Summer vacation arrives and Mitsumi is determined to make memories before everybody graduates. That means the ocean and that also means both of Mitsumi’s worlds are about to collide, with varying degrees of success.
You can make such a brilliant meal of so much of Skip & Loafer’s narrative that it’s easier to go on about it forever than to make a summary review. This volume is stuffed with all sorts of delicious plot and character and the arc’s not even over yet.
Obviously the big fallout is from Sousuke and Mitsumi’s very brief relationship that floundered because, well, Mitsumi felt Sousuke didn’t have his heart in it and he agreed. But is taking Mitsumi’s advice in such things a good idea?
This neatly brings Fumi, Mitsumi’s best friend, into the equation, after the gang heads to Mitsumi’s place for summer break. Fumi gets a lot to do this volume, including…
Look. There’s absolutely too much here to hit all the high points. It’s ALL high points. The subtle character work (nice metaphor at the end there), the way it observes and breaks down human nature so well, the small victories and the melancholy of drifting apart.
It even manages to decisively examine middle child syndrome and that’s after a sort-of unrelated first chapter that’s a brilliant assessment of the ‘desperate to get a girlfriend’ archetype and how shallow (and hurtful) that mentality is.
Not enough? Fine, Nao gets her own homecoming out of nowhere and… it’s kind of beautiful. And something else that looked like it was heading in a predictable direction, like they just pound you with the hints, ends up being a lot more fun.
The joy of this story is how it is just blanket fantastic, but, if you want to dig into it, there’s so much to reward a careful and detailed analysis and breakdown. Motivations and changing circumstances are all blended together so skillfully.
Okay, sure, Mitsumi and Sousuke will likely get together again, but they’ve gone through it to reach that point. Sousuke still doesn’t think he’s a nice guy and yet he keeps showing that he actually is. And he cares, he just has to stop looking to other people (yes, even Mitsumi) for validation.
Standard romance is always welcome, but something like this that just kills it in every aspect while also being so wonderfully unique and mature in how it depicts the immaturity of high school (of course the guys are dumb enough to overheat in the bath because they’re talking too long) offers so much more to a wider variety. It’s easy to recommend to pretty much anybody.
5 stars - I don’t rarely think a manga is overstuffed with amazing things, but this thing is a cannoli stuffed in a calzone stuffed in a submarine sandwich. Except it all makes sense. Perfect volume.