Sports Day, Yokai Style.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Mai Tanaka
Translation/Adaptation: Amanda Haley
What They Say
Sports Day has arrived, and Haruaki is preparing his students and formulating strategies to come out head of the other classes! What has got him so motivated…? Also, when a youkai TV station shows up to interview and follow him around for the day, Haruaki and his star-struck students all try to look their best, but in evidently, things don’t go quite as planned.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
In an effort to make up for breaking a window, Haruaki’s class tries to clean the school’s pool, but it’s full of Kappa and their master, a Human-Faced Fish. While the two groups learn to cooperate, the toxic pool is ultimately ruined. No more swim classes for the yokai school.
Haruaki is excited for Sports Day, but he seems to be the only one. His excitement is short-lived when he finds out the teacher of the losing class gets a punishment. Haruaki is sure he will be the one getting punished, but his class still needs to be prepared to look for tents, batons and human-faced rocks. He splits up the class to search for various items, but as usual, nothing goes very smoothly. They may have found everything, but they forgot some students lost in the woods.
With the start of Sports Day, the principal announces that he’ll take the salary away from the losing class’s teacher. The first event for the day for the second years is a three-person relay Scavenger Hunt. As expected, none of the prompts were easy or ordinary. However, Haruaki’s class does win this round, but it ends causing some awkward moments between Hijita and Sano.
The next battle is the Calvary Battle. While Haruaki has a plan, it quickly falls apart. Though Haruaki tries his hardest to get each yokai to use their special talents, the class ends up in 3rd place. The last event is the Obstacle Course. Class three is looking for a big win with Sano as their anchor. However, Sano ends up in an accident and Haruaki freaks out. Sano’s injury is only a strain, but he’s out of the rest of the day. Haruaki decides to enter the race in Sano’s place. He may be fast, but he really can’t compete with yokai. While the teachers think Sano is going to evoke Haruaki’s anti-yokai abilities, in fact, they all dressed up in sailor uniforms for encouragement and it did the trick and the class took first place.
Next, a yokai TV station wants to interview and follow Haruaki around as a human teacher. While everyone fears that Haruaki will do something dumb and embarrassing while on TV, the students ban together to support Haruaki. Everyone dresses up and gets ready to put their best foot forward. And while insanity still reigned, the class and Haruaki still somehow made a good impression on the interviewers.
In Summary:
Yen Press, as usual, does a fantastic job of adding color inserts and making sure the from cover to cover there are little extras packed into the volume. There are also translations notes at the end. The bonus chapter is about some after-hours shenanigans with the teachers.
I gave this volume a C+, because it didn’t really stand out to me. It wasn’t great, and it wasn’t bad. There were some moments that made me chuckle. And there are some relationships I like to watch as the story progresses, but it’s mostly over the top gags layered on top of yokai hijinks. I’ve said this before in other reviews that I like gags and absurdity, but I like it in small amounts. It would be nice to see more character and relationship development, but instead, each chapter is like a Japanese High School cliché. I’m always hoping for something really good to develop, so we shall see in the next issue.
Content Grade: C+
Art Grade: B-
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: Teen
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: June 26, 2018
MSRP: $13.00
