The truth slips out a little more.
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 has been pretty much a very enjoyable series recently and I’ll admit a certain fear every time that it seemingly closes out a storyline. The potential for it to fall back into old ways is obviously there, though I keep hoping that part of what Komi is doing is cleaning up a lot of lingering subplots either to bring the book to a close or just open it up to new possibilities soon. I was surprised at how much I liked Haru’s arc coming off of what we had before with Chitoge and Raku, particularly since it took a character that had little impact on me overall and made her a far more engaging person with a lot of really good emotionally honest scenes that resonated far, far, too well.
With the baking competition arc closed and Haru moving forward with her life, this one takes us back to the core couple of Chitoge and Raku but through Tsugumi’s eyes. Claude is still trying to prove what a sham all of this is and he’s now enlisting her to watch them for a while. This comes as she and Paula are close to finishing their time in high school with Chitoge and there’s those fleeting moments of thinking of what they’d like to do themselves. But their position is all about serving Chitoge for the family, so it’s just a wistful moment. But it’s these small moments that work quite well in giving us something good about them that doesn’t revolve around their actual job. With Claude sending Tsugumi off on this new mission, it just reinforces for her that her life is all about Chitoge and serving. Which she’s far more fine with than Paula.
Tsugumi is also pretty convinced that there’s nothing shady going on with Raku and Chitoge and that they’re actually in love, which makes her feel somewhat pained while watching them on their date as the two are definitely closer now than they ever have been before. It reinforces for Tsugumi that it’s real while at the same time she doesn’t truly realize her own feelings and heartache over it. Amusingly enough, and again painting a picture of a writer tying up loose ends, she ends up learning the truth that the two are acting when she overhears them. Now, we know that they’re actually getting closer and that’s been great to watch, but they’re still not there themselves and this being caught has them just going back to old habits, which isn’t a surprise. The uncomfortable moments upon saying all of this is spot on. Tsugumi’s more upset that she didn’t catch it, which totally makes sense for her, but you also see the push towards her trying to express herself soon towards Raku. Which I can see playing out for a couple of chapters before resolving in her backing off when she understands the real nature. Again, it all seems like a slow but steady wrapup here.
In Summary:
I’m thoroughly enjoying Nisekoi even if parts of this is familiar as it works through the character connections. Part of what makes it appealing is that it’s actually finishing out some of these subplots, Haru being the most recent one. Will Tsugumi’s get taken care of in the same sort of fashion? I certainly hope so because the whole harem thing is always just overdone when there are so many of them and so much hidden. Komi’s work this time around does some good stuff as he and his assistances really do make it feel like a lived in world with some great backgrounds and a solid flow to the panels, even if it gets a little too wordy with big balloons at times. The forward momentum is definitely here and I continue to be hopeful for some real changes to surface again.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media via Weekly Shonen Jump from ComiXology
Release Date: February 9th, 2016
MSRP: $0.99
