Title: Unmade
Author: SouBU
Rating: T
Genre: Mystery/Crime (supposedly romance but not yet)
Status: WIP
Pairings: Hachiman/Yukino (probably, eventually)
Summary:
Graduation marks the end of youth and the end of the Service Club. The high school romantic comedy never plays out. Years pass, and a neurotic Hachiman serves as a detective in Tokyo amidst rising crime rates. He finds himself embroiled in a lawsuit after a confrontation with a felon turns deadly. If things weren't chaotic enough, his assigned lawyer was… Yukinoshita?
Link: FFnet


Don't be deceived by the summary. The important part of the summary is not the implied drama with Yukinoshita, it's the spiralling crime thriller that spawns from the confrontation with the felon. Drama is surprisingly little to non-existent.
Let's take things one at a time.

What is this? This is a story about the cast as adults, living adult lives. At the end of high school, Hachiman has achieved the impossible and reconciled Yukino with her family. He swallows his tongue and feelings and lets her go abroad to study. Quite lost, he joins the military. When that goes horribly, he becomes a surprisingly effective detective for the Tokyo police department. Many years later, the cast reunites. It's a fic that I believe will be quite hit and miss, as the pros and cons are equally many and it depends upon who gives more weight where.

Cons:

Pros:

I believe that this fic balances on a rather steep edge. It has many things going for it and many things that it could be doing better. But I'll be damned if this isn't an excellent portrayal of the OreGairu cast as adults who have moved pas the high-school issues and now have bigger, uglier issues to deal with.

The fic is still ongoing, so it might end up leaning the other way eventually. But, it made me single-mindedly read it over the course of a few days so for now

4/5

 

I think I read a bit of this a while ago. I remember enjoying it decently enough while walking to class, but not enjoying it enough to bother finding where I left off at the end of class and starting again.

I think I remember liking Hachiman's characterization but oddly not really finding Yukino to be that appealing. I suppose I also read this before I watched the second season of the anime, so maybe I had wrong ideas of Yukino as a character from s1.

Maybe I'll give it another shot.

 

I'd give this a solid 4.5/5 out of 5. Frankly, the only thing that could improve it would be to write it as original fiction.

 

3.5/5 for me. I'm rounding up because I 'm impressed this premise was done this well.

I agree that the strongest part is Hachiman's characterization. I also don't find Yukino particularly compelling. If I had to point out one thing I don't like about Yukino here, it would be the insults and snide remarks made in jest. I get that she and Hachiman more or less intentionally reverted to their typical high school dialogue, but I think it feels harsher and out of place for an adult cast. Then again, that was one aspect of the anime I didn't like, so maybe it's just consistent there.

Aside from that minor flaw, the real problem that brings the story down to a 3.5 for me is the crime/mystery aspect itself. I don't like it. I'm not particularly interested in what's happening behind the scenes in this city. I'm not particularly interested in how Hachiman is going to solve it.

On a similar note, Hachiman's police misconduct trial, as well as the scenes in which characters discuss it, falls a bit flat for me. I'm not sure if the way Hachiman's PTSD is portrayed is realistic, but even setting that aside, it's too angsty for my personal taste.

I realize I've done a lot of complaining in this review, but I do think it deserves a 3.5 because Hachiman's characterization really is that good. The everyday scenes in-between the drama parts were solid enough to keep the story enjoyable all the way through.

 

If symbiotic is defined as a mutually beneficial relationship between two living things, then semibiotic is a bullshit pseudoscientific word I’m making up to describe the mutually parasitic relationship of this fic’s premise/resulting plot and the source material.

On the one hand, the plot is a decent enough crime drama featuring a cynical detective with a dark past whose only real flaw is that he’s too nice to let other people in. On the other, this detective is Hikigaya and while most of his development is a natural enough extension of his character, not only is he a cop, he’s an ex-US army deadshot sniper. I say that knowing the fic claims he’s JDF, but the reality is that the fic presents more Phillip Marlowe and Miami Vice than Darker Than Black or anything at all resembling japanese military or police despite the honorifics and Senpais. Unfortunately, it still takes plenty of influence from anime and suffers from the underlying issue many Oregairu fics suffer from. That near omnipresent undercurrent of attempting to reward or have Hachiman’s heroism be recognized on a greater scale than the microresolutions of his own source material.

I made it to the second trial scene where his CO is called in to testify before I had to tap out. The plot wasn’t really compelling enough to encourage me to stay and the character interactions, while a good balance between familiar and not, were cheapened because of those preexisting relationships. Yukinoshita knows Hikigaya has a penchant for heroics, the narrative even shoves that fact in your face, but the ‘revelation’ scenes fall flat because of this.

It’s not a bad story in the least but it’s as indieHachiman as it gets complete with makeover, harem, and self indulgent alternate povs.

2.5 rounded up to 3/5, could be decent as a crime drama if it dropped the Oregairu baggage, or it could be decent as a story about the adult Oregairu cast reconnecting if it dropped the b movie plot and premise.
But it’s not good at being both.