Haganai: I Don't Have Many Friends (2021)

[僕は友達が少ない]

Volume 20

Author: Yomi Hirasaka
Artist: Itachi
Publisher: Media Factory Comics

Synopsis:
Rika invites Kodaka to go with her to the Comic Bazaar.

Story/Characters:
We tie things up with Rika by putting her in the sort of situation where she's most uncomfortable as another step toward her conquering her weaknesses and we reinforce her commitment to keeping things platonic with Kodaka. We move on to something heavier with Yozora showing up with her head bandaged after her mom smacked her around a bit, having a fit because Yozora's been reconnecting with Hinata. Hinata wants Yozora to come with her, but Yozora refuses as it would only antagonize their mom more, prompting Sena to step in and invite Yozora over. Interestingly, Yozora immediately takes a liking to Stella, which ends up being mutual. This ends up leading to both Sena and Hinata getting jealous, creating some common ground between them.

We follow this with a rather inconsequential chapter depicting the school festival from the perspective of some rando middle schoolers visiting St. Chronica. It does provide a bit of an outside perspective, but nevertheless feels like filler, especially when we just started dealing with the weighty subject of Yozora's abuse. We then have Yukimura's campaign to become the new student council president. The debate goes poorly with Rika sabotaging Yukimura out of spite (I say "spite", but it's more of an expression of their belligerent friendship) and rival candidate Karin self-destructing in a very public sex scandal. The fact that the school didn't vote for Yukimura anyway confirms my opinion of the general student body of being a bunch of schlemiels. Yukimura, you have my vote. You're the people's champion.

We jump ahead to Christmas and see the gang celebrating (though notably just with each other and not participating in general festivities, no doubt a good choice after the events of the previous year). Next is New Year's, where Pegasus offers to adopt Yozora to get her out of her current situation. It's to Yozora's credit how she handles the situation. We jump ahead again to graduation and the tearful goodbyes exchanged. (The Japanese sure do love their weepy graduations.) We close on a retrospective epilogue framed by the yaminabe incident. And that's it. I'll save my final comments for the conclusion below.

Art:
The art maintains the standard and we get some nice shots to punctuate the major emotional beats. Yozora's reaction to Sena's room is priceless.

Other:
We get a color illustration of Sena and Yozora in kimono and two-page spread of them sprawled out together, a black-and-white two-page spread that combines the covers of Volumes 19 and 20 with thanks from Itachi, and the character commentary.

Conclusion:
While this volume is more focused than the previous one, I don't like that the senior year gets the speedrun treatment. If it's going to be handled so inconsequentially, you'd be just as well to skip it entirely. The problem is that we bring in some heavy stuff like Yozora's abuse that isn't given the depth it deserves. Honestly, while I appreciate some of the additional insight we get into the characters, it feels like we would have closed on a stronger note if we just ended it back with Volume 18. So it goes. If you're a fan, you'll want to give it a read at the very least.

Rating:
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