After the Rain, Vol. 2

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By Jun Mayuzuki. Released in Japan as “Koi wa Ameagari no You ni” in two separate volumes by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Big Comic Spirits. Released in North America by Vertical Comics. Translated by Jocelyne Allen.

As you might imagine given the title of the series is After the Rain, it rains an awful lot in this manga. This not only creates an appropriate atmosphere, but allows both of its protagonists to come down with bad colds. This causes both Akira and Kondo to lose control of their emotions a bit, allowing suppressed feelings to boil over – nothing going beyond hugging, mind you. No one is quite ready for this relationship to advance that far yet. (Well, Akira may want it to – her fantasies when she’s in bed with a cold verge close to a masturbatory scene.) Plus both Akira and Kondo have things in their life they need to work out first. Akira is still trying to untie herself from her previous track team life, despite her friend Haruka insisting they can still be friends. And Kondo has a hidden side – he writes. But doesn’t want anyone to find out about it.

It’s no coincidence that both of these plotlines resemble each other – our leads are very much alike despite the age difference. Akira is determined to move on from her injury, but feels like the only way she can do that is by completely cutting out that part of her life. This naturally upsets Haruka, who is reduced to tears hearing Akira essentially deny everything they had. As for Kondo, seeing Akira recommend a book by his college friend Chihiro brings up old memories, and causes him to reunite with said friend and discuss their old literature club, which also apparently had his ex-wife in it. The reunion allows him to give advice to Akira on her fight, which is, essentially, “even if you do never speak again, this will not change the precious moments you once had with each other”. Which is good, if non-confrontational, advice – I’m sort of rooting for Haruka here.

We also meet Akira’s father in this volume (complete with a great “stop telling people I’m dead!” joke), which is good, because it shows us that her dad really isn’t much like Kondo at all. (So he’s not a replacement father figure, which I was fearing.) She’s also a lot more outgoing with her dad, sort of like the flashbacks of her and Haruka that we see before the accident. Like most high school kids, she’s ready to grow up and be taken seriously as an adult, and is frustrated by people who still want to treat her as a kid – not realizing that the reason they’re doing it so much is they know they don’t have much time left to pamper her. She’s almost an adult, but you want to stop time just so that you can still have her need you in the same way. It amounted to my favorite chapter in the book.

This story continues to be a sweet, slow burn, and my misgivings about the May-December romance have faded a bit. More to the point, I just like the writing of the characters. Even if the romance doesn’t happen, I want to see what happens next in their life anyway.

Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon, Vol. 3

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By Hirukuma and Ituwa Kato. Released in Japan as “Jidou Hanbaiki ni Umare Kawatta Ore wa Meikyuu wo Samayou” by Kadokawa Shoten. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Prowse.

This third volume of Reborn as a Vending Machine tries to expand the world that we’re in and give our hero a bit more insight into goals for the future. As we’ve seen, a lot of his “what should I do next” thoughts involve collecting points to level up, get new products, etc. Here, after a very amusing eating contest, Shui from the mercenary group wins the right to have Boxxo for the entire day, and takes him to the first floor of the dungeon, home to (try to contain your surprise) a group of poor yet plucky orphan children. The dungeon, it turns out, needs to have someone reach a certain level in order to get to the second floor. So for the unwanted kids, or whose whose parents have died, they have this. It reminds Boxxo to, if you’ll pardon me, think outside the box and realize this is a real life world he’s now in, not just a game RPG.

There’s also his relationship with Lammis, which continues to be chaste (he’s a vending machine) but still have that “I am a harem manga protagonist” feel to it. Lammis is clearly deeply in love with Boxxo, and as such will try to overcome her limits in order to stay by his side (she’s terrified of the supernatural, and the last half of the book involves nothing but that) and also gets easily embarrassed around him (she tries to hide her heavy period, which doesn’t work but does allow Boxxo to show off that he can also dispense sanitary pads). As for Boxxo, his emotions are still a bit flat, but it’s pretty clear he likes Lammis quite a bit. I’m not entirely sure where the series’ endgame is here, but am content with it simply being cute and chaste – it really does get pretty adorable.

