The Hoshin Festival is in full gear and love is in the air. But a phantom thief has struck, stealing all the heart balloons. Can Detective Chika find the culprit?
Creative Staff:
Art/Story: Aka Akasaka
Translation: Tomoko Kimura
English Adaptation/Editor: Annette Roman
Touch-Up Art & Lettering: Stephen Dutro
Cover & Interior Design: Alice Lewis
What They Say:
Will Yu make a confession of love? Who would date someone who is both an emo gamer and a former school pariah…? Meanwhile, someone is ready to confess her love to Miyuki—and it’s not Kaguya! Then Miko sabotages a romantic tour of a haunted house, Miyuki reveals some unexpected nonacademic skills, Kaguya accidentally dispenses good advice and a fortune-teller foretells an ominous date for our pride-crossed lovers—no, not that kind of date. Plus, heart-themed key rings, cookies, takoyaki and balloons!
But nobody turns down Stanford.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Ignore the lead-in line, that was just for fun. Yes, Detective Chika does make an appearance, but that’s hardly the real heart of this volume. With the coming of the Hoshin Festival, we finally have some dramatic action take center stage. Yu Ishigami’s love for Tsubame Koyasu, which kind of started during the Sports Festival when he worked with her on the Sports Festival Committee, takes center stage, working as something of a proxy for the ongoing romantic battle between Kaguya and Miyuki. Not that Tsubame and Yu are engaged in any kind of silly battle over pride. This is a much more straightforward romantic tale even if the two would appear utterly mismatched: Yu being a loner, emo gamer first-year who is treated as a pariah by his classmates (the upperclassmen in general seem not to care too much or even be fully aware of what is going on; the exceptions being Miyuki and Kaguya, who investigated the truth behind it); Tsubame is the “Third-Year Goddess,” one of the famous personalities of the school. While she has, naturally, been the object of male attention for a long time, she’s never appeared to have gone out with anyone at school (the reasons for that are spelled out in volume, so I won’t get into them).
The interest that Shinomiya and Shirogane have in this potential pairing is that they want Yu to succeed…as a propitiatory sacrifice harbinger of good fortune for their own messed-up dynamic. His failure would be a disaster for them both, as it would cast a cloud over the Student Council and make any romantic advances impossible until the mood improved. Is this Aka Akasaka just continuing to spin our wheels because he can’t move Miyuki and Kaguya forward? Yes, of course it is. But it’s the telling of the tale that often matters as much, or more, than the outcomes.
There is plenty of humor surrounding the dramatic plot at work. We get to see 2 of the 4 Ramen Kings of Tokyo make a cameo. We see Kaguya in cosplay and Hayasaka……cosplaying as a maid (a real stretch there…). There is the amusement of watching Chika try to trip up Shirogane with tests of dexterity…that he passes with flying colors. We see Maki Shijo being Maki. Miko Ino provides some laughs as always.
All of this distraction does not mean that the central war between Kaguya and Miyuki is ignored. There is a direct battle as we come towards the end of the volume that concludes with predictable, but still funny, results.
While one could possibly getting a little tired of the “will they, won’t they?” premise that the series is built upon, I’m just having too much fun watching the characters, who are now much more fully developed, run around with the usual zaniness to be bored. A lack of plot progression does not equal a lack of enjoyment. Sure, we will want to have some kind of conclusion to the ongoing saga of “Who will confess, if ever?” between Kaguya and Miyuki, and the author has indicated that an inflection point is on the immediate horizon (already hinted at in previous volumes). At the end of this one, that potential game changer comes into full view. We’ll see how it plays out.
In Summary:
Yu wants to confess his love for Tsubame, but lacks the confidence to do so. Kaguya and Miyuki both want him to succeed…for their own personal gain, as it might make it easier to then pressure the other to confess their love. Yes, that messed-up dynamic is still at work. But who cares when we can see all of the silliness that a Culture Festival provides as a backdrop to the romantic drama? The comedy continues to be solid, founded upon the now fully-developed characters. This volume may not really have many surprises, but it does have a lot to laugh at and with.
Content Grade: A
Art Grade: A-
Package Rating: A-
Text/Translation: A-
Age Rating: Teen
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: March 3rd, 2020
MSRP: $9.99
