By Dachima Inaka and Iida Pochi. Released in Japan as “Tsujo Kogeki ga Zentai Kogeki de Ni-kai Kogeki no Okasan wa Suki desu ka?” by Fujimi Shobo. Released in North America digitally by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

Since the last volume of this series came out in North America, the anime has started, and as such the series is even more well-known than it was before. Unlike some other Summer 2019 debuts I could mention (coughArifuretacough), the anime of Do You Love Your Mom? does not seem to have annoyed anyone who’s not already annoyed with the premise in the first place. I have been seeing a lot more criticism of Masato, though, and this isn’t a surprise. Indeed, it’s called out by the villain in this book. Shouldn’t he be the hero? Shouldn’t he get to do a cool thing once in a while? Shouldn’t Wise and Medhi be falling for him/competing for him? The answer, of course, is no, becausde the whole point of the series is that it isn’t that. This is a series where the mom takes over. That’s the PLOT. Masato’s journey, if anything, is to get on with him mom.

It’s a journey that may take a while – the entire series, in fact. Now, compared to everyone else in the series, Masato and his mother have a warm, loving relationship. But it’s clear that “my mom is embarrassing” is combining with “my mom is stealing my spotlight” to make for a very frustrated young man. In this book, he and his party reach a 100-floor tower with lots of monsters. A standard dungeon crawl. But there’s not much of that. Instead they take over an inn and fix it up, try to stop a bunch of thugs from blowing up the town, and (of course) deal with a whole bunch of NPC moms and their overly mom traits. The author in the afterword has to spell out that while these are stereotypical moms in every way, they’re not meant to be MEAN characterizations. The book is on Team Mom. Which is why the villain, a clumsy and rather airheaded women who wants to abolish all mothers, is as lame as she is. Well, that plus it’s funny.

As for the core cast, they’re much the same. Wise and Medhi sniping at each other can be funny, and I’m somewhat relieved that the sniping is not as one-sided as I feared it would be. As for Porta… yeah, there’s that implication towards the end. Porta being a sleeper agent for the bad guys is pretty much my number one theory right now, and the villain in this book does nothing to dissuade it. After all, we still know absolutely nothing about her own situation (is she even a PC?), and it would not surprise me if she winds up evil. That said, you know Mamako will just hug the evil out of her. Suspense is not the name of the game here, nor is adventuring and fantasy. The name of the game is watching Mom smother her boy with love while being ludicrously over the top – be it in killing monsters or in washing clothes.

I suspect the anime will end with this volume, and it’s a decent ending place given each book is mostly self-contained. Fans of Mamako will enjoy her being more Mamako than ever, and there’s lots of silly fun to be had here.