The BS Situation of Tougetsu Umidori, Vol. 3

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By Kaeru Ryouseirui and Natsuki Amashiro. Released in Japan as “Umidori Tougetsu no “Detarame” na Jijou” by MF Bunko J. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

I like to theorize about what happens behind the scenes of an author, editor, and publisher, even though I am usually right about 1% of the time, if that. And when I got to the end of this third volume, I did wonder if the author was quietly told before it was written to plan for this to end with the fourth book (which it seems to have done, though I know better than to declare things definitively over now). The first two volumes of this book were very much concerned with the lies and the people behind them, and I was expecting this one to be as well. And to be fair, there is a situation with a lie and a person behind it. But the lie is incredibly pathetic, and it’s resolved in a way that’s deliberately comical. Because this is about Tougetsu Umidori, of course – and her story and its lack of lies are the whole point of the series, and not as easily solved.

Tougetsu has a problem. After avoiding it for nearly a year, her grandmother demands that she come home to visit or else she’ll be forced to move back home permanently. This upsets her, but she’s going to have to suck it up and do it – but it’s OK, Nara will come with her, as they’re friends, and Nara is tremendously curious about her family. That said, once they arrive, Nara finds that her grandmother is pretty nice and kind of normal… except around Tougetsu, where she turns into this stern scary woman. What’s more, she was really looking forward to meeting Tougetsu’s mother… who has fled the house. As it turns out, Nara ends up deeply regretting coming at all. Meanwhile, famous Kobe dishes are now thought to be famous Kakogawa dishes. Someone is altering reality so that Kakogawa gets all the cool Kobe dishes! It can only be a lie! Fortunately, Bullshit-chan has a solution – Youtubing.

There’s a lot of setup for the next volume involving the bad guys, as well as the true nature of Bullshit-chan, but let’s face it, the real meat of the book, and the best part, is the budding relationship between Tougetsu and Nara, and its near-fracturing here because of the way Tougetsu sees herself. Tougetsu’s inability to lie has led to her friendships being sundered, but she also has a lot of family trauma as well (which, be warned, involves an attempted suicide). What this means is that she seemingly feels no deep connections – if Nara broke things off and said she didn’t want to be friends anymore, Tougetsu would just accept it and distance herself. Which, of course, infuriates Nara. This is not a yuri series per se, but the only important male character in it is the villain, so it might as well be. Tougetsu and Nara make up at the end, and seem to come to a compromise, but I suspect it will take working out Bullshit-chan to work out Tougetsu.

Will this end in happiness or in tears? “Yes”, I suspect is that answer to that. Till then, please enjoy Bullshit-chan streaming cooking shows to save Kobe cuisine. And two kinda-gay teens trying to work things out despite one (one?) being really fucked up.

Sasaki and Peeps: A View-Count War Breaks Out on Social Media! ~My Neighbor’s Explosive VTuber Debut~

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By Buncololi and Kantoku. Released in Japan as “Sasaki to Pi-chan” by Media Factory. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Alice Prowse.

The danger of a series like this, which tries to change genres with every new volume, is that eventually you’re going to hit up against one that you’re not really all that interested in. When I saw that this volume was going to be about VTubers, I sort of groaned. It’s not my thing, and I don’t do the virtual idol thing either. So when Type Twelve decided to make this her new thing, I was prepared for this to be a slog. Fortunately, I was saved by the fact that the author knew which character to give the spotlight to this time around. Kurosu has gotten short shrift for a good deal of the series (when the anime came out, most wondered why she was even there at all), but her deadpan horrible personality meshes really well with trying to be a hot VTuber success, especially since we also still have her desperate 13-year-old horny urges to bang Sasaki (which is never going to happen, and I think she knows it deep down).

