Gojo’s done a lot of work on Marin’s latest cosplay, but he’s also having some serious misgivings. Speaking of misgivings, Marin tries to give Gojo a makeover, to limited success. Then they spend the whole volume hanging out and wind up in a love hotel, which sounds about right for this series.
In case you were wondering, this is the volume of the manga that covers up to the end of the anime - the final pages are literally the season finale. Still, it’s interesting to see these scenes as originally intended, so there’s something here even for the person seeing this a second time.
One thing this series doesn’t get enough credit for is how smart it is at skewering tropes in its contemporaries. In addition to the goofy St. Slippery’s eroge game from volume 1, this time we have the pitch perfect dunk on series with tragically long titles (and poor Gojo’s hilarious cognitive dissonance on a slice-of-life series that features a succubus) that helpfully manages to lend itself to some wild antics.
Even as Gojo continues to live a much better, fuller life thanks to his friendship with Marin, I love that he is still fundamentally himself at the core and that’s really what she loves about him. It’s also welcome that he is clearly a, umm, healthy teenager, but he’s not a degenerate - it’s such a balance that I’ve rarely, if ever, seen pulled off.
That also doesn’t preclude him from speaking his mind when one particular cosplay goes way too far for his liking and he notably doesn’t try to say no or forbid Marin, he simply says that he himself can’t be part of it. That’s a subtle moment, but him not being a scold is important to emphasize his respect for her.
The clothing expedition is such a fun story and the manga version has a much more adorable visual styling that wouldn’t be duplicatable in the anime (although the joke with the porn in the love hotel is better in the anime, so it’s a give-and-take).
As a series of vignettes, this whole book works as a parade of joyful moments between two people who are super into each other that is here to make the audience laugh and go ‘aww’, sometimes both at once, with a ‘yikes’ thrown in now and then. The love hotel is a full on comedic farce that is clearly about to head into a whole other genre until the hormones get stifled.
Then the fireworks festival really makes Gojo reflect on all the things Marin has done for him over the course of their friendship, while she learns a way to push his buttons she was previously unaware of and that’s more than enough to make her day. Part of Marin’s charm is that she is absolutely forthright, if not forthcoming, about just doing stuff and enjoying life.
The last section is all about the time-honoured horror movie date (not a date) that goes as expected, minus how adorably clinical Gojo gets about the special effects. It’s amazing how good your series can be when both leads are strong and simply having them hang out is a treat.
Ironically, the absolute best Marin image from this one is the shot of her wrapped in the blanket near the end, showing the least skin in the entire series. It’s such a great visual and comes just before the very, very lovely ending.
This is such a sweet series with such a ridiculous amount of fan service in the name of cosplay that it almost sneaks by at this point. Marin wears skimpy stuff, she doesn’t care, the end, honestly. Watching these two bond over a shared hobby, but coming to like one other for themselves, is the real treat and why this series works as well as it does. It’s such a return to form after the massive info dumps kept getting in the way in volume 3.
5 stars - yeah, explicit content, I guess, but that heart of gold is why this is such a banger. The book that has only two leads for its entire run time and never feels empty or boring is a rare sight and this one shows how it’s done AND makes it look easy.