing is what's important; because you care about the other. The alienation is simply from fear. Gently, forcefully, persistently, she works on persuading Hachiman to be genuine, and hence be vulnerable before the other. The vote count is in. Hiratsuka-sensei is best girl.

This is why Haruno and Sensei, who might at first glance seem similar - harsh, abrasive, interfering - are total, absolute opposites. Haruno's interventions are paralyzing. They cause friction, anger, resentment, and help make people - Yukino especially - worse. They do not help. Sensei on the other hand, is magic: everything she does and has done results almost infallibly in positive, stretching growth for her charges. Proof: she just did in five minutes what Evangelion spends its entire run working out - the pitfalls of human interaction and closeness with others, and why genuine friendship is still worth pursuing. This works in Oregairu because Eva takes place in a loveless, bleak world. There is no warmth, no gentleness, no connection there. Small wonder Shinji is so tempted by Instrumentality. Things are not quite so bad in Oregairu, and though it takes a sleepless night to ponder what he wants, Hachiman is able, thanks to Komachi and Sensei, to make a choice.

Everything about the Hachiman-Yui-Yukino confrontation is perfect. The writing, the direction, the framing, the acting, everything. Hands down it makes one of the most beautiful scenes in anime, in close contention with Re:Zero 18 and Clannad 2.18. And all of it appears to be for nothing. For the second time in his life (the first was for Komachi) Hachiman apologizes: he's acted like a solipsist, as if nobody else existed, so that the solution can be found with the minimum of pain. His friends (I'm looking at you, Yukino) are too blockheaded to articulately call him out on it, so the cycle continues. Yui knows exactly what's wrong and how to fix it, but is unable to take the first step. After Hachiman apologizes, she's riveted in shock, still looking for Yukino to take the initiative.

Until Yukino shuts him down. Hard. Only then does Yui act. Hachiman probably played the rejection tape a thousand times before entering that classroom, so Yukino's refusal barely surprised him at all. He would have left immediately, and the anime would end right there, if it weren't for Yui, who with Hiratsuka-sensei is the hero of this series. Hachiman is unable to reach Yukino, but Yui sure is, attacking her for not being fair. It is the first time Yui has ever eloquently, passionately disagreed with someone, and it is beautiful. 

Hachiman tries to defuse the disagreement, but the girls totally ignore him. Yukino is bothered by Hachiman's method on every single level, not least because it works better than her own. He solved the hate-mail dilemma, he solved the Sagami problem, and he solved the Tobe disaster. Even from the beginning, when Yui couldn't bake a sheet of cookies without burning them and Yukino despaired of teaching, Hachiman provided the solution then too. She knows his way of doing this is wrong (and she's right about this) but his success makes her look inadequate. Her only statement that gets through to Yui is that she Yui, tried to act as if nothing was wrong in the hopes that things would fix themselves. "So I thought that if that was what both of you wanted..." she trails off. 

That is when Hachiman admits that he can't trust what anyone says at face value. "I'd fall back into my habit of reading between the lines and thinking they had ulterior motives," he relates in a most honest dialogue. Yukino assumes the most defensive stance possible, hugging herself and trying to keep everything at bay. I'm almost surprised she didn't curl into the fetal position here. But that is not the end: "Even so," he says, and the frame, so closed off before, with none of the three making eye contact with one another, opens up into dialogue, because for the first time in his life, Hachiman is being straightforward. He wants to understand and know others, resting secure in that knowledge; he wants to know others inside-out and no longer be in the dark. He calls this desire egotistic, self-indulgent, and arrogant (probably out of fear), but he wants to share that desire, and have a relationship where you are free to seek that from another and give it to another in your turn (and the camera turns first to Yukino and then to Yui as he says this). He calls this out of his reach (and it is, because it requires the will of another, who can't be controlled), but bursts out that "Even so, I want something genuine!"

Yui wouldn't - and maybe couldn't - articulate it that way, but she intuits exactly what Hachiman means. She's won over immediately, just as we knew she would be. But we also knew that Yukino would be different, and she is. To the shock of both Hachiman and Yui, she too has a quiet outburst. "I don't understand. I'm sorry." And she runs away clutching herself as if she's in pain. Which she probably is. 

That short cut is exactly why the two of them are the way they are. Hachiman was 100% totally authentically real, and he got shut down with barely a word. No wonder people act the way these two do, or the way Haruno and Iroha do; that kind of response feels like treachery, and Hachiman is shell-shocked, immobile, in despair. Somehow, however, Yui is not rendered immobile, and knows exactly what to do (she and Hiratsuka-sensei are the heroes of this arc), and just by being Yui persuades him that it's not over yet, but if he stops, it will be. 

