Cultural Research Club, more like Babysitter's Club! Winter break is here, and it's nearly time for New Year's festivities… but there's a new troublemaker in town, and its name is «The Second». This time, the members of the Cultural Research Club—minus Taichi—are chosen at random to physically regress into younger versions of themselves from 12 PM to 5 PM every day! Tensions build as old, painful memories come to light. Meanwhile, Taichi is forced to keep quiet about «The Second» or else it threatens to make things even worse… Can they last until the clock runs out? Find out in volume 3 of the hit ensemble dramedy light novel from award-winning author Sadanatsu Anda!
A much better volume than the previous Kizu Random.
The gimmick this time has our gang randomly regressing to childhood between the hours of 12PM to 5PM and in the process, they discover a lot more about themselves than they might have realised. This time, the approach is fairly more interesting and the author broaches the angle of facing your past regrets in a much more relatable manner, especially when the characters are literally brought back to the moment when they actually felt it.
Another thing that made this volume a lot better for me was the introduction of the 2nd antagonist character, which approaches our leading cast in a very different manner compared to the first, but no less malicious at parts. It also paints a more nuanced picture of the mysterious antagonists that our heroes face, but still we are not given much to work with.
More importantly, the drama and angst written in this volume is definitely back to the quality levels of the first volume, so I did find myself being more immersed and sympathetic to their plight. Definitely needs more of this writing quality.