Whoo-hoo! A short stack of new volumes from the library will let me finish out the week with a Hinamatsuri binge!
Hitomi Mishima, the super competent and responsible teenager, continues to be the main draw. With the series' time jump, she finds herself in the extremely awkward position of being able to help out her newly-unemployed father.
Anzu gets the second best chapter as her life with her foster parents takes multiple wrenching emotional turns in just a few pages.
And title character Hina is still just fine as the former magical girl assassin who'd rather just eat and play video games. Her funniest chapters have her trading lunches with classmates at her new school and taking a part-time waitress job in order to afford a new video game system.
The previous volume wrapped up the material covered by the anime and began the three year jump with the kids now starting high school. I do enjoy noting the subtle changes in character designs when a series covers age progression. The characters are still themselves, although Hina's probably changed the most and has gotten more expressive. She's still a lazy, food-obsessed bum, but she doesn't have that robotic Rei Ayanami-style emotional distance and now seems to have a "normal" nonchalant apathy.
This time jump also seemed a bit lacking somehow. Maybe it's because the characters feel like they've settled into their roles and don't feel quite as eccentric. The new yankee/delinquent/hooligan characters aren't as amusing as others and it feels like characters are starting to face more "serious" events.
This is definitely one of the funniest, weirdest series I’ve read. Hitomi arc is so crazy, I laughed for several minutes. Anzu generally has a lot of feel good stories. Hina has downright ridiculous stories. To say that there’s nothing I’ve read which is quite like this would be no understatement. It’s also amazing how the mangaka continues to deliver comedy stories consistently. There’s not much fatigue here that’s typical of comedy slice of life series.
One interesting thing - there’s almost no focus on where Hina, Anzu, Mao and Ikaruga come from. I wonder if they’ll ever get to that.
Most of the psychic powers have fallen by the wayside as we now watch these high school age girls have their own adventures. Like finding a job! Or... helping their parents find jobs? There are some good bits in here, I think Hina's job search chapter was my favourite. But overall it's lost a bit of the ridiculousness that made me like this series so much. Yakuza jobs, psychic powers... I miss those outlandish situations that made for some far-out humour watching them clash.