Uryu is deeply troubled by the question the three sisters have set before Which of the three of them does he actually want to marry? Unable to come up with a good answer that will leave all three sisters happy, and fretting over the approaching date of his college entrance exams, Uryu is on the verge of panic. And between running into a mysterious blonde beauty, unraveling Yuna's murderous plot, dealing with Asahi turning as cold as ice, and reminiscing about how he and Mahiru first met, he still has to answer the question. Can he really make all three sisters happy if he has to pick just one of them?
Now that we’ve met Azuki of the Inugami shrine, you’d think she would be front and centre in our tale. Instead, the story immediately goes back to what it does best and continues being incredibly good at it.
By daring to give its male lead a personality and facing the potential miseries for most of its cast by the end head-on, this has become my default harem series and the best of its type I’ve read in ages. It puts the effort in and has yet to get the slightest bit stale.
The first three chapters are just focused on each of the three sisters, filled with the usual romance and nonsense that the series has down to a science by this point. Each is slightly different - Asahi shows off her intelligence, Yuna’s inability to process her emotions turns into a horror parody, and Yae gives a very cold shoulder.
There are a couple dalliances with other love interests, the story still hasn’t forgotten Uryu’s original crush on his ‘big sister’ at the orphanage, but even that is mostly just to throw light on how good the dynamic between Uryu and the sisters has become.
Honestly, the best story involves a winding trip through Kyoto that is pure fun and manages to shoehorn in literally every single side character the series has given time to up to this point. It’s pretty much a celebration and one that is honestly well-earned at this point.
There’s a ton of such callbacks in this volume, including one from many, many volumes ago that brings in some fourth wall breaking that I’ll allow because the way the story incorporates faith and the supernatural into a rather sweet ending is wonderfully done.
Toss in some umbrella fighting and a segue into a Yae storyline that ends just as she reveals that she’s got a far different perspective on love than you might have thought, and for unclear but definite reasons, and you have a very full volume.
It’s very solid, but there’s no big huge storyline with a twist that pushes this into great territory. Instead it contents itself with being good for every single story instead. Not exactly a bad position to be in and one this manga frequently occupies.
Again, this could all go so very badly by the ending, but there has been a considerable and consistent amount of goodwill built up over these many volumes that it’s more than earned the benefit of the doubt. It has a willingness to ask the difficult questions amidst the silly and I appreciate that very much.
4.5 stars - so very good, but nothing that quite wowed me enough in the moment to make me think it deserves higher. Still, I am a big fan of this series for many reasons and it has yet to miss a beat these past few volumes.