“I was hoping… you’d pick me…”
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):
With everything seemingly coming back to where it began – or rather, where it began before the manga started, there’s been a solid winnowing of the cast to allow the focus to be where it needs to be. Which is why it’s kind of nice that in this installment we get two characters coming back into play at different points and with different agendas to bring their own kind of closure to things, or at least start trying to do so. With Raku becoming firm in his own mind about his choice, something that’s allowing him to move forward in an engaging way because it’s solidified well, the change in him is noticeable and that’s making it easier fro most others to accept what he’s doing and support him in because they simply know and get it.
White Chitoge is making her way into the Tenku highland at the start here, the chapter focuses first on Raku and the others getting ready to make their trip there. This comes mostly with his dealings with Yui, who is kind of silly-frustrated with the fact that she can’t go since she’s teaching and makes an almost giggle-like approach to telling him that she wishes he had chosen her instead and that Marika likely felt the same way before she left. What’s neat is we get a little work with the pendant that Raku has and reveals the broken piece of the key inside, which goes back to the tale of old. But it’s really good to see that Raku doesn’t want to hear anything else about the past anymore as he’s made his choice and intends to follow through on it once things get resolved with Chitoge since he can’t leave it like that.
Not surprisingly, Raku doesn’t go alone as not only does Kosaki come along as expected but we get Ruri and Shuu. It’s nice seeing them getting closer, though Shuu is still oblivious to things in a way, and seeing them reinforces how they’ll move forward in a slow pace. Mostly we get Raku and Kosaki together as they split off to find Chitoge, but even that splits along the way since Claude is there waiting to get his final revenge on Raku for all that he’s done. Claude was there from early on in protecting Chitoge so it makes sense that he’s one of the last hurdles to cross and seeing Raku stand tall with this and not back down is definitely welcome. It’s all about the setup here, drawing the story out a bit more than I think it needs to be, but the focus on lots of resolution for various characters is something I won’t complain about much.
In Summary:
Naoshi Komi is pulling the strings a little tighter as we see events narrowing more and it’s coming together well, even if it does feel like things have slowed down a bit too much recently. Komi and his art team are doing a great job here once again in giving this a real life and feel to it with the detail and backgrounds that just adds exactly what’s needed. This wouldn’t resonate as much with the simple and mostly bland or empty backgrounds that some series have to work with in order to meet deadlines so I’m glad with what they do here as it really adds to it in a big and meaningful way. I love the direction of the book and am in full anticipation mode to see what will happen next.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media via Weekly Shonen Jump from ComiXology
Release Date: May 23rd, 2016
MSRP: $0.99
