Whether a feature or a bug, I mostly lean feature, every volume of Last Game is pretty much exactly like the previous. The admission by Amano that their desire was to produce an over-the-top shojo makes it pretty clear where the needle is.
This time out it’s the fancy party and Kujou is avoiding Yanagi and general mayhem ensues. Souma, useless rival, continues to be a useless rival, but I admit that his schtick of trying to conceal his country roots is growing on me. His ranting about eating taters in the sticks was excessively funny.
Kujou kicks some butt herself by taking down a bully and then also gets a hand from Yanagi. Then there’s hotpot and lots of sparkles, some fourth wall breaking about sparkles, all the usual things. And also one instance of charming blood vomit? Maybe.
Finally, a rival for Yanagi shows up and ingratiates herself into the astrology club and I do love how the club president has her number in around five seconds flat. There is some pretty amusing comedy to all this - I wouldn’t say it’s laugh out loud, but there are a lot of chuckles to be mined from it.
I wouldn’t recommend this as a starting point for shojo, but as an example of it taken to its extremes, it’s pretty fun. Both Yanagi and Kujou are two very silly fish that I enjoy watching flounder.
On the downside, all that mayhem comes at a price and it can be brutally tough to tell who is saying what to whom from where sometimes (the party chapters are a muddle and change). It’s not the most elegant plotting.
And my usual bias against one-shots remains intact with a good 50 pages or so taken up with a ninja love story that’s cute enough, but not a patch on the main story that I’m actually here for.
3 stars - a good 3; it exists in its genre and, while never exceeding it, takes it to some ridiculous endpoints. Fun and cozy.