The long-simmering Mami continues to wage her silent war against Kazuya’s many relationships, while Kazuya indulges a lot of fantasy and familial relations get strained to the old breaking point.
At this stage, if Mami was any more of a foil she’d be sanctioned for Olympic fencing tournaments. Whether she still cares about Kazuya or not, and this being this type of book she probably does, her methods of involving herself in his life are… miserable. Still, much as I hate her, I cannot deny she adds some needed pop to this story.
The main action this time is Kazuya’s indulgent request to have a vintage high school date with Chizuru, trying to relive all the memories he never got to make in the first place. It’s pretty believable and certainly not the worst request he could have made, so there’s that.
This is actually the best section of the book because it illustrates Chizuru’s calm professionalism at a job that is clearly a thankless hell. Even with Kazuya’s interest in her well-being, there’s a lot of customer-client-maybe more that gets blurred and, in a better series, would be grappled with a lot more depth.
Kazuya seems to be aware that he’s paying for Chizuru’s affection, even if she has moments where she seems genuinely fond of him, but he also crosses the line (not like that) in believing they could be something more. Which, again, is the point, but seems terrifying from the female perspective - if all her clients did this it would be solid nightmare fuel.
Anyway, it’s largely an excuse for an amusement park setting and to get Chizuru into her high school duds and, while I do not espouse a schoolgirl fetish, I can never fault the art in this series and the mangaka knocks this clear out of the park, so to speak.
For all Kazuya’s endless fumbles and constant ball drops, he does want the best for Chizuru. By this stage of the game I feel that would best be served by him no longer hiring her and being a bit more of a man about it, but what do I know?
The last section is the beginning of a story arc that involves Ruka interjecting herself into what turns into a joint birthday party for Kazuya and Chizuru at his place.
This bit turns into a lot of friction from Ruka trying to ingratiate herself into the family while Kazuya attempts to make peace and maintain the flimsy lie that this entire series is largely based on (can you tell I’m kind of done with it?).
Honestly, this entire storyline is kind of boring because I think Ruka’s the most straightforward and, bluntly put, dull of the girls at this point. It’s also the most eye-rollingly cliché bit of the story in a series that’s already pretty cliché most of the time. Wackiness that isn’t funny isn’t, well, much fun.
It would be sub-par at the best of times, it takes a lot to sell a concept this sweaty any more, but coming off a genuinely fun, if conflicting, set of chapters like the ones that came before it makes this feel well past its sell-by date, even with the title promising a potential kiss that can just as easily amount to nothing.
3 stars - average series with amazing art, which is my review of every single volume. The date is admittedly cute, but this narrative strains against both the genre’s limitations and the nature of any long-running manga that drags its plot out for ages.