Plot: Blackmail, pregnancy, unknown parental origins, and Yori having a human moment?!
Breakdown: The first chapter leads us to believe Yori will have emotionless sex with Tomoka as long as she keeps his relationship with Iku a secret. He’s being pretty damn aggressive about it, even throwing her onto the bed. But not but four pages later, before they even get undressed, it’s revealed that he was formatting her computer the whole time, meaning the pictures are gone and she has no pull now.
That’s either the fastest computer format ever or they were having the slowest non-sexual foreplay ever. Either way, Tomoka’s a dumbass for leaving her computer alone with Yori (at least password protect it, for god’s sake.) If you’re using anything for blackmail, you can never have too many copies and backups. Worst antagonist ever.
Yano teases Iku some more at her house, Yori comes home and, despite the fact that their parents are still home and Yano is there, Yori suggests doing naughty things and the chapter ends.
Riveting.
The next chapter has Yori getting slightly rapey again as he and Iku start doing the naughty things mentioned before because he states to himself that she needs to tell him what she wants, otherwise he won’t be able to stop himself. Neat.
Yano sits and watches them, but who cares? He already knew about the two of them and we already know he’s a creep. Either way, Yori gets possessive and tells Yano to forget what he saw. He thinks to himself that he’s the only one allowed to see Iku’s cute face like that. If he doesn’t forget it, he’ll never forgive him. At least Yori is seeming a little less aggressive lately, even if he was being damn near assault-y with Tomoka earlier.
Yano leaves, they eat dinner, and Yori passes out because he was caught in the rain earlier. I hate that trope. Getting a little cold and wet for a bit does not give you insta-flu.
We learn that their mom is actually legitimately concerned that Iku and Yori have a thing for each other. I thought she was joking before, but nope. They even clearly state that she’s noticed that Yori is in love with Iku. It’s interesting that it doesn’t say that they’ve fallen for each other. It’s clearly just saying that Yori loves Iku.
She even hears what sounds like Yori about to force himself on Iku, which turns out to not be true, but I really wouldn’t be surprised because these two dumbasses are about as stealthy as a moose made of pans.
The next chapter is mostly pointless. It’s a day in the school life of Yano and Iku. Yano gets turned on by Iku in her pajamas, Yano states that he likes Iku even though she sleeps late, makes other people do her homework for her because she’s too dumb, has no common sense and sleeps in class. Okay, he doesn’t directly say that, but basically. We learn that she and Yori never did anything while he was home because his fever was so bad the whole time that he couldn’t get hard. Lovely.
The only important information in this chapter is given at the end, where…I’ve kinda cheated. Way back when I watched and reviewed the OVA, I read some information on the manga and learned that Yori and Iku are only half-siblings through heteropaternal superfecundation. When a woman has sex with two different men in the time frame of, at most, one week, she can get simultaneously pregnant from both men.
Don’t think that I’m spoiling you early because this chapter is not that subtle about it. In this chapter, we learn of a man named Mori Yuugo, an old friend of theirs that they haven’t seen in 17 years. Iku and Yori’s mother flips out when she hears their father has met back up with him and is especially outraged to hear that Mori has a daughter about Yori’s age, and that they promised to have them get married when they were old enough.
It was probably said in jest, even if he explains how much sense it makes, but Iku and Yori’s mother has an extreme outburst, demanding to know why he believes Yori and the daughter are similar and how similar they are in what ways. She then says it’s ridiculous to even suggest that they should live up to this stupid promise they made years ago and tells him to never see him again.
Yano puts two and two together and calls Yori, telling him that he and Iku might not be twins. Though, at this point, shouldn’t the suspicion be that Yori and Iku aren’t their father’s children? That’s a lot easier to believe than the incredibly rare heteropaternal superfecundation.
Next chapter, Yori doesn’t know what to make of what Yano has told him, but believes it to be too good to be true. He sleeps in class and slacks off, basically in a deep legit depression that Iku’s not around. He states that he only tried so hard in school because Iku once told him that she liked brainy guys. Now that he’s not with Iku anymore, he feels he doesn’t need to put in such effort. Not that that matters anyway because super shoujo manga love interest main character powers activate! He still gets first in the class in exams.
Iku later tells him that Yano’s being nice and helping her with her homework, which Yori couldn’t do the last time he was home because he was sick. He feels bad about it, and Iku feels the need to ‘punish’ him since he wasn’t able to help her. His punishment? You’ll never guess.
It’s sex.
Damn, girl. You harsh.
I will say this is a bit of….nice….development? Because she’s actually the one suggesting it this time. I’m feeling less squicky. Who knew that Yori being away from Iku for a bulk of the manga would make it more tolerable?
Meanwhile, Tomoka, not done with Yori yet, calls up Iku and drops the bomb. She’s pregnant!
