A whole lot of the same, but at least with a bit of an arc conclusion this time around
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Naoshi Komi
Translation: Camellia Nieh
What They Say
When Marika’s plan to watch the first sunrise of the year with Raku goes awry, they find themselves stranded on an uninhabited island! As Marika’s health begins to fail, will they find a way to see the sunrise? Plus, when Yui turns twenty, Night comes to her with a shocking pronouncement: it is time for Yui to get married!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
To kick it off this time around, we get the conclusion to the Marika story from last volume. It’s a nice enough little bonding moment for the two of them, but it’s nothing too exceptional or noteworthy, to be honest. Though it at least has some hints of further things to come with Marika, which could certainly be interesting. With that out of the way, the time comes for everyone to do their first shrine visit of the new year. There’s a cute little bit where Chitoge and Onodera unwittingly give each other a pep talk in their pursuits of Raku, but outside of that this is pretty much just a fluff chapter without much of note. The next chapter goes a little wild, though, and has the girls unintentionally end up drunk and full on assault Raku. It’s treated almost like a faux horror event as they stalk him, which is fortunately quite amusing to watch.
Raku and Chitoge then go on a date, and our heroine actually tries to plan it around things he would like for once. It’s got some decent gags as she of course fails in her attempts, but for the most part it’s not terribly exceptional. Though at the end we get a slight bit of progress, as Chitoge admits that she has someone she likes, which in turn prompts Raku to once more reevaluate his feelings. It’s a small step forward, but at least it goes a little bit towards dragging Raku out of the pit of cluelessness he recently tumbled back into full force.
Finally, Yui turns 20, meaning that she’s at last come of age. And in the midst of a big celebration, Night tells her that she either needs to confess to Raku and get together with him in a week, or she’ll be forced into an arranged marriage! It’s not a huge surprise that in the end this turns out to be a made-up threat to get Yui to move, but it actually does provide an impetus for Yui’s story to at last come to a close. While it doesn’t have quite the emotional punch I would’ve liked (though it’s not awful either), it is certainly at least very nice to finally get some closure on a character’s arc, and thus see some real progress.
In Summary
For the most part, this is a rather run of the mill entry in the series. There are plenty of decent yet somewhat familiar gags, some very tiny signs of progress made between Raku and the girls, and a few nice enough emotional bits. It’s certainly not bad, but for most of the book, it just kind of feels like the series is dragging its heels and retreading old ground. So even if the actual content is solid enough, it’s still more than a little disappointing to see. Though with all that said, we actually DO get some firm closure for one of the girls at the tail end of this book, which is certainly a nice attempt to beat back some of that samey-ness and show some real progress. Ultimately, I did feel the execution was just a tad weak, as it felt closer to the rest of this volume rather than being a high point for the series, but it’s still at least something of note that this entry can boast about. All in all, I’d say this is a pretty flat yet inoffensive entry into the series, but things are at least looking to heat up in the near future, which I’m definitely looking forward to seeing.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A-
Package Rating: B+
Text/Translation Rating: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released by: Viz Media
Release Date: March 7th, 2017
MSRP: $9.99
