Butterflies, Flowers Vol. #03 Manga Review

Another volume of Butterflies, Flowers means five more chapters of insane personality comedy and sexual innuendo. With the relationship between Domoto and Choko getting hot and heavy at the end of the last volume, the dirty talk gets turned all the way up to 10.

The first chapter starts with Choko remembering another boy from her childhood, Reibun Jinguji, who conveniently serves as the perfect foil for Domoto. While Masayuki is outwardly sociopathic with a heart of gold (or so we hope), Junguji is outwardly charming and suave, but is driven only by the desire to make Domoto miserable. Put off by Masayuki’s brusque and matter-of-fact demeanor, Choko is initially somewhat smitten with the handsome Jinguji. Domoto immediately realizes Jinguji is up to no good, but expresses his concerns by being rude and possessive, which only further drives Choko away. Yoshihara has some more fun with role reversal face-swapping, as Domoto’s eyes grow ever more desperate, and Choko’s expressions become cold and cynical. Fortunately for our lovers, Jinguji is too cruel to keep up his facade for long, and Choko returns to Domoto’s eager embrace.

The couple decides to attempt to consummate their relationship again over the summer at a company vacation house. Again, Butterflies, Flowers relies on genre convention, and we see their plans get derailed by the fact that Choko’s brother, Jinguji, Suou, and Makie show up to crash the party. Ever-determined and single-minded in the pursuit of his goal, Masayuki uses a grappling hook to sneak up to a private room at night, and he and Choko make love. It’s handled quite tenderly and seriously, but things return to wacky comedy for the final chapter, which contains one of the most bizarrely perfect Gundam gags I’ve ever seen.

In Summary:

Butterflies, Flowers doesn’t stray very far from the shoujo playbook, throwing in some more romantic rivals and sitcom-style obstacles to threaten Choko and Domoto’s romance. At this point, though, most readers are in it for the absurd humor and general pervertedness, and this volume doesn’t disappoint on either of those counts, with the most explicit content yet. Now that they’ve gone this far in just the third volume, I’m curious to see how weird and wacky it gets from here.