By Izumi Tsubaki. Released in Japan as “Oyayubi kara Romance” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz.

Well, at the end of Volume 7 of this series, I noted that I hoped the next volume would give us more humor and massage. Luckily, I get both here, although still not as much massage as the earlier volumes. But then, that’s because the author is busy moving the romance between Chiaki and Yosuke forward.

One thing I really liked about this is seeing Yosuke having to forcibly stop himself from getting more physical with Chiaki. This is unsurprising from a reserved guy with a tortured past, but it’s handled very well, showing a certain honest-to-god passion that tends to be missing much of the time from Hana to Yume guys. The implication that kissing Chiaki has unlocked his libido is refreshing, especially as the series as shown us multiple times that Chiaki really wants to ravish *him*, and how this is only partially sublimated through the massage.

Meanwhile, it’s culture festival time, and the massage club is having to deal with the fact that if they do a maid massage cafe, the customers will only be horny guys trying to see up their skirts when they massage. The solution to this, of course, is cross-dressing! And yes, the girls in the massage club to make very handsome fake guys. The same cannot be said of the guys in the club, who (with a few bishie exceptions) make very ugly girls. Nevertheless, it seems to succeed very well. Sadly, it also shows one of the author’s major faults, which is her inability to distinguish between so many characters. It’s far too easy to get people mixed up in this manga.

We get a decent amount of Natsue and Harumi here. I’m highly amused by the bath scene, where all the guys note that they can hear everything the girls are saying in the other bath, and all stay very quiet to try to hear the other girl’s feelings. In particular, I love after all this has happened seeing Natsue quietly smile down at a hiding Harumi and asking “Was it fun?” More to the point, however, we see that Natsue has realized that since Harumi and Ayame are completely unable to break out of their family situations, she has to be the one to do it… and she doesn’t have the power or skill yet. This is, of course, why she’s going to study abroad, something she’s still keeping from Harumi. The scene with her and Ayame was very sweet, showing two friends who could have become rivals but instead are working together to make themselves happier.

Oh yes, and Ayame meeting Amane (and not thinking his eyes are scary at all) is a hideous deus-ex-machina to clean up romantic loose ends… except it’s also incredibly adorable, so I’ll give it a pass. Amane also gets a nice, if awkward speech that leads to Ayame realizing that she can be the chain link binding together Natsue and Harumi… and that’s what she wants more than anything. Bonds of friendship.

So Chiaki and Yosuke are dating, the cast is almost ready to get to the end of the school year, and most of the loose ends are wrapping up. (There are still some loose ends… whatever happened to Chiaki’s evil twin anyway?) A solid volume of this unassuming and unspectacular series.