Kujou and Yanagi are no further along than before, but that’s just room for Tachibana to keep getting her hopes up. And what better time than a trip to Souma’s hometown for some stargazing to muck things up?
Other than its college-age setting, which I do appreciate, this is as by-the-numbers and straight down the middle as a shojo story gets. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, it doesn’t move very fast, and it’s damned charming.
There’s exactly enough sweet stuff between Yanagi and Kujou that makes it worth waiting for and the other bits in between are fine to while away the time with. This is a pretty solid batch of people whose tendency, minus Kujou, is to overreact to everything and that energy keeps it pretty light.
Really, it’s not exactly novel to have yet another character so oblivious to life that they don’t understand jealousy, but this isn’t playing it terribly straight and Kujou is so nice that she gets away with it (this will not prove the case with another book I am reading).
Kujou’s development has been slow, but the cracks in her taciturn nature slowly forming as she comes to terms with her feelings (or begins to) are good enough and Yanagi is always just ready to be charming or suddenly die. Although, the mangaka rightly notes that he gets a few unintentional boundary violations this volume.
Souma continues to be a character who has actually evolved and despite a little backsliding on his approach to Kujou, he is much more fun when he’s helping things along, the story makes a lot out of somebody who was woefully annoying at the offset.
Watching him and his dad try to interact in the way of all repressed men, combined with Souma’s ongoing tsundere tendencies, is a lot of fun and I like that his mom is there to keep them both in their place.
If you take away that this volume is totally fine, that is the exact point I’m trying to make. These are not fabulous works of literature, but they’re a really good time. Tachibana is a bit of a dip, and crazy shallow, but everybody else works great.
You could do much better, but you could do a lot worse. Every time I grab one of these it’s basically an excuse to hang out with a great cast and get a little romance. There’s nothing wrong with that, but set your expectations accordingly.
3 stars - perfectly acceptable with a sprinkling of cute. I don’t mean to impugn it with that score; it’s absolutely enjoyable, but absolutely of its genre at the same time.