A reunion and the start of a new arc!
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Naoe
Translation: Leighann Harvey
What They Say
Hotaru has been handed her walking papers from Toy Gun Gun, but there’s no way she’s going down without a fight or several! Fighting her way back onto the team will just be the first step if she wants to become a serious competitor, though. When a face from the past re-emerges, the hurdles Hotaru has to overcome to secure her position with Toy Gun Gun increase exponentially!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Following up on last time, we rejoin Hotaru and Matsuoka at the start of their fateful standoff, which will determine whether or not our heroine makes it back on the team! An intense battle kicks off, with Hotaru pulling off some straight-up Matrix-style dodging nonsense… only to get shot in the leg by a second shot while she’s doing that. But then, she demands a rematch, and another after that, and so on. It’s actually a pretty nice little swerve, as it’s of course setup as this big dramatic showdown that’ll resolve the matter… but it’s ultimately a matter of understanding one another rather than proving strength, so it works so much better this way. It just feels a lot more raw and real when Hotaru “wins” through sheer determination, forcing Matsuoka to play match after match until her feelings get across, rather than just having her pull out a miraculous win at the start. It’s a real good scene all around, and is executed wonderfully to bring a satisfying close to the arc.
Next up, as she’s finally back on the team and there’s no reason not to, our heroine finally actually moves to break the status quo by casually letting her teammates know that she’s a girl! And… they both take it as a joke, no matter how much she insists otherwise (though Matsuoka is having his own issues with a budding attraction to her causing him some confusion). It’s pretty great, and a clever little twist on the whole setup to keep things as they are, in addition to of course being rather amusing to watch play out.
Finally, we move onto the next arc, as Hotaru expresses an interest in the former Toy Gun Gun member, Haru-Haruki. When he turns out to be a masochistic mess of a shut-in who actually does still play survival games in secret, though, will she be able to sort him out? Or, when he happens to learn our heroine’s secret, will he manage to use that to thoroughly torture her?
In Summary
This time around the book follows up on the events of last time, and fortunately, it sticks the landing thoroughly. There’s a decent bit of action to it that’s nice to see… but more than that, the author realized that this is really an emotional issue and arc, and played it more heavily in that regard to great effect. It’s just all wonderfully done and has a real punch to that. Afterwards, we get a clever and hilarious development, and then dive into the next arc, which already shows some real potential. The character introduced there seems like a real mess in more ways than one, and it’ll definitely be interesting to see just how things develop with him. So yeah, this is just plain a strong entry in the series from start to finish, and definitely more than worth picking up.
Content Grade: A
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: Older Teen
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: June 20th, 2017
MSRP: $12.99