Less adorable is the climax to the third book, where our heroes defeat a skeleton lord and then discover the demon behind the skeleton lord, who is vastly more powerful. For a moment I wondered if the book was actually going to kill off a few regulars – the villain actually stops Hulemy and Shui’s hearts, and you briefly think the book might be going in a dark direction. But no, it’s just an excuse for Boxxo to recall that AED stations can also be part of a vending machine, and that he can use that to save their lives. Also, he has telekinesis now, though we don’t get too much of a sense of how he’ll use that. Honestly, you don’t want this series getting too dark – it’s about a guy reincarnated as a vending machine – so I’m fine with his breaking out vaguely deus ex vending machina powers so that everyone is fine again.

While the series has a number of volumes after this in its webnovel version, Kadokawa hasn’t published a new volume in about two years, so this may be all the vending machine we see. (The author has been writing KonoSuba side story volumes, which may explain it.) Which is a shame, as despite its truly ridiculous premise I found myself drawn into each book, trying to see what would be happening next. I’ll miss you, Boxxo.

I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse, Vol. 11

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By Namekojirushi and Nao Watanuki. Released in Japan as “Ore ga Heroine o Tasukesugite Sekai ga Little Mokushiroku!?” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Mana Z.

By the end of this volume, we have five left to go before the series ends. It’s started to make me wonder what the endgame is actually going to be. Oh, I’m still convinced it will end with him not choosing anyone. But it has to be said, if he is going to choose one of the girls, it has to be someone the reader has a strong attachment to as well. And, well, First Girl Wins is not just a trope for nothing. Satsuki has an advantage that the other girls do not. She’s a childhood friend, she has magical wikipedia powers and is therefore involved in Rekka’s life rather than being kept in the dark. And she gets a big focus in this volume as well, as she and Rekka are accidentally sent to a deserted island for a while, where they can wax nostalgic, almost get eaten by a leopard, and come close (but not close enough) to a confession.

Satsuki is not on the cover, of course. The interesting thing, though, is that both girls on the cover, while heroines that Rekka “solves”, are not romantic heroines that we can see. Yulia is a nun who, like many Japanese nuns in fiction, is also an exorcist and a bit of a fanatic. Given she’s ended up in Rekka’s hometown, which is teeming with otherworldly inhabitants, particularly the vampire Rosalind, you can see why Yulia is flipping out a bit. In fact, dialing back her fanaticism is the point – she’s mistaking the Church’s vendetta for her own, and Rekka has an actual Angel to tell her “no, God says the Church is wrong”. (A very common thing in light novels lately.) As for Poppy the fairy, “staying hidden” and avoiding a group of kids trying to capture her is the sole goal she has. Compared to prior volumes, the stakes are very low key here.

Back to Satsuki, a surprise in this volume was that we not only see her parents, but get art showing what they look like. (In fact, the author wondered if there were enough interesting scenes for the artist, which may be why we see her parents as well as the kids harassing the fairy.) The other plot-heavy part of the book involves L, who has been abandoned by her villain friends and is on her own in the past, and essentially homeless till she gets picked up and adopted, for the moment, by Satsuki’s family. She’s still trying to kill Rekka technically, but it is interesting that whereas R is going for “hammer Rekka with as many heroines as possible to create a crisis point”, L is more “I am in one heroine’s corner”. And that heroine is Satsuki.

Will she win? Likely we won’t know till Book 16. Will R ever be seen? And of course the one question that absolutely has to wait for the last book: will Rekka get a clue that everyone is in love with him and do something about it other than change the subject? We do apparently get a girl in a top hat, though, so that’s nice. If you’ve been reading this, keep reading it. It’s fun froth.