Hikigaya's calculated assessment of Iroha Isshiki from Volume #8 holds true: The first-year student is "[a] bitch in fluffy sheep's clothing." The girl's duplicitousness is only marginally outshone by her galloping craftiness, and her intuition for collaborative work only goes so far as her vapid charms permit. And yet, still, somehow, Isshiki worms her way into the Service Club and steals their labor to eke out a rudimentary task she cannot complete in the course of her normal student council duties.
MY YOUTH ROMANTIC COMEDY. . .#10.5 is a slight change of pace for the novel series' half volumes. This isn't a collection of seasonal short stories. Oddly, this volume is its own, self-contained story. The time scale is compressed to perhaps three or four days' time, but generally speaking, the structure and format of the conflict set before Hikigaya and his schoolmates is no different here than elsewhere. Here, Isshiki crashes the Service Club with greater and greater frequency. She's terribly annoying. And all readers can do is hope the girl gets what she wants, so she can slough off and wander toward the next shiny object on her path.
Hikigaya, sadly, submits to far too many cute smiles and dewy eyes in this volume than is typical. It's funny to imagine the young man loosening his grip on the arch validity of pragmatism, but the truth is that Isshiki is a hungry lioness with a feral taste for materialism. What's that? The student council has funds left at year's end? And Isshiki wants to blow the cash? And then conjure some ex post facto, rhetorical needling to make herself seem like a better person than she is? Par for the course.
The stakes are low, however, and so it's not really that big of a deal whether the club agrees to assemble a cheap newsmagazine to advertise the school as the new year approaches. It's not that big of deal whether Isshiki's garrulous and cheeky efforts at forcing a weekend "date" can actually put a dent in Hikigaya's rotten-eyed fortitude. And it's not that big of a deal when, in nearly failing to make the deadline for the magazine, Isshiki grumbles, but Yuigahama smiles warmly and Yukinoshita nods with confidence.
MY YOUTH ROMANTIC COMEDY. . .#10.5 posits these inherently contradictory circumstances with the prevailing undercurrent that yes, of course it all matters, just not in the way that's easy to intuit. Isshiki is sly enough to get what she wants, but she's a complete fool for believing she'll win favors for doing so. Conversely, Yuigahama and Yukinoshita are intelligent and empathetic enough to know how much personal investment is too much personal investment, but the past year has instructed them on the need to settle down and take life as it comes. It can be difficult to ask for help or to admit when one's judgement has fallen short. It sucks being wrong. But sometimes, if one has a really good pair of allies nearby, and if one is willing to share the hardship for a little while longer, then failure is no longer a phantom of personal inadequacy, failure simply becomes another exercise in self-forgiveness.