I went into volume two right after we see Yukako basically breaking off their friendship after she sees Kousuke in Hotaru’s room. I was honestly hoping this manga would get better as we moved away from the starting relationship troubles and basic background explanation, but unfortunately I’m not that lucky. Maybe I’m too far removed from the highschool scene now that this kind of drama is starting to not appeal to me, but that’s questionable. I still remember what it was like in highschool and the complexities that come with crushing hard on someone while still trying to maintain a friendship. However, I don’t think I would ever break off a friendship in favor of a potential relationship. This is probably the main reason this manga started to drop far down on my list. I can understand straining a friendship, but I can’t see deliberately sabotaging your friends chances (even going so far as to break her phone) to steal the guy away. It just makes me think that she wasn’t a great friend to begin with. It makes it worse as Hotaru is clearly agonizing over her loss of friendship and is trying to be straight with Yukako, but she just continues to be completely underhanded to someone who was her best friend a few days ago.
Then we see a week-long fight between Hotaru and Kousuke after Kousuke catches her coming out of Haruna-sensei’s house with his brother’s clothes on. This was after she was waiting in the rain for Kousuke and fainted from a fever, only to be saved by Haruna-sensei. I can pass this part off as typical young people not knowing how to solve relationship problems yet, but it was still kind of frustrating because you don’t know that Kousuke had seen her come out of his brother’s house. This leaves you wondering what the hell happened to make him so mad. We also get the standard plot delays I was talking about in the last volume popping up again when Hotaru just falls asleep at important moments.
Also in this volume we get to see a different side of Haruna-sensei, one who seems to have changed from a teacher to an older senpai in terms of characterization and how he interacts with everyone. I’m not sure I like how much he changed from the first volume, but I guess the love triangle with Yukako wasn’t enough. Well, on to volume three. I have to see how this ends now.
Volume 3’s review will be coming soon!
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