As we strategy the conclusion of this collection, issues come to a head for Megumi because the love pursuits closest to her trigger her issues in surprising methods.
One comes within the type of Yui, Megumi’s penpal, who Megumi doesn’t know is a boy named Itokichi, even when he visits her stall at Comiket. With Megumi making an attempt to return to phrases together with her romantic emotions for otaku-hating Masamune, she decides to inform Yui/Itokichi that she is falling in love with a boy. Issues develop into much more difficult when Megumi asks to satisfy Yui. Given his mother and father’ insistence on him becoming a member of a army academy very quickly, Itokichi decides to satisfy Megumi and reveal the reality about Yui.
In the meantime, Masamune’s sister Sara is about to have a good time her birthday, and Megumi thinks it will be a good suggestion to organise a celebration to have a good time it. Nonetheless, a part of the rationale for that is an effort to try to get their otaku mom Fujiko to hitch, regardless of how a lot Masamune hates her. There’s one other downside too: the day of the social gathering can also be the day Megumi meets Itokichi. In Megumi’s phrases: “After which got here February 3, 1996. The day all of the gears went haywire.”
This third quantity within the collection is especially setting out the groundwork for the fourth and closing version, as the stress ramps up between Megumi, Masamune and Itokichi. The assembly between Megumi and Itokichi makes for nice and amusing studying – regardless of a gag through which Megumi by accident squirts ketchup on Itokichi, leading to an cross on his face, main him to fortunately say how a lot he now appears to be like like Kenshin from Rurouni Kenshin. I do know it’s a interval piece, however all these references to the work of convicted intercourse offender Nobuhiro Watsuki undoubtedly grate. It’s like somebody in Britain making a TV present set within the Eighties and somebody making a casual gag about Jim’ll Repair It – you can not make that reference with out realizing there’s a large asterisk subsequent to it.
We additionally get to study extra concerning the background of among the characters. We find out how Fujiko grew to become the best way that she is, which was all the way down to her being deserted by her feckless husband. For her, anime offered a way of escape from the troubles of being a single mom, to the price of her personal children.
The manufacturing high quality of the collection stays excessive. Matt Treyvaud’s translation, Jamil Stewart’s lettering, and Maggie Lee’s modifying once more work properly, whether or not it’s the simple readability of the manga, or the standard of the interpretation notes, offering context and up-to-date details about references to some issues from the Nineteen Nineties which have modified – for instance, particulars on the army academy Itokichi is being made to hitch, which has modified names over time.
As we strategy the ultimate quantity, it’s essential to recollect this story is informed in flashback. Simply how Megumi ended up on the level that she too grew to become a single mom, however with an anime-loving daughter, remains to be to be revealed.
Our assessment copy from Kodansha was equipped by Diamond Guide Distributors UK.
