Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai - Episode 12 (Completed)

It took the poor guy long enough, but at last Kodaka is faced with the realisation that his old friend Sora from ten years previously is in fact Yozora - quite the tear-jerking reunion, isn't it?

After Yozora's new, short haircut springs this surprise on him, we take a pause - or more precisely, we rewind to take a look at some of the show's early events from Yozora's point of view.  Although this gives AIC the chance to recycle a fair amount of footage, it actually makes for a nice little touch as we're exposed to Yozora's inner thoughts as Kodaka comes blundering back into her life.  With that out of the way, the obvious question is what next for this pair of individuals? 

After a little more stumbling around the issue and some further exposition on the circumstances which led Taka and Sora to part without saying their goodbyes, we return very much to the established status quo between Kodaka and Yozora, as they return to "normal" life at the Neighbours Club and a place where the only real item of interest is Yozora's boyish haircut.  That aside, it's very much a return to business as usual in the madhouse that is the club room.

Despite a pretty stale finale to this episode, the ending to this series itself was actually rather sweet - no real angst or declarations of love, just a couple of people more or less shrugging off their memories of a decade before to focus on the present and their friendship in the here and now, which is a pretty satisfying way to end things overall.  From a broader perspective, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai was almost a series of two halves - ferociously funny at times when it was on-form (and to be honest, this largely seemed to involve video game parodies), but depressingly fan service-centric and overly concerned with Yozora's bullying, abusive tendencies at others.  It's that latter aspect to the series which sticks in my mind most markedly, if only due to the way the series progressed and slid into these bad habits, to cast a shadow over an offering that was entertaining more often than not when it managed to keep that less respectable underbelly hidden away.