The Rentaro family have a very interesting yakiniku dinner where they unexpectedly gorge on marinaded cabbage. We later meet the next girlfriend, late 20s ethics teacher Momoha Bonnouji who is a real drinker and gambler but also has a good helping heart most of the time and they all have a warm and fuzzy non-alcoholic drinking experience.
Later on Rentaro has a nice double date at a travelers cafe and at a gyaru cafe, helps Mimimi with her acting skills for a play and visiting a spring lights display.
The bonus story shows us how Bonnouji got her gambling and drinking habits, partly thanks to her father.
100 Girlfriends works best when it takes the extra bit of effort with its jokes and goes from straightforward gag to something a little more ridiculous that lands just a little bit harder.
Case in point, Bonnoji, our newest girlfriend, who happens to also be a lascivious drunkard of a schoolteacher. Which is mined for the predicable gags, including a wildly inappropriate (and thus appropriate for this series) fourth wall break.
When it turns out that she’s the school’s ethics teacher, however? Now that’s a great joke. Just the little bit more it needs as that gets hammered happily into the ground. Yes, she has a heart of gold, tropes and all that, but she’s also a hot mess.
(For the record, I’ll eat my e-reader if there aren’t twins in this at some point.)
Everything else is about the usual, which is decidedly silly, although the series definitely has its patterns down to a science at this point. I will not belabour the point I always make, but through single digits this was a sleek, goofy, beast. Now it is a lumbering titan of titillation and a mostly impressive juggling act.
The smaller side chapters are consequently more fun for me because they drill down to the sort of thing it was doing all the time at first. The double date with Yaku and Kishika is a hoot, especially when Kusuri and Shizuka tag along to spy on them and get distracted by everything.
Similarly, the very nonsensical Uto, whose bard-like appearance belies somebody who is making up crap as they go, is rapidly becoming one of my favorite characters and they use her very well this volume. She really lifts up the gyaru character, Ahko, when they share a date.
The group stuff is largely chaos at this point. The alcohol chapter breaks the fourth wall a little too much for my liking - I feel this is a crutch the series is way too fond of at this point - but it does indulge in your Karane/Hakari ship if you have one (which I do).
(The anime has helpfully clued me in more acutely to the Nano and Shizuku pairing, which is as adorably wholesome as Karane and Hakari are not.)
That chapter’s okay, but the entire yakiniku section lands so little for me that it’s a real bust. I don’t think much of it works, minus a brief moment for poor Chiyo as she tries to take 20-odd different drink orders. Not a great use of two chapters.
But, the singles really save this. The school play chapter with the drama club goes so sideways that it’s very hard not to laugh at it. Which I did, because it does the kind of extremes the series is best at.
The days when I wholeheartedly recommend every little bit of this series are probably well past it by this point, but this does a good job with offering up the small stuff that it does very well and the large stuff that it occasionally gets right.
4 stars - enough gags and excellent Uto content make for a good volume, even with a couple of underwhelming chapters.
Chapters 109 & 110 will go down has two of the greatest in this series, I was laughing nonstop. I also have to say, M. Fulcrum (real name?) did a phenomenal job translating those two chapters. This series has to be the most difficult manga to translate, I can’t imagine it being anything but difficult. And btw, the new character, Bonnoji Sensei is a great new love. I’m glad to see this series back on track, it was slipping a tad.