Turns out that all Komi needs to communicate is a game of Among Us, or its legally distinct parody. There’s also a lot of talk about kissing and the manga’s power couple gets a little more spotlight.
It’s almost somewhat calming, like the rise and fall of the tides, that the continued quality of Komi ebbs and flows depending on the scenario and characters. Except I can’t just skip the duds and low tide is ahead for this volume.
This might be my curmudgeonly forty-plus years of gaming talking, and given the popularity of Twitch I believe this to be completely my issue, but watching other people play video games is typically very, very boring to me.
I’m passingly aware of Among Us, though undoubtedly this version has a pun to it that is left for the English reader to just assume the translation doesn’t want to share for some reason. But not enough to get at all excited at this parody.
There are some amusing moments, and the ending does encapsulate the intense frustrations that can erupt when playing a social deduction game with players who don’t want to acknowledge any logic, but it is a bit long for what it is.
It does give Komi a chance to strut her stuff and really get into it, which I did like, and it was a nice (and cute) touch that Tadano is so shrewd that he knows when she’s lying every time.
I wish it just had more oomph. This is the same problem I had with that huge classroom war arc a couple volumes back too. They drag in a huge number of the cast and boy do I have no idea who had what personality trait any more.
Anyway, it’s a lot of pages spent on something fitfully engaging, which is too bad, as there are some gems amongst the rough, as usually happens with these.
The best stuff is focused on Naruse and Ase again - starting with a really funny chapter where Manbagi starts to suss out that something is up between them, which leads to the revelation that they are, in fact, dating.
Which, yay, but is then followed up with some ridiculous girl talk and an especially ridiculous digression into the nature of kissing (and lust!) that brings an energy and level of antics I wish the rest of the volume had. It’s both fun and smoothly brings Tadano in at the end to cap it off.
The stuff with the little sister character who is basically Komi if she was gregarious is okay, although the line between gregarious and obnoxious is razor thin, let me tell you. It’s not a great combo with the dragged-out parody from earlier.
The soccer match with the guy who can’t talk to girls, who does manage to talk to Manbagi for one sentence and you can tell that’s a pairing in the making, is fine. Most of the fun comes from Manbagi, who remains the finest creation in the series. Basically, there’s just too much gristle and not enough meat.
3 stars - categorically uneven, but that means next volume should be really good, if I’m reading this chart correctly. And, hey, if you’re really dying for a video game parody, this might really tick your boxes.