Fourth year anniversary!
Creative Staff:
Story/Art: Naoshi Komi
What They Say:
It’s hate at first sight… rather a knee-to-the-head at first sight when Raku meets Chitoge! Unfortunately, his gangster father arranges a false love match with their rival gang leader’s daughter, Chitoge! However, Raku’s searching for his childhood sweetheart, with a pendant around his neck as a memento, and is surprised to discover three candidates with keyes: Chitoge, Onodera (his current crush), and Tachibana (the police chief’s daughter)!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Nisekoi firmly wrapped up its Marika arc the last time around and it worked pretty well because this chapter is part of the whole fourth anniversary celebration. That means a couple of color pages right from the get go that’s fairly meta overall as the characters talk about how amazing it’s been. Even better is that we get a two page splash design after that with everyone basically in sleepover pillow fight mode. It’s colorful, fun, and silly. Which is what the series needs a dose of after the more serious material we’ve had and with Marika heading off overseas. To Pittsburgh. I can’t not laugh at that. I just can’t.
With the main part of this chapter though it does keep things fairly serious and not altogether silly, though there are light moments to be had. Raku is now pretty much in a dangerous place where he has to actually think about things and while not necessarily make a decision has to at least realize there may be a decision to be made. With both Shu and Marika now making it clear that there’s a triangle in the mix with him, Chitoge and Onodera, he’s trying to square his feelings. It’s easy enough to believe that Raku may have firmly put Chitoge in the friend category for so long that he doesn’t recognize that he’s suppressed potential feelings there. It’s a good angle to play with as it really gets Raku to look at things, including taking some time with Shu who smartly sidesteps it and tells him that nobody else can decide his feelings. He really has to do it himself.
Thankfully, this chapter doesn’t try to force a lot of different things on Raku on top of this. It’s main focus really is just on Onodera – though Chitoge fans can get a thrill from the last page. When Raku happens upon Onodera at school at the end of the day the two end up walking home together a bit. This hsa her being more honest than she has been for some time about feelings and being brave, though even here she’s trying to dance around it because she can’t be brave yet. The teenage fear (that many of us carry into adulthood) is nicely done here as she wants so much more from him and to be so much for him as well that it’s petrifying. And understandably so. The two have the same conversation that we’ve seen before to different degrees, but now it has a little more importance to it because Onodera realizes that she has to step up soon while Raku has to grapple with what his true feelings may be.
In Summary:
Nisekoi doesn’t admittedly do anything grand or huge here when you get down to it. But it at least feels like it’s going to move into more interesting territory if these three actually get their feelings out there, even a bit more, to see where it’ll cause them to change and adjust in their orbits with each other. There’s a lot of fun story potential out there if they begin to move forward and choices made, but we all know that’s not how manga works – even at the end of series where there’s always a desire to leave it open-ended so as to not offend any fans. Therein lies my main frustration with so much manga these days (and for years) anyway. I like what Komi does here with the story and what it might lead to and I really like the stepping up of the locations and layouts that he uses, giving it a warmer feeling as we see all of them going through their own internal struggles.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media via Weekly Shonen Jump from ComiXology
Release Date: November 30th, 2015
MSRP: $0.99