As noted above, Type Twelve is done with school because of … well, see Book 8. Instead, she’s decided to try uploading videos to Youtube (yes, they use the actual word). This becomes a competition, with everyone in the “family” (thus not including Elsa and Peeps, who already have a Youtube channel) competing to see who can get the most page views… and the winner has to order the loser to obey any command. Naturally, this gets Neighbor Girl tremendously excited, as even she knows that middle-management dude Sasaki is not going to be able to compete with four cute young-looking girls. She decides to (with Type Twelve’s tech help) become a cute, happy VTuber… which is a disaster. However, the backlash actually forces her to use it to her advantage, and she comes back admitting the happy girl was a fake and she’s a depressed introvert. This goes MUCH better… to the point where she’s scouted!

I’ve talked before about how the neighbor girl is so screwed up and horrifying that it almost comes around to being funny, but that’s not really sustainable if you’re going to have the series develop characterization (which is debatable – honestly, I think this author is far happier having its characters be cutely meta than learning anything about themselves). Over the course of the last few books she’s been forced to endure a lot and also interact with others far more than she ever did before. As a result, while her quiet cynical sarcasm is present and correct, as is her twisted sex with Sasaki fantasy, she no longer looks as if she’s actively trying to kill herself. Actually, she may have found a career path – her quick deductions at the scene of a crime, while getting in the way of the plot, show off a detective skill that’s actually kind of scary. Is she healing? A bit?

The others, rest assured, get stuff to do, and Hoshizaki gets the funniest part of the book. But yeah, this continues to interest me, even when it’s playing around in sandboxes I don’t care about.

Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle, Vol. 7

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By Hiromu and raemz. Released in Japan as “Chitose-kun wa Ramune Bin no Naka” by Gagaga Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Evie Lund.

Throwing up the spoiler warning here: I discuss the big revelations in this book, but not till the third paragraph.

I was expecting something else, to be honest. After the trauma of the last few books, the sturm und drang and Yua playing Baker Street over a sobbing Chitose, that we would sort of go back to everyone smiling, going back to their normal high school lives, and have a nice, relaxing 7th book. And, to be fair, so was the author. There is an extra-long afterword describing their thought process while writing this book, and you can see how the first, oh, third of the book is written by a very different person from the one who wrote the last two-thirds. Because the author is correct, that is what the characters want. It’s what the readers want. We do not want more angst. We want to relax. Unfortunately, for the sake of the story, the author cannot give that to us. And so… see the girl on the cover>? She’s a first-year. She’s spunky, cute, and loves the whole cast. And she’s also a bomb.

After the events over the summer, Chitose is hoping that everything will go back to normal. And, aside from Yuuko having the traditional “moving on” haircut, they do. Which means it’s time to plan for the culture festival, which is two months away and seems to involve both a sports day AND a culture day. Naturally, Chitose and company are very involved, especially since, in his first year, he was not in the right headspace to handle a festival. Now he and the rest of the group want to be on the cheer squad. They’re joined by Asuka, who is happy to do something with them before she has to graduate. They are also joined by Kureha, a first-year who has heard all the stories about the very famous Chitose and his very famous friends, and is star-struck. She rapidly becomes part of their group. A bit too rapidly. The reader gradually feels that things are about to go very, very wrong.

As our little bomb sent everyone into a coma over the course of the last third of the book, I noticed that Yuuko was pretty much absent. She’s not like all the others, after all. She actually confessed and was rejected. So Kureha can’t really do much about her. It’s worth noting that Kureha is being written as a horrible villain after the reveal, and the reader sees her as one long before that, but to all the other girls, she’s not. Particularly Yuzuki, who is on the cover of the next two books in this series, and I strongly suspect is going to step past Yuuko to steal the main girl spotlight. But the way that Kureha demolishes Haru, Asuka and Yua with “innocent” ease shows off that much as we’d like all the girls to be equal in their chances to win Chitose, that’s not how love works. You have to commit. You have to be ready to hurt others to get what you want. Yuuko understood that, and the hurt was devastating to her. Kureha is able to hurt far more easily, but so far only Yuzuki, who has always been the most aloof of the group, is ready to take things to the next level.

As the anime seems to be polarizing people, the novels are hitting another high point. Just… be ready for things to not be safe and fun.