By Hajime Kamoshida and Keji Mizoguchi. Released in Japan as “Seishun Buta Yarou wa Santa Claus no Yume wo Minai” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

You know, Rascal Does Not Dream turned into a horror series so gradually, I didn’t even notice. Oh sure, each volume has had its share of horror and suspense – far more than you’d normally expect from a high school romcom. Starting with Mai potentially disappearing and Sakuta’s horrible scars, each volume has sometimes looked deep into the abyss. But I don’t think we’ve had a volume lean quite so hard into actual horror than this one. Even Vol. 6 and 7 was meant to be a tragedy, not horror. Here we get the ongoing Touko plot blending into loss of identity, and over the course of the book we realize that it’s not just Nene who’s dealing with the loss of identity, but A LOT of other people. And now they’re all invisible Santas. And they’re trying to kill Mai. As I said. Creepy as hell. Sakuta manages to resolve the immediate issue this time around, but only by getting physically injured to protect his love. Also, the ending is not reassuring.

Sakuta has a Christmas dream that Mai is singing at a concert, then announced publicly that she is Touko Kirishima. What’s worse, a whole lot of other people had similar dreams. Other, more disturbing dreams are also happening. Kaede dreamed she had reverted to her alternate self again. Futaba dreamed that she and Kunumi were on a happy date together, which is ominous given that he’s still together with Kamisato. And Mai… didn’t have a dream at all. It all has to relate to the Santa-wearing Touko, and Sakuta spends most of the book looking into Touko, as well as the girl he thinks she is, Nene. The answer to how to solve her problem is a lot closer to Sakuta than he thinks, but… is that really the actual problem? Is he just treating a symptom? And what’s with the dream of Mai getting injured and falling into a coma?

As I said, there’s a lot of scary stuff here. Particularly the ending, showing Mai surrounded by about 100 Santa-clad Toukos that no one else seems to be able to see. I did enjoy the wrapup on Nene’s plot specifically, but it also made me wonder how she and all the other Toukos are meant to reintegrate into society after having “vanished” for about 10 months. The book, unsurprisingly, decides to elide over that. I also enjoyed seeing the friendship/codependent helper relationship that he and Ikumi have, is only because it’s just nice to see him have someone reliable to talk to who can help deal with everything even when no one else can. And, honestly, that may end up tying into the next book. Because anyone who thinks the next book is not going to start with Mai saying that she’s Touko is fooling themselves. The whole volume is a setup for that.

There are two books to go, and they come out only two months apart (the final one is in October in Japan), so Yen may wait and try to release them the same way here. The identity of the antagonist is not hard to guess (hint: what major girl hasn’t got a cover yet?) but I have no idea how it’s going to resolve. In the meantime, there is fun banter here, I promise, but it’s getting thin on the ground.

By Hajime Kamoshida and Keji Mizoguchi. Released in Japan as “Seishun Buta Yarou wa My Student no Yume wo Minai” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

With the first two books in the “college” part of this series, I have struggled to see why it’s been ongoing at all beyond “this is now a franchise with ongoing multimedia, you will write more until we tell you to stop” coming from Dengeki Bunko. With this book, I think I’ve gotten a handle on where this is going, helped out by a much stronger “cover character” than the others, even if she’s far less likeable. The original Rascal books were, for the most part, “a traumatic event in someone’s past displays itself as external symptoms that are horrible”, with Sakuta attempting to fix things in the same way that Koyomi Araragi or Hachiman Hikigaya try to fix things, i.e. throw themselves at it with little regard to danger. But Sakuta has learned better by now, helped by Mai literally dying for him, and so self-sacrifice isn’t on the menu. More importantly, the external symptoms are now wonderful.

