By Karuho Shiina. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Margaret (“Betsuma”). Released in North America by Viz.

After the drama of Volume 2, we take a bit of a breather here, as these chapters serve to help cement Sawako’s new friendships and set up the Kurumi arc to come.

I had a discussion on Twitter the other day with Joy Kim regarding shoujo manga and female friendships. I was reminded of it by reading Portrait of M & N, which in Volume 1 featured our heroine as an outcast who is disliked by the other girls for attracting the attention of the hotties who are interested in her. This happens all the time in shoujo, an unfortunate consequence of the authors wanting to draw a lot of hot guys.

Thank God for titles like this, then. While this is still a romance manga, and I would argue that Sawako’s feelings for Kazehaya are the most important plot point, if you removed the romance entirely this manga would still exist. The manga is about Sawako coming out of her shell and learning to interact and be herself, which isn’t something that can be taught by just her man giving a winning smile on Page 35 of every chapter.

The first chapter is almost a microcosm of the manga itself. Sawako gets invited out by Yoshida and Yano for ramen, a carryover from Volume 2. (Her parent’s reaction to this is hysterical.) The ramen turns out to be at Ryu’s place, as his dad owns a ramen shop. Then Kazehaya gets invited over, and even Pin shows up, uninvited, to cause trouble. Throughout this we see Sawako marveling at the easy interaction everyone has with each other, and her gratitude that she’s now a part of it. It’s touching, and yet her intensity also makes it amusingly over the top.

(We also see that Sawako is not the only one in the manga who gets to be completely oblivious to love. Ryu gets the best line of the entire volume when Yoshida asks him what kind of girl he likes.

Ryu: (staring at her) … the kind that’s naive and oblivious, I guess.

Naturally, Yoshida’s response to this is complete bafflement.)

This is not to say that there is no romance in this volume. Sawako and Kazehaya are adorable, and you root for them and feel frustration at their poor communication skills. I liked it when he begins to teach her soccer, and she even noticeably improves under his tutelage (I was expecting her, as a non-tomboy, to be bad at sports in the cliched way.)

And of course we get Kurumi introduced properly here. She’s signposted as a major villain, and Yano (the sharpest of the entire group) sees through her right away. But Sawako has no ability to see through anything, and so is merely deliriously happy that she’s found another friend. Kurumi herself seems to be the ‘sweet on the outside, manipulative on the inside’ sort, and I expect the next volume will have her making Sawako’s life miserable. Especially because of the cliffhanger ending, where it becomes clear that Kurumi’s plans did not take Sawako’s honesty into account.

The mangaka for this series, Karuho Shiina, has been drawing for Shueisha for about 15 years, but she had only one other recurring series, Crazy For You, before starting this one. Clearly she has been honing her craft, as Kimi Ni Todoke is immensely popular in Japan, with an anime currently airing on television (it’s become quite rare for shoujo to get an anime). It’s well deserved. With likeable leads, a great supporting cast, and a heroine who’s becoming a stronger person every day, this is simply one of the best manga that Viz is releasing at the moment.