Friday 8 March 2013

Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai NEXT - Episode 9

The impending culture festival means that its time for our group of not-at-all-friends to club together and start work on their film project - however, it seems that there will be more important items hitting the agenda in this week's instalment.

First and foremost, we have the announcement of post-exam grades for school - no surprises whose on top of that particular pile (spoiler: it's Sena), but Kodaka's decision to check out the board of exams treats us to a meeting with her diminutive yet deadly rival Aoi Yusa, who is hardly happy about being kept in second spot by "Miss Perfect" Sena.


Aoi also seems to have gotten the idea that Kodaka and Sena are dating, which is an idea that repeatedly rears its not particularly ugly head throughout the episode, most notably in the case of Sena's father who has an... "adverse" reaction to Kodaka's assurance that he and Sena are most certainly not an item.  The reason for her father's shock proves to be the key to the whole affair, as we ultimately learn that he and Kodaka's father made a pact for their respective children to be married, to the point where Kodaka and Sena are technically engaged already.  If that news is a shock to Sena and Kodaka themselves, you can imagine the effect it has on Yozora....

Given how quickly it came out of nowhere to dominate this episode, it's hard to think of Sena and Kodaka's engagement as anything other than a contrived way to move the series forward - why it would take so long for them to be told about it is only one of the burning reasons why the whole thing makes no sense.  This isn't particularly helped that the episode as a whole focuses more on story progression than comedy, meaning that for the most part it's neither particularly interesting nor funny.  While I'm grateful to see the show at least trying to move some of its major relationships forward, this isn't a particularly satisfying way to go about it.

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