Changing Sides? Haganai’s best girl.

We’re almost halfway done with Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai NEXT and I have to admit, my opinion has changed. I loved the first season of Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai finding it to be a lot of fun and actually enjoyed rewatching it on occasion. I was ecstatic when I heard they were producing a new season. However, as episode 5 comes to a conclusion, my opinion has firmly changed on something core to the series. A topic so strong that many forums have genocidal flame wars on the subject. Of course I’m talking about which girl should win. A year ago I would have defended that Sena should be the winner, but now I can firmly say that I want Yozora to win.

All she wants is to be heard by her ‘dear friend’.

Yes, I want the verbally and physically abusive girl with a terrible attitude to win the Haganai. On face value, Yozora is a terrible person. She’s really easy to hate as she’s basically a gigantic bitch to every other character with exception of Kodaka. However, as you begin to dive into her past and her thoughts you find that she’s really doing it for a noble cause even if she might be going around it the wrong way. I advise you right now that if you’d like to continue with this article, I will be going into some spoilers so please don’t read ahead if you don’t want certain things spoiled.

You probably shouldn’t have read that page.

You find out in volume 7, Hagani Connect, or possibly inferred from episode 12 of the first season, that Yozora didn’t make the club because she wanted friends, but because she wanted to spend time alone with Kodaka. Under the guise of creating a club to get friends, she found a way to spend time and become friends with Kodaka again. This was her chance to spend time and develop feelings for her ‘one true friend’. However, nothing ever goes to Yozora’s plan. You find this out in the very first episode when Sena figures out the hidden message in Yozora’s club notice and joins the club. As the series progresses, Yozora tries her best to disfranchisement each girl who gets too close to Kodaka. Every new girl that joins the group tries to separate her further and further from her ‘friend’. However, it becomes quite obvious that she has more than just friendly feelings for Kodaka and each girl is just another enemy that plans on stealing the only person she ever cared about.

Her entire reasoning in this one page.

It’s for this reason that I find Yozora to be the better girl. She tries really, really hard to be with Kodaka only to have everything blow up in her face each and every time. Yukimura, the King’s Game, or Karaoke it all ends in failure for her. In fact, many of her failures only seem to push Kodaka closer to the other girls with Sena being the number one benefactor of it all. It’s really heartbreaking to see her fail each and every time and it makes you wonder if she’s just getting hit with bad karma due to the fact that she treats everyone so terribly or for her own amusement. It really depends on the media you’re reading/watching as she seems to have slightly different personalities in each one. She’s abusive and mean in all of them, but her reasons for it seem to change for each media.

How could a person not feel bad for her?

Her effort is what makes me like Yozora. She is trying so hard to be alone with Kodaka, to make Kodaka have eyes only for her. She loses with everything she does and it only makes me think of her as a tragic character. It was really depressing to see her lose in the spin-off manga where Sena became the winner, but I doubt that’s going to happen in the original canon. I can only hope that Yozora gets exactly what she wants and more. I’m also hoping she eventually gets a little softer in her treatment of others. She might find it going for her benefit.