 All right, so today we are hitting the finale of that long list of requested reviews that I got hit with last month, or... Well, yeah, yeah, I guess it started last month, but it continued this month. And for you guys, you probably won't be seeing this until April. But the point is, I'm reviewing the first couple volumes of a light novel called My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong As I Expected, because light novel titles are extremely stupid. This was requested by Datboy805, and I will... I will say this is not nearly as bad as I expected it to be, and there were a few parts I liked that does not mean that overall I thought it was good, because I didn't. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Okay, so this one is gonna be more off the cuff than usual. I didn't write any notes, and I didn't even think all that hard about what I wanted to say. So if this comes across as more bumbly and unfocused than usual, I apologize in advance for that. But this one, this one kind of defies regular reviewing logic, because the main reasons I don't really like reading light novels, and just to be clear, I did change my Patreon page, so I'm no longer accepting requests for that because I just... I don't like reading them. It's never been fun for me. I hate the way they're written, and I hate the lack of originality in them. And that also goes for the lack of originality in the anime and manga industry as a whole, which I just hate. And looking at this one, this is basically just a story about a guy named Hikigaya who... I'll get to him in a minute. I was originally just going to call him Protagonist Koon, because I thought he was so generic, but he turned out to not be. But the point is there's this guy named Hikigaya who just thinks... He's just a loner who is in high school, and he really hates other people, or not even necessarily hates other people, but just thinks that they don't have anything to offer him, and that they're all very fake. Like he's constantly thinking in his internal monologue about how fake other people are, about how, oh hey, she's pretending to be nice to that guy for one reason or another, you know, that sort of thing. And basically his teacher forces him to join this organization at their school. It's a club called the Service Club Club, and basically all they do is go around and help people with some problems that they might be having, like if you're bad at cooking, like how do we help you get better at cooking? If you're having a fight with your friends, how do we help you with that? That sort of thing. And that's pretty much it. It's them solving people's problems, which is kind of an ingenious way to bring in all these little smaller stories, admittedly. But I wasn't ever really into any of them, nor was I into the overarching story about Hikigaya making friends or anything like that. It's a, it's um, how do I put this? I expected it to be like typical harem comedy hijinks. Like if you're unfamiliar with that, it's basically, there's one guy who's bland as toast, which is why he's usually just called protagonist coon. Like it's, there's no point in learning his name because he's the same as everybody else. He's just the protagonist with no personality who's surrounded by like 18 beautiful girls who all want to jump on his dick. And he's completely unaware of that. And then humor ensues. And I put quotes around humor because anime and manga has about five jokes that they've been using since the 90s and they have not really seen fit to update that with the exception of a couple of shows and manga that I've found over the years, which are legitimately funny. But most of them, it's just like, look, accidental sexual harassment, that's funny. Oh, look, girl is mad at guy for a stupid reason. And then she physically assaults him. That's funny. Like just repeat those ad nauseam and you'll just, you'll get pretty much all of the comedy that anime has to offer. And I went into my youth romantic comedy, Stupid Long Title. I went into that assuming that this would just be more of that. And it, it wasn't like the main character does not really get a harem, at least not in the beginning part that I read because I read the first two volumes and this is like 14 volumes in total. So maybe it changes as time goes on. But at the beginning, like he is just, yeah, there's some beautiful girls around him, but he just kind of hangs out with them. You know, they're just sort of acquaintances or friends maybe. And there's some hints that like, oh, there might be some deeper feelings in there on one side or the other, but it's not, it's not a harem. It's not them all constantly trying to avoid acknowledging to themselves that, oh, we really like this guy and I wanna, I'm sorry, I was trying to think of some weird sexual euphemism there, but I kind of ran out of time and now it would no longer be funny. But the point is, it's not just a whole bunch of romantic comedy hijinks and sex jokes. I don't really need to put quotes around sex jokes, but the point is it's not a bunch of that stuff which is all handled super immaturely because let's be honest, sex and romance are handled extremely immaturely in pretty much all anime as well. And it's not that. It's basically just, like I said, they go around helping people and it did make me laugh a couple of times. I'll give it that. Like, it doesn't really do anything super over the top and annoying. Like the characters aren't just so, I don't know how to put this, like so set in their one archetype that the author decided they fit into that they go over the top with everything and that's the humor, that's the joke. It's not like that. There are a few genuinely funny bits where I gotta chuckle, I'll admit. And the main character, as time went on, Hikigaya, I started to realize, is a lot deeper than I initially gave him credit for because, like I said, he is a loner in high school who is basically a loner because he doesn't want to put in the effort to make friends or anything. And well, that's part of it anyhow. Part of it is also that he feels that he, because of something that happened in his past which made it difficult for him to make friends, he thinks that he is now stuck in this loner place in his life. Like he will never be able to make friends because you have to be friends with someone from like the beginning of middle school or beginning of high school or something like that. And if you can't do that, then well, you're just screwed. So he thinks, okay, yeah, like what's even the point of trying? And he just sort of hangs out by himself for the most part. And I'll admit, I did connect with that a bit because I was kind of similar to that when I was a teenager. I also was using excuses to cover up for my laziness and my lack of social skills and I was also kind of trying to use, I don't know how to put this, he doesn't really use humor, but he does act like kind of an asshole and is a bit snarky to people and is mean honestly. Like he's just mean to people when he shouldn't be. And just as a way to push them away so that they don't try and make friends with him and he doesn't have to try and put energy into that. Like I kept reading that going, I'm in this picture and I don't like it. So yeah, I'll admit, I connected with that on a pretty deep level. And I get the feeling that the author also was like that when he was younger. Obviously I can't prove this because I don't know the guy, but it wouldn't surprise me if he was. And I also liked how Hikigaya is not, well even beyond that, he's not a total blank slate. Like he is actually pretty smart in some areas. Like he's not the most amazing student of all time, but he's very good at reading people and that helps him out when the service club is trying to help people out. And yeah, so I will say that he's not just generic protagonist number 12,804. Like he is an actual character, which I actually did connect to on some level. Now would that make me want to continue reading this whole series all the way through? No, I didn't connect with him that much. But you may and you also might find it funnier than I do and you also just might be a little bit less bothered by the generic setup of it all because I seriously don't even remember any other character's name besides Hikigaya. Like he was kind of neat, but the others are just like here's quiet girl, here's slightly friendlier girl that Hikigaya is mean to because he thinks she's just being nice because that's what society demands and he really doesn't care about that and just things like that. And so overall, while I don't know if I'd really recommend this one just because as I said a million times, I just don't like light novels or the way they're written or yada yada. So if you are a fan of that, you may be more into this than I am, but overall I will say it is less annoying than I thought it would be which isn't exactly glowing praise but you know it's the truth. And at least when it comes to the protagonist, I was a bit more invested and a bit more interested and he was a bit deeper than I initially thought he would be. And so overall, while I wasn't the biggest fan of this series with this stupidly long descriptive name, light novel names aren't even names so much as they are summaries of the series. It's stupid, but while I wasn't the biggest fan of it, I don't think it was really a waste of my time. All right, you know how this works by now. All the names on here are people that gave me money and the people that gave me $10 and more are Aposavalanian, Olivia Rayan, Ava Tumor, Brandon S. Pilcher, Brother Santotys, Christopher Quinten, Datboy805, Mbis, Pfizer, Jeremy, Joel, Karkat Kitsune, Kevin Zhang, Liza Rudikova, Madison-Lewis Bennett, Mel Austin, Microphone, Sad Martigan, TobaccoCrow, Tom Beanie, and VaVictus. You guys are the best. If you want stuff like early access to my videos or just voting on future video topics, then consider sending me money. And if you don't want to do that, then become a YouTube channel member or just like this video, share it around and stuff. It really does help. And that's about everything I'm supposed to say here, so I'll see you later. Bye.