@ZeroSum Bear in mind that when I say I enjoyed it as a deconstruction of the harem genre, I'm specifically referring to the anime. Yes, I know that the books continued after that point and that it got worse, but my enjoyment is only of the anime. Again, I have read summaries of how bad it gets afterwards.
I see it as a deconstruction because it shows the actual effects of an unwanted harem. As a bonus, it actually stayed true to the title/basic premise. We had the MC who was specifically looking for friends because his scary look warded people off (very similar to this series; almost like there's no creativity). Then he actually gets friends, and they just so happen to be females. Unfortunately for him, they all start to develop romantic feelings for him. So far, straightforward stock harem genre. The best part was the ending of the anime, where after one confession, the MC freaks the hell out and ditches them for multiple days/weeks.
Eventually, Rika calls him out on it and is actually very reasonable. I'm making an aside, but holy shit, I rarely see that level of reasonability in anime/manga. She's like, yeah, it's fine that you freaked out. It's fine that you ditched for a bit. It's not fine that you left for so long. It's not fine that you went to hang out with people that you know we strongly dislike. Then Kodaka's response was great. He literally tells her fuck you, I never wanted this shit to happen. I literally just wanted friends all along. This is all paired with the fact that we learned that he always pretended to be dense because he wanted to ward off romantic feelings from others, because he knew that would collapse their friendship.
TL;DR I see the anime specifically as a deconstruction because it actually shows the bad effects of an unwanted harem in a fairly reasonable way.