Himari is now managing the rival band to the one that her girlfriend, Yori, is in. This divides a lot of her time, but how about her allegiances? As the summer break wears on, so do the tensions, and this might be a problem that not even yukatas can solve…
Well, it’s a whole volume of getting back to our leads, with the focus shifting nicely back to them at their cutest. After a volume where Yori was pretty sidelined it’s nice to see her back to the fore, although the circumstances could be better.
Shiho still sucks. Our usual bonus manga reveal suggests that her actual reason for breaking with the band was, indeed, heartbreak that she couldn’t deal with compounded by Aki’s growing fondness for Yori. It’s hardly the most shattering revelation, but it’s nice to see that it’s (probably) not strictly malicious.
It’s not quite overtly suggested that her interest in Himari is based out of petty revenge, Himari fits in with the other band really well, but given Shiho’s nature I wouldn’t put it past her. I did like the point raised that she is just as hard on herself as she is everybody else. However, she still sucks. While I don’t love her, Shiho is definitely the type of person who attracts some and repels others and that’s not something we see enough of in manga.
But that’s all stuff that we know, less so Yori, who succumbs to the relatable paranoia when your new partner who you love to bits is spending time with somebody else and they get along really, really well. Despite rallying here and there, Yori is ultimately overcome by her feelings of potential inadequacy and missing Himari.
What I really like here is that even amidst this whole ‘band competition over Himari’ plot and coupled with Yori’s issues, the manga reminds us that amidst all of this trouble brewing… Himari’s a human being. That might sound trite, but the story rightly pivots on the point that she’s a human being and has thoughts and feelings of her own. Yes, Himari is probably too nice for her own good (almost certainly so), but the love she’s discovered in Yori is not so shallow that it could be tossed aside just like that.
And, just like that, this competition is completely defanged of the rather unfortunate feeling it had of being a competition for Himari’s heart. It really seemed like it was going there, but I love the way it just pulled back to show how inconsequential it is to the feelings between our leads. Shame it caused so much friction getting there (Yori really puts herself through fifteen flavours of hell).
Between these points we get a lot of dating, which it’s great to see back in the series. As usual, I have covered the broad strokes of where we go, but there’s a lot more nuance to all this. As fluffy as this can get sometimes, and good lord the fluff when they’re dating, it knows how to do the drama really well, even if Himari’s incredible earnestness does tend to uncomplicate things rather quickly.
4 stars - always a delight and I was especially pleased to see how it treated the band competition, taking it in a direction that I think was far healthier and realistic that acknowledged Himari as something more than a prize. It has weight in the narrative, but it’s not some make or break point for these two, as it should be.