Plot: The ‘war’ for Iku’s affections between Yano and Yori is on with Tomoka looking on from the shadows, waiting for her chance to strike.
Breakdown: The first chapter starts with Iku and Yori’s first official date in his town. They make an effort at making them cutesy and couple-y, but there is still a heavy vibe of creepiness and unease. Every time Iku responds to nearly everything Yori does, it makes it seem like she’s less full of love and excitement and more like she’s scared to death, embarrassed and about to throw up.
Iku shows off that she’s using the cell phone charm Yano bought for her. She believes she’s making Yori happy because Yano lied and said Yori bought it for her during his visit. He is trapped in the lie because he doesn’t want to make Iku upset for falling for Yano’s trickery, which is a double-edged sword because now Yori has to put up with her flaunting a gift from Yano in his face.
Yori gets her ‘alone’ in a park and tells her to kiss him like he did to her before. He refuses to not kiss her despite her telling him to wait because rapey. She eventually does, but she is entirely focused on how embarrassed she is to kiss him instead of how much she loves Yori or how nice it is to kiss him. At this point, they should really be putting more effort into making this supposed romantic relationship seem more consensual. Rarely is there a moment when Iku actually seems like she’s in love with Yori or even likes him romantically.
Yori, being an ass, tells her that she did it wrong and that nobody would kiss like that. Then he has the nerve to immediately say they should go to a hotel to have sex.
We then get this line exchange:
Iku: “Yori, you really are a pervert!”
Yori: “That’s because I’m a man.”
Iku: “What kind of excuse is that!?”
Yori: “It’s a perfectly good reason. Iku, you’re still a child.”
It is incredibly difficult for me to tell when the characters in this series are legitimately joking, and it seems like Yori never is. Yori’s seriously excusing his perversion by saying he’s a man so it’s to be expected? I’m getting premonitions of him sexually assaulting Iku and him going ‘Well, boys will be boys.’ And Iku’s a child for thinking him having a penis is a bad excuse for being a pervert? Iku is indeed immature, but if you want to get down to it, Yori seems like he’s more childish than Iku is.
Think about it. He’s incredibly possessive, and when he doesn’t get what he wants, he has a temper tantrum. He thinks being an adult is all about not expressing happy, healthy emotions and focusing a lot of energy on sex. When someone threatens to take something he wants, he either tries to physically fight them (Nakamura) or turn it into a competition (Yano). He’s a very childish person.
Iku keeps trying to refuse Yori’s request to go have sex, and he grabs the collar of her shirt, revealing a bite mark. She says Yano bit her to prevent her and Yori from having sex.
Of course he did…
Of….course…he…did.
Of course he did.
It’s official now. No character in this series is likable at all. Yano BIT Iku against her will just so he could mark her in an effort to keep Iku from having sex with Yori. That’s incredibly creepy and flatout assault. He might edge out Yori in the creepiness tournament with this. Holy crap.
The chapter ends with Yori saying the mark isn’t enough to prevent them from having sex, and he’s not going to let her go home.
Aw, well, surely this creepy declaration and kidnapping will lead into a romantic ‘love will conquer all’ love-making scene, eh?
…..So the next chapter starts with Yori forcing Iku into the men’s bathroom to hide her since he can’t miss attendance and he still won’t let her go home…..Because no one will ever enter the men’s bathroom in a school, right?
Iku hears a bunch of guys talking about sex in a fairly graphic manner, and she has to keep quiet and hidden for hours. She probably went in there in the late afternoon and it’s past 11 o’clock before Yori finally goes to get her. What…the…hell. If he has a job, wouldn’t it have been easier to just give her money for a hotel room? They were going to go to one anyway. He’d rather have her hidden away in a stinky school bathroom (the men’s room no less) for hours upon hours?
Oh by the way, inu!Yori is with her the entire time, so she not only has to keep quiet herself, but she has to keep the dog in her arms for hours, prevent him from making noise, and also deprive him of food and water. Nice that we now have to include animal abuse and neglect to our list of awful things in this manga.
When Yori finally gets Iku, they have a sweet-ish (?) moment, but they’re interrupted by a ringtone on Iku’s phone going “It’s me! Please pick up.” It’s Yano, who has changed Iku’s ringtone for his calls without her knowledge or consent. More creeps.
Yori picks up the phone, and Yano acts really creepy talking about him and Iku. He hated how she seemed annoyed when he gave her the cell phone charm and was forced to lie and say Yori got it for her. He was also upset that Iku thought he was making fun of her when he said he had feelings for her. He finishes off the conversation by telling Yori to treat Iku nicely because, and I quote, he can’t be sweet to her. He can only be mean. Well, at least the creepy prick admits it.
He says he doesn’t need to tell him that, because he’ll be treating her nicely anyw—pbbbbttthahahaha! Sure. I totally believe that, Yori.
After he forcibly sniffs her hair again—Hey! We haven’t had one of those in while!
Update the tally!
Hair sniffs: 8
Iku and Yori go back to his dorm room to have sex, even though Yori has a roommate and he sleeps on the top bunk. Being fair, Iku suggested this and was willing to risk his roommate seeing them.
Sexual tension as they prepare themselves, and the roommate is listening to everything they’re doing. Nothing kinkier or uncomfortable than that.
Yori and Iku start making out and prepare to release the hounds when we get this confusing page.
On one hand, I commend Yori for controlling himself, and the reasons are pretty noble, but….also kinda sexist. “I’m a guy, so it’s fine if I’m seen porking a girl in my room. But Iku’s a girl. This would be awful for her.” Then again…..he has a point. That’s just a very sad fact about our culture. It’s high fives for the guy and the walk of shame for the girl. People are terrible…
And, yes, Yori, it’s so hard being a guy. Do you need a vacation after taming your dick for a minute?