Understanding Yukino is hard, because we only see her from Hachiman's perspective, so she almost always appears perfect (because to his eyes, she is), which is why the frame of her friends approaching, Hachiman in the foreground, Yui ahead, and Yukino in the background, smallest, most diminutive of all, is practically a photographic miracle. Hachiman just had an epiphany, Yui intuits what it means even if she can't explain it, but Yukino feels small, inadequate, and ignorant, because being genuine also means being vulnerable, which she can't abide. She tries to take refuge in words or argument, and Yui, who has no talent whatsoever for that sort of thing, counters by doing the thing women somehow know how to do at exactly the right time: she sees someone in fear and pain, so she simply flings her arms around her suffering friend. That's the camel's straw, and both of them dissolve in tears. One could be forgiven for thinking it's a hallowed moment. 

Oregairu 2.7

Finally, Yukino returns to front and center - at least for the opening. Yui figures out that she really wanted to be student council president (double blast you, Yukino, for being an emotionally repressed, inarticulate ice fiend!), and worries that something is wrong. "The old Yukino" would have eagerly taken on requests like Iroha's, but this new, damaged version just looked pained. She is all about hiding these days. Triple blast you, Yukinoshita!

Hachiman is slowly wearing himself down with all this faking. He criticizes himself for helping Iroha as just "conforming to the ideal self I've created in my mind," and recollects Iroha's sullen manipulation and Yui's forced cheerfulness (I don't care even if it is fake. Yui can do no wrong), but what bothers him the most is "Yukino's resigned smile." It reeks of falsity, just like the more superficial elements of Hayama's clique. He, Yui, and Yukino are in fact not so different from them, a hypocritical fact he is beginning to acknowledge, even as it makes him uncomfortable. That, coupled with the falsities of the  Christmas event, which is increasingly devolving into meetings from hell, headed by people who love to hear others talk about nothing almost as much as they love talking about nothing themselves - this is about to make him explode, in a much more colorful way than during the school festival, when he happens to run into......Yukino! Finally, an unscripted encounter.

It's as if Yukino was pushed to the brink of going beyond herself, and then retreated. She has officially given up, saying almost exactly the same words Hachiman used on Hayama: "If this is all it takes to pull us apart, maybe we weren't all that close to begin with." If this were a lesser anime, I'd assume Yukino is testing him, but there's no doubt. She's given up. Hachiman was clearly not expecting such a response. No banter, no humor, just formal, polite, false pleasantness. Then she walks away. It will take a miracle to fix now. 

Oregairu 2.6

For all the grief Yukino gave Hachiman for not changing, she's the changeless-est one of them all. This woman is so blind! And inarticulate! She has a frozen ice smile in place, and Hachiman fights the desire to run away, noting that "In order to avoid crying over spilled milk, you try harder than ever to act the same as ever." He has the intuition that things are not alright, that the new normal routine is just "papering over the cracks of something that had fallen apart." He and Yukino haven't actually spoken a word to one another that wasn't through Yui. "What happens when we can't pretend anymore?" he wonders with somewhat ominous undertones. 

The pattern is intimately familiar by now: Hachiman and Yukino are in a rut, so they need something from the outside to help them. That arrives in the form of Iroha, a girl I despise just slightly less than Haruno (there might be hope for her; there is none for Haruno). She has to cooperate with another high school to organize a Christmas event for senior citizens and nursery school children (yet another Japanese school community event that makes me shudder and gag reflexively. I am a bad man). She puts on a weepy helpless act to elicit sympathy. Thanks to Hachiman, I am not fooled. Thanks to Hachiman, that type has been ruined for me now. Iroha and Haruno, what with the cute and clumsy or flirty and sexually playful acts, have shown what's underneath them - insecurity, need to manipulate, looking towards domination, hiding oneself, etc. - and it's genuinely repugnant. It will always be at least a little effective, at least until the realization returns to consciousness - sexual attraction is real and powerful, after all - but it is only a false promise of connection, like the proposition of a prostitute; a promise of everything but which in reality is the furthest possible distance removed from genuine closeness.

What Iroha and Haruno are doing, of course, is only a distant analogue, but the principle is the same; using expressions of closeness and intimacy as weapons. It's a tamer version of the advice Cersei gives Sansa during the assault on the Blackwater Bay: use certain behaviors to get what you want. Small, petty, filthiness of soul. 

