Uryu is having some wild dreams that are, to his dismay, proving wildly prophetic as well. Despite his attempts to fight fate, he ends up on a shrine visit with the sisters that might show him a way forward, provided he can keep from getting himself killed first.
This is the rare harem book where the main character is actually written decently enough that he isn’t some amorphous loser blob just waiting to luck into a pile of women and Uryu remains a big asset to the story being told.
For as much as he dislikes the idea of taking on the shrine, he definitely cares about what happens to the girls and that makes him particularly likeable and interesting. He has a couple of stand-out moments here where he stands up to people and he’s contributing to the story rather than merely flopping around being shocked at all the fan service.
No, it isn’t all perfect, this is a boob-squeezin’ bit of business and still catering to all the other usual genre trappings to boot. But it also has things to say about fate and destiny and how maybe they might not be so bad after all, even if trying to escape them makes Uryu even more miserable.
And if the girls’ mentor is inscrutable and cruel (and too handsy), she’s at least coming at it from the position of seeing who’s really got the drive to see the shrine succeed in the future. She’s far less villainous than the ending of last volume would have suggested.
Even better, though this is all to varying degrees of success, every girl gets something to do and becomes a little more fleshed out (yes, in both senses, although the youngest one is mercifully minimal still in that respect). Since this definitely feels more traditional than the fun of last volume, the extra effort here does alleviate that somewhat.
This particularly pays out for Yae, the eldest, who is a lot more than just the flighty one of the group. It was really interesting to see what she’s actually capable of. Yuna’s section is probably the lamest, just because it kind of gives her a trait that doesn’t do much except make her less interesting.
Asahi’s portion is sweet and falls in that middle area of being a celebration of family, but also rather naive in terms of throwing away a big chance just on that basis. The ease with which this gets wrapped up doesn’t quite sit right either, but maybe I’m just a pragmatist.
This isn’t the best series going or anything, and the harem antics at the heart of things really did not offer anything new this time, sadly, but there is typically a swing at sentimentality in every example of this genre and I believe this story does it a lot better than most.
3 stars - it’s been better, but I have read far worse elsewhere. In fact, having a story like this where you’re actually invested in the characters is, sadly, so uncommon that it deserves praise for that alone.