Yori apologizes for his behavior, proclaiming his roommate won’t wake up either way. His roommate goes to get the dorm president, Takuma, to bust him, but Yori reveals that the only other being in his bed is inu!Yori. Whamp whamp.
End chapter.
The next chapter starts almost immediately after the last one ended. Everyone’s still talking about Yori supposedly having a girl in his room, but they seem fine to just brush it off as being the dog. Iku sneaked away out the window or something with Yori promising to call her later to find out where she hid. Two other students find her sneaking around campus and bring her to where everyone’s talking.
Just when you think he might still get away with it by pretending he doesn’t know her, he can’t help but be insanely possessive and yanks Iku out of their grasp to say “Don’t you dare touch my stuff!” Yup. He didn’t say ‘Don’t touch my Iku’ or ‘Don’t touch my girlfriend’ or even ‘Don’t touch my sister!’ He straight out calls her his property.
As if that’s not bad enough, look just a few pages later where they describe her as Yori’s loyal dog.
The boys want to investigate and kick her out, but Takuma says they’re just jealous that they don’t bring girls back to the dorms. He decides to show some leniency and heads to the girls’ dorm to discuss having Iku sleep there with their dorm president until she can leave in the morning. After Takuma has some sexual tension with the girls’ dorm president, Mayu, she reluctantly agrees.
The next morning, after a surprisingly tender and sincere farewell between Iku and Yori, complete with goodbye kiss, Tomoka ambushes Yori to show that she’s taken pictures of them kissing. Even though he slaps the phone away from her, she states that she’s already sent them to her home computer.
And you know what that means. Bababababaaaaa-Blackmail!
Tomoka, now with Yori under her thumb, forces him to kiss her. Because Yori’s such a damn catch.
End chapter.
The next chapter has more followup with Tomoka’s blackmail before we cut back to Iku at school where we learn that she saw Tomoka and Yori kissing as she left. OoooooooOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooohhhh…….*sigh* I’m starting to remember why I don’t like romance manga and anime. The angst and drama just files my brain stem down.
After a heated phone call with Yano, Yori decides enough is enough and ominously asks Tomoka if he can come to her house. It’s so ominous, I sincerely think he’s planning on killing her, dismembering her body and burying her in her own backyard.
Yano tries to cheer Iku up in a sweet but still kinda creepy and intimidating way. As they take a bike ride home, Yano decides he likes Iku too much to truly take this opportunity for everything it’s worth and tells her to keep believing in Yori.
End chapter.
Our ‘final’ chapter starts with Yano enjoying himself at Iku’s house and chatting with her mom. He pretends that he’s her boyfriend because her mom just assumes the situation. She, surprisingly, admits that she thought Iku and Yori were getting so close that they might be in love with each other. But then Iku freaks out when her mom points out that not only does Iku ‘have’ Yano, but Yori ‘has’ Tomoka. I’m not sure if she somehow knows about him and Tomoka currently or if she’s saying this based on the fact that they used to date.
Iku goes to her room and Yano follows. Iku’s dad bursts into her room ranting about how he won’t let Yano date her. Yano wins him over incredibly easily through a quick and silver-tongued speech.
Meanwhile, back at Yori’s school, the dean has found out about Iku infiltrating the dorms and he’s pissed. So much so that not only is Yori set to be rightfully punished, but he also states that he wants to punish Iku. How that would ever work, I don’t know. She’s not a student at that school, and she didn’t do anything illegal, so what punishment is he planning there? Mayu and Takuma are there as well, debating the situation, and when tensions run too high, Takuma keels over in some sort of attack.
In the nurse’s office, he tells Mayu that he faked it, but confesses to Yori that it was real since he was born with some sort of condition. He asks what sort of secret he keeps that forces him to put up such a cold and unfriendly exterior, especially since just smiling more and being more ‘normal’ would put focus away from him. He doesn’t have an answer.
Later, Yori goes to Tomoka’s house and instantly goes to her bedroom to find her computer. It’s password protected, and Tomoka asks what he’d do to get the password from her as our volume cliffhanger.
If she was smart, she’d have the pictures on an external hard drive or a flash drive or a CD or something too. Make him be always guessing if she has more copies. Don’t read too much into me knowing these things…..*cough*
This volume, we’re ‘treated’ to a bonus half-chapter. It’s literally just Yori blackmailing Iku into a morning kiss by saying he won’t let her cheat off of his homework if she doesn’t. Whoo. Roman…tic.
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I honestly don’t know what to make of this volume because the story doesn’t go forward that much. Yori and Yano both treat Iku like trash some more, and Iku just takes it because she’s infuriating. Iku gets caught in Yori’s dorm and they never make it clear what the consequences of that will be, if there will be any.
We get some kinda interesting development in two new characters of Takuma and Mayu, and that’s still way more interesting than any of the pairings we’ve been presented with so far. Tomoka blackmails Yori, but, being honest, I saw this coming way back when they showed that she was going to Yori’s school.
There’s not as many creepy moments, but there are still plenty to go around.
Plus, the ending cliffhanger is…uninteresting. Gee, will Yori sleep with Tomoka to get the password?….Who cares? Doubly who cares, because he’s already slept with her tons of times. I know he’d be cheating on Iku, but I hate them both so I don’t care. Will he hurt her to get it?….Don’t care. What about Iku’s situation back home? Couldn’t care less.
Next time on ‘Healthy Romantic Relationships are for Pussies’ things between Tomoka and Yori happen. Stuff happens with Yano and Iku. Events occur between Iku and Yori. And everyone’s still horrible.
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