Iroha might be doing something Haruno never would or even dream of doing. She lets Hachiman see how she's manipulating people, including him, so the spell necessarily collapses - at least as far as he's concerned. He thinks it's because she wants him to dislike her (since she displays the cute side so that people will like her, the logical converse reveals his conclusion), but at least there's a possibility for something real, whereas Haruno is manipulation and lies incarnate.

The rest of the episode focuses on the meetings between Kaihin and Soubu councils, and is the best possible depiction of the hell that is meetings. Perfectly skewered, and wildly hilarious, especially when Hachiman adopts the same vague, abstract, pious communitarian platitudes in order to argue for something approaching sanity. He is only partially successful, but the level of insight into the sorts of people like meetings is as clear as it is true. The villain for this arc has just been given. 

Oregairu 2.5

Every time we get an extended scene of Hachiman and Komachi, it seems like it's the greatest scene. The writers really know how siblings interact, ranging from playful banter to sincere, simple, heartfelt emotion at the drop of the hat. A little effort, a cup of coffee, and a request for help prompts an endearing smile from his loving little sister. Completely real, totally adorable. It will hold the best brother-sister scene award for some time. 

Now Hachiman has his marching orders: keep Yui and Yukino from being elected and keep the club intact. The simplest way to do that is to negotiate (read: manipulate) Iroha into running for real. Hachiman knows her number, so to speak, and suspects she'll be easy to 'negotiate' with. This highlights how accurate his cynicism usually is: characters like Yui are outliers; not everyone (read: almost nobody) possesses her purity and goodness; most are just social garbage, like Kaori, Haruno, and probably Iroha; whiny, manipulative, worthless creatures who suck life out of others for their own advancement or own amusement. They are what Yui seemed to be in the first episode - self-centered airheads who manufacture a persona so that they never have to be real with anybody. No wonder Shinji is such a mess and Asuka is a broken shell of a human being. Those like Subaru and Yui, who can transcend the lies, are few and far between. 

At any rate, a little flattery, a little surprise, a hint of romance (he argues she can convince Hayama to help her, since she's into him, though who isn't in this school?) and Iroha agrees, as Hachiman knows she would. Onto the tougher sell. 

Yui is unsurprisingly easy to convince; just the revelation that Hachiman put a lot of effort (even if it was a tad underhanded, which she guesses but does not verify) is enough to convince her love-struck heart, but the real obstacle is Yukino, who while quite moved Hachiman abandoned his method, was sure "he'd understand;" so while she agrees, and withdraws from the race, is still not happy with the way things turned out. Just as Sensei said, when Hachiman found someone or something he truly wanted to help, he'd find a reason, one that didn't involve being a social martyr; his was found in family and friendship; but Yukino also found her reason; opposition to her sister-nemesis. Hachiman's is life incarnate, Yukino's is poison.

I only have hints of the kinds of relationships Yukino has with her family, so I can only barely understand that kind of motivation, where competition and rivalry replaces love and understanding. The world is an awful enough place already, rife with cruelty and uncaring, without those bad traits defining family relations. Hachiman is bad enough, but if he didn't have Komachi, or their relation were defined by loveless, cold formality, icily bubbling into occasional hatred (Yukino and Haruno, if the above weren't obvious), he'd be a total monster. But he has his sister, Yui has her mom (and plus, she's Yui), and all three of them have Sensei, but after Hachiman's growth of light-years, Yukino has been left behind, and she lacks the means to see it. "Can things really go back to normal?" Yui anxiously asks him. "I don't know," he drily replies, and both look by instinct to Yukino's empty chair. The cohesion or dissolution of the group now depends on her, the weakest link, for the future. 

Hachiman reflects that there are people who can't act until they're faced with a problem. By 'people' of course he means himself and Yukino. Despite her awful motivations, she genuinely did want to be council president. Only after the current president relates her hopes that Yukino, Yui, and Hachiman would together succeed her in office (president, vice-president, and general affairs manager), meaning they'd still be together and doing what they've been doing for a year, does another possibility emerge. But of course the president said nothing. Thanks, Kaichou. How were the three supposed to know that's what you wanted if you kept it to yourself? Are they mindreaders?  Thanks to her silence and Yukino's stony sullenness, that possibility is gone forever. Much work has to be done, but almost all of it is in Yukino's court now.