Christmas Festivities
Creative Staff
Story: UKAMI
Art: UKAMI
Translation: Caleb D. Cook
What they say
Christmastime is here, and Vignette, Satanya, and Raphael have a cake to decorate! Raphael has convinced Satanya to wear a reindeer suit, and Gabrielle is being dragged along for her first shrine visit of the New Year! With all the festivities, it’s sure to be a merry time for everyone—except Gabriel!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The first chapter of volume 3 details what I believe is episode 9 of the anime. Vignette is hosting a Christmas party—despite the fact that she is a devil and probably shouldn’t be celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ—and has gained the help of Raphael—an angel who probably shouldn’t be helping a devil celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ—and she wants Satanya to join in on the fun. Of course, if Satanya knew they were celebrating the birth of their hated enemy, she’d throw a fit. So, naturally, this means Vignette needs to get Satanya into the Christmas mood without alerting her to the fact that they are celebrating Christmas.
It’s a very good thing Satanya is an idiot.
The next chapter deals with Gabriel—our resident angel NEET—who understands that she needs to wake up and get to school. They are taking a test today. If she fails to show up and take it, she’ll be forced to take supplementary lessons during Spring Break. This is tantamount to suicide for someone who hates doing extra work. Sadly, Gabriel is probably the laziest individual who ever existed and thus falls back to sleep. Sadly for her—or perhaps fortunately—her alarm clock on her phone wakes her up. Also sadly for her—or maybe not—her alarm clock is far away and she can’t shut it off without getting up. Despite the surmounting hardships, she somehow manages to turn off her alarm clock and fall asleep again, but then she’s woken up by Vignette, who is wondering why she hasn’t come to school yet.
As a series that’s basically nothing but gags and silly humor, this series does a fairly good job of presenting a number of jokes that are funny but not “roll on the floor and laugh out loud” funny. I feel some of these jokes were done better during the anime. This is especially true given the episodic nature of the series. Since it’s mostly just a series of short chapters that deal with these characters going through their every day lives in a manner that reminds me of a sitcom, the humor sometimes less impressive in this paperback medium than it was with an animated format. It’s generally easier to make comedy with animation than it is writing or comic panels.
A good example of this series’ episodic nature is how chapters 2 and 3 have literally nothing to do with each other. Chapter 2 has Gabriel discovering the difficulty of getting to school when all she wants to do is sleep, while chapter 3 introduces a new character—Taplis, an angel who was sent down from heaven to attend school. She seems to be a big fan of Gabriel. However, when she discovers that her beloved Tenma-senpai has become a disgusting NEET and fallen angel, she is left destitute… though not for long. She now believes someone was responsible for her senpai’s fall from grace.
Unfortunately, Raphael is the one who decides to help her, which leads to further comedy in chapter 4 when Taplis is introduced to Satanya.
In Summary
Whether it’s Gabriel trying to teleport to school but only teleporting her skirt, Vignette attempting to be bad despite being the purest devil around, or Raphael spying on Tapils as she confronts Satanya in a misunderstanding she created for the sake of entertaining herself, this series has a lot of cute and funny moments with lots of gags and silly humor. On the other hand, series like this tend to only remain interesting for a few volumes. Gags and silly humor can only take a story so far. There’s a reason I no longer watch American cartoons like the Simpsons, American Dad, and Futurama, after all. In either event, while this volume was good, I’m wondering just how far UKAMI-sensei can stretch this series before the comedy runs dry.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Releasrighted By: Yen Press
Release Date: April 24, 2018
MSRP: $12.99