Sakuta is still doing his cram-school job while also attending college, working his part-time job, trying to figure out what’s up with the Santa girl only he can see, and also spending time with his girlfriend. This is a lot. The prophetic dream thing is still ongoing, and Sakuta has a dream that on Christmas Eve he’s on a train … not with his girlfriend, but with Sara Himeji, a new student in his cram school class who has had two cram school teachers apparently try to make a move on her and be fired. Sakuta is #3, and is determined to avoid that possibility, despite events conspiring against him at every turn. And there’s also the fact that Sakuta from the other world where he’s more competent has told our Sakuta that Mai is in danger because of Touko.

Sara may not be 100% likeable, but she’s one of the best characters we’ve seen in this series for a while. She’s basically not had to struggle her entire life, and people are naturally drawn to her. As a result, when something does not go the way she wants, it ends up devastating her in a way that’s pretty easy for Touko to exploit. The best part of the book is the solution to the problem, as Sakuta spends most of it doing detective work to try to find a way out of this dream future, and ends up going with “do what the dream says and see what happens. But then Mai invites herself along. Mai being part of the solution is something that works very specifically for Sara, who is poleaxed at seeing what a real couple really in love is like, and when Mai starts reeling off things she loves about Sakuta and informs her she can do this all day, it cracks the Adolescence Syndrome like an egg. You can see and hear Sara grow up.

There is an ominous cliffhanger to this book, which implies that once again the universe is out to kill Mai. That said, the title of the next book is Rascal Does Not Believe in Santa Claus, so presumably we’ll confront Touko at last.

By Hajime Kamoshida and Keji Mizoguchi. Released in Japan as “Seishun Buta Yarou wa Nightingale no Yume wo Minai” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

When I first saw the title, I wondered why we were getting two “singer” books in a row, and wondered if we’d be hitting all of Sweet Bullet. But no, this is not “Nightingale” as in “sang in Berkeley Square”, it’s “Nightingale” as in “Florence Nightingale”. I’m not sure if the author is TRYING to hit every single fetish, but it’s certainly true that, after commenting on the miniskirt Santa he met last time, he has to deal with several nursing school students this time around. Including, unfortunately, his old nemesis Saki. Fortunately, both of them have grown up to the point where they can actually tolerate each other in short bursts. As for the actual person who stars in this volume, we’ve seen her before as well. She was briefly in Sakuta’s high school in the “other universe” in Book 9, and he briefly saw her at college last book. And, as it turns out, she’s heavily connected to his past.

After briefly meeting up with Yuuma and Rio for a day outing, and confirming that Yuuma is quite happy being written out of the series, Sakuta goes back to trying to solve the problem of Touko Kirishima and the resurgence of Adolescence Syndrome. Of course, this being Sakuta, “trying” is perhaps too strong a word. What he ends up finding is that Ikumi Akagi, his old classmate from junior high, has been going around doing good deeds. Horrifying, right? It turns out that these good deeds are connected to a social media tag where people confess prophetic dreams, and Ikumi has been using that to try to stop the bad prochecies from coming true. This bothers Sakuta, who has first hand experience about why doing that can be a terrible idea. That said, what’s more bothersome is the fact that she’s making him remember what happened back in junior high, i.e. the events that led to the main plotline of this series.

This isn’t a harem series. Really. Sakuta has remained faithful to Mai the entire time, and the two have several lovey-dovey scenes together. It’s just that Sakuta has that combination of a bad-boy personality combined with good-boy actions that leads everyone to be drawn to him. Ikumi is no exception, and I actually want to be circumspect here, because I thought a lot of the aspects of her syndrome, as well as the cause and resolution, were very clever in a series that’s already pretty clever, so I don’t want to give it away. At heart, this is about how hard to can be to live up to your own expectations. Ikumi feels she failed Sakuta in junior high, and has never been able to get over it. Sakuta always feels like he’s doing the wrong thing, especially after going to the other world and finding a Sakuta who seemingly did everything right. We are our own worst critics.

Good stuff, even if it still feels like a series that ended at Book 9 and the publisher is locking the author in a room until they write more because it’s got movies coming out.