Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai
僕は友達が少ない
Haganai: I Don’t Have Many Friends Volume 3
Haganai! Vol. 03 (manga)

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***SPOILER!!!*** Summary/Synopsis:

Highlights from this volume start with Yozora deciding that laughter is the best way to make friends, thus attempts at creating laughter is begun with poor results.  Kodaka finds a young girl wearing a nun’s habit sleeping in the club room and is stunned when he learns this is Sister Maria, a teacher at the school and official club adviser thanks to Yozora tricking the girl repeatedly. Maria wants her nap room back, but gets tricked into letting the club stay there while agreeing to be a general dogsbody.

After Kodaka saves a genius student-scientist’s life (Rika), she becomes interested in him and then joins the Neighbors Club. Rika reveals her perverse side and her interest in BL doujinshi works. Kodaka tries his failed humor stories on Sister Maria, who finds them funny. Since Maria only seems to eat potato chips, Kodaka makes her a bento. Kobato gets jealous of Maria occupying so much of her brother’s attention, so she pays a visit to the Neighbors Club to meet her chuunibyou and literal nemesis. She’s horrified to learn that Maria addresses Kodaka as “oniichan” and decides to join the club to keep an eye on things.

Despite the shaky artwork by Itachi-san, I find the story in Haganai to be more and more interesting, even if there’s no real plot to speak of.

In a way, it is kind of odd that I’m liking this manga. I say this because Yozora’s manipulation of Maria was a bit over the top for my tastes. Yes, I know that it was done for the sake of humor, but when taken to her over the top abuse of Sena, it makes her somewhat unlikable as a character.

In the new characters, Rika is another over the top character with her BL obsession and her perverse nature. I don’t know what it is about the Japanese and their apparent obsession of BL, but whatever. I will say that doing a BL parody featuring the mecha from Gundam and Evangelion made me laugh in spite of myself.

Sister Maria is the other new character introduced in this volume. In her own way, she is over the top in her reactions to things. The premise of her character is that she’s some kind of genius. Having been a fan of a manga where a ten year old genius boy became a teacher in Japan, Maria doesn’t seem like a genius, especially if Yozora can so easily trick her.

Now that I think about it, all of the characters in this manga, save maybe Kodaka, are over the top. Sena is over the top in her obsession of hentai, bishoujo games. Yozora is over the top in how she handles Sena, Maria, and others. Yukimura is over the top in trying to become a man by dressing as a maid, playing the role of servant, and worshiping Kodaka. Kobato is over the top in her attachment to her brother.  So the manga is full of over the top characters.

Still, on the whole, things are pretty entertaining, so I’m encouraged to read the next volume.

On the Seven Seas side of things, the usual Japanese honorifics are here, as is the usual lack of translator notes, save for a note after chapter 13 explaining Rika’s name with the kanji and margin note explaining a bento. That’s unfortunate since this volume had parodies for Mobile Suit Gundam, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and I think Powerpuff Girls. I’m not sure what other parodies were here.  I just like it when parodies are explained because it helps me to learn and makes future occurrences in whatever medium funny (or potentially funnier).

So as I said, an entertaining volume here despite certain reservations with the art and some of the characters.