#Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata

[shanks]

Mr.BlackCat666

[dummy-dot-exe]

by 松吉 コミッション絵作業中@matsukitchi12

[dailyfigures]

Kato Megumi ; How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend ☆ Aniplex

[my-anime-goods]

Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata Fine (Saekano the Movie: Finale) - Megumi Katou Birthday Takeout Cafe 2024 at Cure Maid Cafe from 20 September to 6 October 2024. Goods with the new illustration has been announced to be revealed at a later date.

[maidoftheday]

Today's Maid of the Day: Hyoudou Michiru from Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata

[burnertracfone]

霞ヶ丘詩羽 by matsukitchi12

[sachi]

☆ Sawamura Spencer Eriri // Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata ♭ ☆ 1/7 / Good Smile Company ☆ August 2018 ¥10,694 ☆ Sculpt Tomogomahu Paint Sugi Kenji / Ekoshi

[9chan]

[manekinekocake]

[jeffreyocampo]

Don't worry if you got rejected, they may be the people you want but they ain't the people you need.

[tharizdun-03]

You've drawn porn since second grade?

my god the camera leers

they are just having a conversation

THE LEERING

you get it. this happens all the time. also random color shots for no reason cause the directing is kinda haphazard.

even in season 1's BIGGEST emotional crescendoes, the episode also just sexualizes eriri like crazy and how am i supposed to buy into their emotional arcs when the show itself doesn't even respect them the bare minimum? you can't have it both ways.

i think i have a hard time with these otaku narratives cause it's centered around deep emotional conflicts like "everyone bullied me for liking anime so i lost all my friends and now i have to live with this persona on" which simply doesn't ring emotionally true to me.

the consequence is that you get emotional character turns like... staring at a drawing of a girl flashing her panties and being take agasp? the show needs the audience to be as into these things as the characters and i'm just.. not.

utaha sucks btw. remember the very first episode of the show where they literally just had her do a rape gag? constantly sexually assaults aki after this too, most recently in the last episode (several times).

yet another piece of characterization that shows that aki's motivations for doing this is entirely selfish. i'm gonna finish the show, it's just one season and a short movie, but...

Cute illustrations at least.

[shanks]

Mr.BlackCat666

[fzzr]

I Can't Stop Comparing Things to How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend

Starting in August 2022 I began a long marathon of catching up on my anime backlog. The second show I watched was Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata (How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend, henceforth Saekano). At the time, I had only watched the first season, so this was me re-watching that and catching up on the rest. I was not ready for what happened next. A saucy show about making a visual novel while surrounded by hot chicks made a sudden turn into an emotionally devastating story about growing as an artist and how easy it is for people to hurt one another and much more. It was powerful. It both made me need to stop and take a look at myself and stay up until 2AM to finish it. I need to talk about it.

A note on the title: "heroine" here is officially translated "girlfriend", but a more useful translation would be "main female love interest".

Summary

Our male viewpoint character, Tomoya Aki, has a fateful encounter with a girl that inspires him to create a galge around her. He recruits his two very talented classmates, artist Eriri Spencer Sawamura and writer Utaka Kasumigaoka. When he realizes that his muse is actually the hopelessly normal Megumi Katou, he resolves to bring her into the circle anyway.

With this premise out of the way, the show kicks off a harem story. The core plotline keeps the count of ladies stable at three. When a fourth is introduced as his cousin late in season 1 and the OH NO alerts go off, don't worry - this has not become an incest anime, she's just here to help with the actual plot. The amount of fanservice is significant, but it's not the sole focus of the show. Had it continued like this, it would have been a well-executed example of the genre and probably sat at 8/10.

But then season 2 happens, and the game comes out in time for Comiket... barely. Things didn't go as well as they could have, and not everyone is quite satisfied with the result. There were even some emotional bruises along the way. Tomoya resolves to give it another shot. At this point... well I don't want to spoil things in detail. This is the moment where Saekano takes a hard left turn into drama. It starts artistically managing the viewer's understanding of each character's point of view. It uses indirection and suspense to build up to one emotional gut punch after another. It allows the characters, and you, to wallow in the impact of what happens. It moves the theme of artistic fulfillment from background to front and center.

From here, I went from merely enjoying myself to absolutely hooked. In many harem shows you can find yourself writhing in pain as it draws out every possible step of progress and then snatches them back. In Saekano, you instead feel genuinely worried, deep down, that things will not work out at all and everyone will be left broken into pieces or incomplete. There are twists - but they're not bullshit romcom twists to make things worse for no reason. Characters hurt each other, unnecessarily and unintentionally but sometimes necessarily and knowingly. No one is forgiven for free. When things do get better, they leave scars. There are antagonists, but even characters who act like heels get empathy and you come to understand them, if not agree with their actions.

Wait, I need to talk about the characters more.

