With summer vacation looming, the vaunted meteor shower viewing is nearly upon Magari and Nakami. In fact, they have a lot of plans. So many plans. Sure seems like they’re dating. But they aren’t. And what could possibly go wrong during the summer anyway?
The manga summer vacation carries certain expectations and beats you’re expecting, but the interesting stories do something with them and the most interesting do something else entirely.
This one has a combination of both, including the most vulnerable beach episode I’ve seen in a long, long time, where Magari is very self-conscious of wearing her bikini because of her surgery scars. So she covers up. It’s a smart balance of audience titillation with reality that I felt was beyond the usual tropes.
But there cannot be little swings without big ones and, as always, this art is just too good by half. The continued framing of Magari from Nakami’s perspective and his stolen glances say tons more than most shojo characters manage in eight volumes.
While Magari continues to be amazing, the way she’s also bringing Nakami out of his shell via her influence is really altogether charming. And they make such a solid pair together - the way they share secret conversations late into the night is such vintage high school for me.
And though there is one pretty straightforward declaration this time out, so much of their attraction is portrayed in the subtleties, like the way talking to Nakami is enough to calm Magari’s anxiety and let her actually sleep.
Nagani continues to struggle, but he always has, and it’s a brutal moment where what he’s been so excited for this entire time just gets stolen from him and leaves him in so much turmoil that he just has to act without really processing it.
Of course, that leads to THAT moment, so it all works out, I’d say.
I love this series and these characters so much. Even when I read it and think ‘yeah, that was good’ I realize how fast I consumed the whole thing and how many moments just got stuck in my head from it. It leaves an impression no matter what it’s doing.
There’s a lot less of the typical summer antics, actually, minus that beach stuff. But there’s a lot more hanging out with friends that was kind of great to see. It feels less rote and ‘check off the boxes’ than many stories do, which makes it better, in my opinion.
On the downside, some of the panel composition and dialogue kind of left me at a loss as to what was going on. It’s infrequent, but whenever the rest of the volume is so incredible it does cause the small rough bits to show more.
4.5 stars - still, I can say one thing, and that’s that this is quickly angling for a spot on my short list of ‘series I will reread one day and enjoy all over again’. It is a treasure I look forward to each time it comes out.