A time of endings and a look towards new beginnings
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Kanae Hazuki
Translation: Alethea and Athena Nibley
What They Say
It’s the last winter vacation for Mei and her friends, and with their futures after high school settled, they now have time to relax. During winter break, Ren invited Mei out to play with his younger sister Hiro, but during a conversation between Mei and Ren, Hiro goes missing…again! A franctic search ensues and it all ends with an emotional outburst that may affect Mei and her relationships. How will Mei handle this unexpected turn of events, and will it bring her closer or drive her apart from the people she cares for?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Once again, we start off with Ren’s story, and it remains kind of eh. Like, he has a conversation with Kai, but that only becomes something halfway interesting when it shifts to Kai and Megumi talking instead. And even then, it’s just kind of the meh first half of a better interaction later in the book. Anyway, Mei ends up joining Ren and his little sister Hiro on an outing, and the young girl ends up lost again. But they gather up some help and find her before long, turning it into a non-event. After a little bit more odds and ends, things finally come to a climax with Ren really awkwardly confessing and then storming off. And then he just kind of collapses into his own angst, until it’s semi-resolved by Mei contacting him and mostly just saying how much he helped her out. I suppose it in theory concludes his arc, but it doesn’t really feel much like he grew as a character, especially considering how much time was spent on him.
After that’s resolved, we change topics completely as Mei gets a new cellphone, her first smart phone. Which sounds like a weird, throwaway theme, but it’s actually used pretty nicely to look back over how she’s changed as a character. So yeah, a little goofy, but surprisingly earnest and heartfelt, so it comes across rather well. Oh, and Kai and Megumi then manage to get their aforementioned closure on their interactions as well, which makes for a decent enough scene. And then the rest of the volume goes to winding things down as everyone graduates and prepares for what comes next. It’s a tad cliché and doesn’t do anything too special, but again it acts as a nice capstone to everything that’s happened. And it does have the additional benefit that this isn’t the end, meaning that this somewhat clichéd high school drama is heading off into fairly uncharted waters, which is certainly exciting.
With their high school lives behind them, what will happen to our heroes now? And will they manage to stay together, or will they end up drifting apart now that they’ve lost that bond of going to the same school?
In Summary
This volume is in many ways a conclusion, and it fortunately handles that competently enough. We get to see everyone graduate, and all those proceedings bring with them the sort of reflection and emotions you’d expect. Of course it’s hard to say it does much original there (outside of one neat and unexpected framing device for looking back on things), but it’s all competent and works well enough. With that said, though, all of that competence is relegated to the back half of the book, while the front is dedicated to Ren’s plot. And unfortunately, bringing things to a close there doesn’t exactly make it any more exciting, with him just feeling like a half-baked and uninteresting retread of Mei’s plot. It’s a shame, as the best thing I can say about all the time spent with the character is that we at least seem to be done with him, which is rather sad. Still, now that the book is throwing aside the high school setting, there’s finally some promise for the book shedding its clichés, which really is exciting. For now, this book is a decent enough capstone to what’s come before it, but it’s still rather generic and unexciting, so hopefully things really will start to get back on track next time around.
Content Grade: B-
Art Grade: B-
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Kodansha Comics
Release Date: August 2nd, 2016
MSRP: $10.99
