Bocchi the Rock!, Vol. 4 | By Aki Hamazi | Yen Press – This is not a sports series, but there are certain plot beats that make it FEEL like a sports series, and none more so than the Band Competition arc. It relies on a lot of word of mouth and help from others in order to have Kessoku Band make it into the preliminaries. And then, like a whole lot of sports manga that have our first-year kids discover that there’s always a higher mountain, they do really well… but lose, and are forced to watch their rivals perform at the festival while they remain in the audience. That said, a lot of bands lost, and Bocchi and company got their name out there. (Which is more than I can say for Sick Hack… I must say I’m kind of dreading the spinoff as I find Hiroi almost unreadable, but oh well, this is the main series.) Good stuff. – Sean Gaffney
Diary of a Female Lead: Shujinkou Nikki, Vol. 1 | By Yuu Yoshinaga | Seven Seas – It’s been a while since I’ve read a straight-up normal shoujo title, like this one from Betsucomi. That said, it’s normal, but it’s also deconstructing shoujo manga. Our heroine is a shy, glasses-wearing girl who feels intimidated by her outgoing jock brother and her driven shoujo-manga-writing mother. Then when seats change in class, she’s next to the class hottie—best friend of her brother—and things start to change. Her brother and his friend decide that what she needs to change herself is to fall in love, and they read a lot of shoujo manga to figure out how to make that work. There’s an obvious guy chosen as her target… but we, the reader, know that it’s gonna be the friend, who reeks of male lead. This was fun. – Sean Gaffney
Kageki Shojo!!, Vol. 11 | By Kumiko Saiki | Seven Seas – Everything I said in my review of the last volume a year ago (yeah, this is the trouble with catching up) applies here. Sarasa is still overpowering the scene with her own performance, and the other actresses are needing to change the way they approach the scene to try to salvage it. Ai, meanwhile, is still trying to figure out if she wants to play male or female leads, and which she’d be best at. Given that the series works best when it’s focusing on the two of them, and that Sarasa’s height makes it next to impossible for her to play a female lead, I can see narratively where this should go, but honestly in terms of character I think Ai would be best served playing the male parts. Needless to say, this remains terrific, and I love reading it. – Sean Gaffney
Komi Can’t Communicate, Vol. 31 | By Tomohito Oda | Viz Media – Let’s face it, this is the most back-loaded volume of Komi ever, as a whole lot of festival antics, some focusing on Komi and Tadano and a whole lot more focusing on characters we’ve seen only once or twice before ends with the two of them, trying to have a real festival date on their own, being met with so many disasters that ruin everything that they can’t help but laugh. After that, though, we get the payoff, as the two of them kiss! But there’s a question about if it was accidental or on purpose, and both of them are so flustered that they can’t quite agree on what it is. Given that we spent so long getting to them becoming a couple, it was clear that this was the next step. Will they go all the way? Likely not in Shonen Sunday, but you never know. Cute as a button. – Sean Gaffney
Laid-Back Camp, Vol. 15 | By Afro | Yen Press – We’ve got newbies in the cast again, which means that we can have them learning new things like “it’s really hard to bike uphill.” Because yes, this series is about camping, but it’s just as much about getting to and from the camp, be that testing your strength by biking up a huge hill (really a small mountain) to the camp, or the frustration when you realize that your journey ends here because you don’t have a car and only cars are allowed in the tunnel between prefectures. There are, once again, minimal appearances by the two I’m reading this for, though we see Nadeshiko show off her cooking talents in “imagine sequences,” and there are a few scenes of Rin once again solo camping. This is always enjoyable and always hard to review. – Sean Gaffney
Qualia Under the Snow | By Kanna Kii | KUMA – Kobayashi Akio prefers the company of plants, but makes the acquaintance of his boarding house neighbor, Oohashi Umi, who keeps coming home in disarray after one-night stands. They’re attending the same university and become friends (and, later, roommates), and we gradually learn more about how each was affected by someone they loved disappearing from their lives (Akio’s father, and Umi’s first love). I enjoyed reading Qualia Under the Snow, but thought it was all kind of… vague. There’s no real access to the characters’ inner thoughts, so I still don’t understand what made Akio’s feelings about Umi change, and I don’t know the significance of what he whispers to him at the end (or even, honestly, exactly what it was). This was good, but it wasn’t great. – Michelle Smith
A Sign of Affection, Vol. 10 | By Suu Morishita | Kodansha Comics – OK, the secret continues to linger, and is not addressed in this volume either. What does occur in this volume is a) The two of them moving in, making the house a home, and trying to get a bit more intimate—or at least prepare for more intimacy; b) Itsuomi continuing to try to reach out to Oushi and let him know Yuki wants him in their life, despite Oushi wanting nothing to do with him; and c) introducing new neighbors, sometimes with overdramatic head injuries and sometimes with surprise “oh hey, it’s you!” run-ins on the street. This is still very good, but that’s now two volumes worth of ‘transition to the next arc,’ and I’m not sure all the moving in is enough to carry it right now. I want more meat on these bones. – Sean Gaffney
Skip and Loafer, Vol. 10 | By Misaki Takamatsu | Seven Seas – We finish up the vacation arc, with Shima still at sixes and sevens. At least Mitsumi has confessed her aborted relationship to the other girls, which frankly stuns them (particularly Mika, who is really starting to feel a bit inadequate over this, especially after she spends the vacation getting over her lingering feelings). And then it’s time for the new semester, and a big surprise—their teacher is taking maternity leave, and no, she’s not married. Skip and Loafer has proved that it’s willing to bring in controversial subjects and treat them exactly the same as everything else in the story—and that it’s willing to move away from the main cast, as the back half focuses on Kazakami, who has his future all laid out for him, and hates it. Still amazing. – Sean Gaffney