The Fall 2022 Preview Guide

Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! Season 2

Shinichi Sakurai's one wish is for a little peace and quiet. But Hana Uzaki –his boisterous, well-endowed underclassman–has other plans. All she wants is to hang out and poke fun at him. With the help of her chipper charm and peppy persistence, this might just be the start of a beautiful relationship.

Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! is based on Take's manga and streams on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

James Beckett
Rating:

I'll be honest with you all: I may have reviewed the first season of Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out!, but the whole of 2020 is more-or-less a blur at this point, and I barely remembered that this show even existed until I saw the Season 2 premiere pop up on Crunchyroll. So much so, in fact, that I had to go back and re-read a bunch of my old reviews to even recall what I thought about the whole affair. After watching the premiere proper, my feelings about Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! started to come back to me, and I can now say with utmost confidence that this show continues to be…fine, I guess?

It's nowhere near as aggravating as it was when the series first got started, at least; Uzaki and Shinichi have developed something resembling chemistry, for one, and the constant shenanigans and annoying asides that define their relationship fall firmly within the familiar “Will They/Won't They?” sitcom dynamic. There's a whole host of side characters now, too, so we have some other flavors to balance out the experience when Uzaki and Shinichi's solo antics start to become a little stale.

The problems that remain with Uzaki-chan are entirely subjective, as is the case with romantic comedies and slice-of-life shows, but they nonetheless inhibit my ability to actually enjoy this show. Chiefly, it isn't funny, and its characters are all pretty lame. Plenty of other anime would be able to get some mileage out of any hangout sitcom cliché you could think of, such as “The Gang Goes Bowling” or “The One Where the Main Couple Tries (and Fails) to Pretend They Aren't Already a Couple”. With Uzaki-chan's take on these old formulas, though, the laughs simply never arrive, and the characters remain too thin to become truly loveable. Even the show's attempts to be weird and zany fall flat, more often than not. The whole fanservice segment that focuses on Ami's obsessive need to put Uzaki in a pervy costume is neither as funny nor as sexy as it is so desperately trying to be, and the only bit that even comes close to being entertaining is the gag about how unfair it is that anime boys don't get to have nipples.

Obviously, how much you laugh at a joke or end up liking stock characters like these will always be a matter of personal preference, so I can see how this new season of Uzaki-chan might be able to scrounge up a fanbase. As for me, I'm sure I won't remember a single frame of this episode within five minutes of submitting this preview that I'm typing right now, and that's perfectly okay with me.