Tomoya enters the picture as the character for the male target audience to imprint on. Eriri is a tsundere with all the option boxes checked - twintails, S-class absolute territory, relatively short, modestly endowed. Utaka is cool, collected, cunning, and cutting. You know the type, she never forgets a slight and makes sure you don't either. Megumi is... um. Megumi is... well she's uh... huh. You riffle through all your binders full of women and she's nowhere to be found. Dandere? No, she's plenty willing to speak her mind when needed. Kuudere? I mean sorta, she knows how to deploy sarcasm, but it's not like she's an ice queen.

No, Megumi, as introduced, is a nothing in particular. How can you base a story on a character without a trope to use as a foundation? Tomoya is at a loss, and if you are used to nothing but remixes of *deres in assorted hair colors and slightly different school uniforms, you are too. I guess instead of stamping a label on her, you're just going to need to get to know her. So let's try.

In many stories, you get to know a character and then you get to see them change. Indeed, that's what happens with every character in Saekano - except Megumi. Eriri has trouble drawing her, because you can't see all of her at once. Instead, like the characters in the show, you have to pull together what you do see and create an image of a complete whole in your mind. You turn to compare your model to the original and... it's a bit off. She's changed. Indeed, she has been changing since the beginning. Even your starting snapshot is a bit blurred. Megumi doesn't move too fast to catch up to - but she is always moving, so you can't quite hold on to what you catch.

Megumi is nothing in particular. Instead, she's herself. Kind but not endlessly selfless. Tolerant but not without limits. Influence from others doesn't fill her like some empty vessel, it just adds to what was already there. Neither clay nor brick, neither water nor ice, not a mere object of affection nor a prize to be won. Megumi Kato is nothing in particular, just like you and I aren't anything in particular either. We're just people.

What is love?

Saekano doesn't believe in love at first sight. You aren't destined for someone just because you saw them from the bottom of a hill. It then spends two seasons and a movie teaching us, and its characters, what it thinks love actually is.

Saekano says love isn't an event, nor a straight road from one place to another. It's not even a maze, with many branching paths but one entrance and exit. Life is a forest, and everyone stumbles through the forest in their own way. You may walk together with someone for a time - but when your paths diverge you will find that love is more than being together. Love is when you change your paths and come together. Your paths are still your own - but you stay close enough to hold hands. Love is knowing whose hand you want to hold.

Conclusion

Saekano is not perfect. There are some weak points, even once the fanservice mostly ends in favor of drama. There are a couple of potentially heart-wrenching twists that turn out to be joke setups, which can hurt your trust a bit. The big theme of personal growth in your art does tie into the romance plot, but they don't blend entirely seamlessly. Early on Tomoya does fulfill some of the tropes of "why does anyone like this guy in the first place," which can be off-putting if your tolerance for that kind of shitty protagonist is low. I assure you that this time, the reason he starts low is to give him room to grow high, and that he does.

But... If you're an artist (by which I mean you express yourself in any creative medium, including writing, music etc.) you should probably watch it. If you've ever burned yourself out, created the best work of your life, and then wondered if it was worth it, this is something you should watch. If you have ever wondered if you've plateaued and had to rediscover your motivation to improve, this show is for you too. Likewise if you've ever hurt someone unintentionally and had to earn back their trust. Or if you've had to hurt someone because the alternative was losing a part of yourself. Or if you've been hurt in that way, and needed to pull yourself back together. If you have ever felt like you were accidentally abusing someone's feelings for you, or allowed your own feelings for someone to be abused, or or or or...

Score: 9/10. It tried to do a great many things, and it did those things. It wobbled a bit getting there. This is almost as close as you can get to a 10 without being there.

Recommendation: Power level requirement is fairly high, so I can’t hard recommend it to everyone. It has a lot of anime tiddy early on, the protagonist starts out as a bit of a shit, and you will miss some things if you're not deep enough in anime culture. Out of the gate it wears the same hat as a harem anime. It does pull troll tricks maybe one or two times too many. If you can, I urge you to look past all that. Just... watch How To Raise A Boring Girlfriend.

Final Thoughts

Oh right, I should explain the title. At the time I finished Saekano, I was maintaining that there could only be one 10/10 anime, and it was Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Lagann-hen. Saekano was so good I had to go back and watch my top rated shows again to compare. This started the train of thought that led to On Rating Anime, and "Perfection" and caused me to re-rate Toradora and Angel Beats up to 10. For the rest of the marathon, I found that something in almost everything I watched caused me to think of Saekano, so it led me to start comparing anime to similar ones... particularly Saekano. At this point it's become a personal meme to find a way to compare things to it, in at least some small way.

[dailyfigures]

Sawamura Spencer Eriri ; How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend ☆ Good Smile Company

[my-anime-goods]

Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata Fine (Saekano the Movie: Finale) - 1/6 Megumi Katou: Bunny Ver. 2nd Figure by Freeing. Release: May 2025

[trash2tone]

Today, March 20, we celebrate the birthday of the popular, intelligent, elegant, talented illustrator, but first of all, tsundere, Eriri Spencer Sawamura, she is one of the main characters in Saenai Heroine no Sodatekata (Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend)