Haganai Season 3: Premiere Date, Characters, Plot

What if I told you that there is an anime that has an entire cast of female characters and is still not a rom-com? Sounds unbelievable, right? Well, ‘Haganai’, also known as Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, is one such rare anime show. It does have a few elements of romance here and there but mostly it’s about a bunch of social misfits. The good part of the show is its characters and the interactions between them. The dialogues are unique and hilarious, and they elevate the show to new heights. The social awkwardness of the main characters is unusually funny and doesn’t even make you feel like you’re laughing at them. The main reason why ‘Haganai’ succeeds is because it slightly deconstructs its genre and adds some never-seen-before variations of its own.

The fan service in this show can go way overboard at times, especially with characters like Maria who says nothing other than “poop” for an entire season. It has its moments but for the most part, it’s very annoying. Even other fan service instances are not at all funny beyond a certain point. What makes up for all the flaws in the anime is its underlying sweet message about friendship. It conveys that it does not necessarily matter if you don’t have too many friends, the only thing that matters is having one true friend who is worth a hundred others.

AIC Build Studios isn’t really known for too many anime series and so if you compare ‘Haganai’ with all the other anime series it has created, you can see a massive improvement. That’s probably the reason why ‘Haganai’ is one of their few well-known creations. The storyline of the anime is very generic and has a typical high-school set up where a bunch of strange students get together in a club. They have fun and do weird things, apart from their usual “school” stuff, and that’s about it. So clearly, the story lacks substance and does not make the anime stand out in that aspect at least. In the end, one thing it solely survives on is the eccentricity of its enjoyable characters who give you, as a viewer, some really memorable moments.

So to sum up, ‘Haganai’ is about that one question we all ask ourselves at some point in our lives and that is, “Who are our real friends?” The true answer to that remains a mystery to most of us and even to the protagonists of this show. With time, all the main characters try to unravel the answers to this mystifying question and it all turns out to be different for each of them. We get to see some really funny moments, unwanted fan-service and a little bit of romance in the anime. ‘Haganai’ is, without a doubt, a highly enjoyable series.

Haganai Season 3 Release Date: When will it premiere?

‘Haganai’ season 1 premiered on October 7, 2011, and ended its run two months later, on December 23, 2011. The second season then came out almost one year later, on January 11, 2013, and finished airing on December 23, 2011. As far as next season is concerned, there have been no confirmations yet from the Studio’s end but there are rumors that it will be announced somewhere in the last quarter of 2019.

The series, till date, has proven to be a great success and I don’t see why the studio would miss out on another opportunity to squeeze out some more profits out of it. So hopefully, a new season will be announced soon. Our best guess is ‘Haganai’ season 3 should release sometime in 2020 or 2021. Till then, you can always catch up with the manga of the anime, or you could just re-watch the whole thing. We have also created a list of some great similar ‘Slice of Life‘ anime that you can refer to, if you’re open to watching something new from the same genre.

Haganai English Dub:

The English Dubbed and Subbed versions of ‘Haganai: I Don’t Have Many Friends’ are available on Funimation, Netflix, AnimeLab, and Amazon Prime.

Haganai Plot:

Moving to a new school isn’t all sunshine and rainbows and it’s one experience most of us are quite familiar with. But it also opens up an opportunity for a fresh start and gives you the chance to be someone you haven’t really been all this while. Such is the case with Kodaka Hasegawa, who finds out that he’ll be getting transferred to a new school. He sees this as his shot at starting a new positive life where he might even be able to make a few good friends. But things don’t really go as planned and he ends up being labeled as a delinquent because of his shabby dirty blonde hair and droopy expression. No one really cares about the “don’t judge a book by its cover” expression in school and in this case, it becomes very clear.

Kodaka remains a misfit for a very long time because of the pre-conceived notion that people have about him but one day, all of this starts to change. He walks by a classroom where he finds another loner named Yozora Mikazuki chatting with her imaginary friends. He strikes a conversation with her and they soon decide to find a solution to their problems by starting a club for oddballs like them. “The Neighbors Club”, as they call it, is a club for all other misfit teens of their school who struggle to fit in. Their club involves activities where all of these outcasts learn basic socializing skills and also learn to fit in where they want to. They’re all strangely hilarious in their own ways. Some people might feel transported back to their teenage years.

The second season pretty much remains the same as the first one. The only change is the introduction of new characters. The relationships between the members of the group start changing, leading to more awkwardness and also more comedy that comes with it. Rest everything is in sync with the first season, in a disappointingly monotonous way.

Haganai Characters:

Kodaka Hasegawa

Kodaka is the main protagonist of the show and he hopes that he will be able to make new friends in the school he has been transferred to. But his intimidating looks and his dirty blond hair, which he has inherited from his mother, make him look like a delinquent of some sort. His looks become the core of many rumors that are sparked about him from the first day itself and like every other school he has ever been in, he is again completely outcast. His father works in the US. So while living alone with his younger sister, he has taught himself how to cook good food. Unlike his deceiving “bad boy” looks, he is actually a very kind-hearted and gentle person who would never intentionally harm anyone around him.

Having spent most of his childhood as a misfit, Kodaka knows very well how to fight and defend himself whenever necessary. But he avoids fights in general and only wishes to make new friends. When he finally starts making close friends during the club activities, the whole feeling of “belonging” comes off as very new to him because in the past, due to his father’s profession, he never really got the chance to make close friends. His quotes throughout the show are words that we should all learn to live by.

Sena Kashiwazaki

Sena is a blond-haired, heavy-chested girl, who’s the daughter of a rich headteacher. She treats almost all of her peers as inferiors. She hates anything that can even mildly be titled ordinary. She is very good looking and even her grades prove that she is no dumb blonde, but her arrogance and superiority complex lead her to being disliked by most of her classmates. Most boys would do anything for her and she takes that for granted by treating them as her servants. But the boys never mind and do everything she demands in the hope that they might get to be her boyfriend.

Yozora Mikazuki

As innocent as Yozora might look, she actually checks the list of most of the traits of a typical sociopath. She is cruel and only cares about her own personal interests. She even claims to respect and understand the motive behind bullying but denies that she herself is a bully. She abuses other characters, especially Sena and also cons many people for her own benefits. The only character she is not able to insult in any way is Rika because Rika never tends to react to her insults in a negative way. Instead, Rika always deflects her insults back at her by using dirty jokes that usually leave Yozora with no reply. She then just gives up and follows Rika’s orders. With her long black hair and purple eyes, Yozora is one character to look out for because her deceiving looks can fool even the best of us.

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