Series Overview

Aharen Is Indecipherable (Aharen-san wa Hakarenai / 阿波連さんははかれない) is a rom-com anime. The two main characters are Matsuboshi Raido and Reina Aharen. And as the title implies, Aharen is indecipherable — that’s the twist this time around.

Aharen has three defining traits. She’s short. She’s quiet. And she doesn’t know how to judge how close she should get to people. Because of these traits, she’s always getting into wacky situations. Or, at least that’s what you would think from how the series starts off.

In reality, Aharen isn’t all that indecipherable. Most of the crazy situations in this series only take place in Raido’s imagination. When he can’t figure out what Aharen is doing, he jumps to outlandish conclusions. So, in reality, Aharen is only indecipherable to Raido.

In fact, due to Raido’s imagination, most people are probably indecipherable to him.

Anyway, I didn’t watch Komi Can’t Communicate, but I imagine this series is similar in a lot of ways. They’re both about high school girls who can’t communicate very well and want to make friends. From my understanding, the main difference is that Komi has anxiety while Aharen is quiet.

I was never interested in Komi. But, I decided to pick up Aharen because the trailer made it look more comedy-focused. And, to be fair, it is comedy-focused. Also, for most of this season, Aharen Is Indecipherable was one of the anime I had rated the highest.

As the series progressed, though, I wasn’t getting the same enjoyment out of it. For the most part, the characters are good throughout. This is just a complaint I seem to have about a lot of more slice of life anime.

Let me know in the comments. Do you get tired of slice of life anime as they progress?

Characters

I already went over the two main characters in my description of the series. But, once again, they are Reina Aharen and Matsuboshi Raido. I don’t have much else to say about them, though. So, let’s move on to the supporting characters and go through them in groups.

The first group includes Aharen’s and Raido’s other friends at school. Mitsuki Ooshiro is one of Aharen’s childhood friends and is extremely shy. She’s usually hiding somewhere nearby. There are also Hanako Satou and Ishikawa. They’re less important, but they’re still part of the group.

Staying at school, there are two teachers who get a fair amount of screen time. These are Miyahira-sensei and Toubaru-sensei. In my expert opinion, these two female teachers are a romantic couple.

And speaking of romance, Toubaru-sensei has a potentially-fatal weakness to it. When she sees Aharen and Raido together, she gets severe nosebleeds.

Outside of school, Aharen and Raido often run into some elementary schoolers. These are Futaba and Atsushi. Futaba has a crush on Atsushi and believes Aharen is trying to seduce him. Meanwhile, Atsushi doesn’t understand why his master, Aharen, hangs out with Raido.

Lastly, we have the siblings. Raido has a younger whose name we’re never given. She’s only ever referred to as “younger sister.” But, she’s not important in any way, so her lack of a name doesn’t matter at all.

Aharen has both a younger sister and a younger brother. And they both look like her to an extreme degree. Raido first meets Ren, Aharen’s younger brother. And because they look so similar, Raido mistakes Ren for his older sister.

Eru is Aharen’s younger sister. The joke with Eru is that she looks like she should be the older sister. She’s larger than Aharen in every way.

Less Unique Than Expected

My biggest complaint with Aharen Is Indecipherable is that it wasn’t all that unique. As I mentioned earlier in this review, all the wacky antics in the series are actually in Raido’s head. Crazy things aren’t always happening in reality, and that makes the series a bit more boring.

Funny things do happen in the reality of the series. For example, one of my favorite bits was when Aharen became obsessed with a fidget spinner. But, the best part of that bit was the extreme Raido’s imagination took Aharen’s obsession to.

In his mind, her use of a fidget spinner is going to affect every waking hour of the rest of her life. But, again, this isn’t reality. So, once reality retakes control, we’re left with nothing. There’s no lasting impact on the series. And the only character who knows what was going on in Raido’s head is Raido.

Another great bit that solved some of these issues was when Aharen and Raido got into rap music. First of all, this happened in the reality of the series. They actually got into rap music and communicated with each other via rapping.

So, already, that solves a big problem most of the other bits have. It actually involves other characters, not only Raido. It’s not Raido imagining what Aharen would do. The two of them play off each other.

And as for a lasting impact, there admittedly still isn’t much. But, later on, Raido’s unnamed younger sister also tries her hand at rapping to communicate. With Raido’s imaginings, we never get tie-ins like that.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to the fact that Aharen isn’t actually indecipherable. If she was, and if she was always doing crazy things, it’d be better.

Conclusion

For most of the season, I had Aharen Is Indecipherable sitting at a 7. But, after finishing the final episode, I decided to lower my rating to a 6/10. I enjoyed the anime. And the OP is one of the best of the season. But, it’s not all that special compared to other rom-coms.

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