Dun dun d—no. No. That’s impossible. Yori hasn’t slept with Tomoka since they were ‘dating’. Why should I care about this? Fake pregnancy tricks always seem so stupid because the person never seems to realize that, come nine months from now, they’ll notice there’s no kid. You could fake a miscarriage, but then you’re back where you started. The only reason I could ever see anyone doing this is that they’re evil enough to want to screw up someone’s life that badly, even temporarily, just to soak up their suffering.
The only other way this could work is if Tomoka purposely got herself pregnant by someone else and is accusing Yori of being the father, which is insane, but Tomoka’s gone far down Insane Lane by now. However, DNA test…..that’s all I have to say in that regard.
Even if I sit here going ‘Oh mon Dieu. How will Iku react?!’ I know that everything would revert back to normal once the truth was given, especially since dumbass Iku takes everything Yori says as gospel.
I wouldn’t care anyway because this manga still gives me no reason to root for them as a couple….or people…..or living creatures.
Next chapter is…..good?
Dun dun du—well, actually, every part not including Iku is good…surprise!
Yori is sent on a punishment game, which is tradition for anyone who gets first place marks on exams. His task is to go into the girls’ dorm and retrieve a specified item. The item is a tie from the girls’ dorm residential adviser, Mayu. Remember her? She’s still here.
The boys also make him dress up like a doctor and tell him to play doctor with the girls, which he doesn’t do, thank god. You’d think this would involve being secretive, but for Yori, it’s not. The girls actually line the halls, taking pictures of him with their cameraphones, telling him that they’ll let him go if he tells them what girls he likes. He says he likes girls who are kinda dumb, and they all collapse in despair because they’re smart. They actually collapsed because they realized they dodged a huge bullet.
When Yori arrives at Mayu, she agrees to just give him the tie and shares a story about Takuma’s experience doing the punishment game. Remember Takuma? The boys’ dorm residential adviser? He’s still here.
When he did it, the girls did try to hunt him down, and his task was to retrieve a garment from the girl he liked while wearing a girl’s sailor uniform. He was planning on taking Mayu’s underwear and ran into her room. He had a mild attack and dropped an exposition bomb that he has until he’s 20 years old to live, so he can’t pursue romantic relationships.
She used a stethoscope to listen to his heart, which was beating wildly. He explained that it wasn’t the running or the illness doing that – it was her being so close to him.
The flashback ends and it’s shown that Yori has the stethoscope that she used that day, and he’s returned it to her. Mayu suggests that this might mean that he doesn’t feel the same way about her anymore, but in a shocking turn of humanity, Yori smiles and tells her that it’s just the opposite. He wants her to hear what she heard that day again.
He returns to the boys’ dorm, gives up the tie and teases Takuma by giving him a pair of panties, claiming he played doctor with Mayu.
Alright, let me stop right there. This right here. This. This one little splash of a moment for Yori…..is positive character development. He’s socializing – positively. He’s smiling. He’s playfully teasing someone. He’s laughing….in a non-creepy way. He’s cheering someone else up. He’s listening intently to someone else’s stories. It may have been just a flash in the pan, but this little moment is proof that Yori can be a better person.
This is also proof that his relationship with Iku is toxic.
I mentioned earlier that Yori seems like he’s more tolerable when Iku’s not around. He mopes, yeah, but he’s slowly breaking out of his shell and becoming a better person. In the ten some odd years of being in love with Iku, he became a horrible, malicious person who never showed any sort of emotion towards anyone but Iku, and the emotions were always extremely aggressive and creepy.
Being away from Iku just for a few months, even taking into consideration phone calls and visits, has made him significantly more tolerable. He still has his creeper asshole moments, but, shocker, these are almost now entirely relegated to anything involving Iku. And, honestly, even those moments aren’t on the same level anymore as the moments they had when he was still living with her.
I can say the same thing about Iku. Using Yori as a crutch, Iku has become an incredibly needy, dependent idiot who is not good at anything…at all and doesn’t even seem like she tries much at all at anything she does. She flops around on the ground like a fish, gasping for air, until Yori or Yano put her in her tank and shake fish flakes over the surface of the water. Then she hides in her ceramic castle until Yori comes to boink her.
Despite getting a little closer with Yano now, Iku is not experiencing the same character development that Yori is having because she’s too preoccupied with him. Rarely a page goes by with focus on her that she’s not thinking or talking about Yori.
Yano is not helping. He’s basically a stand-in for Yori as a crutch. He finds her stupidity and neediness to be adorable and is more than willing to lug around her tank and a backpack full of fish flakes, chasing her flopping stupid body all around town just hoping that he can flop around with her.
This is not a matter of taboo. It never has been. It’s been a matter of two people being in a very unhealthy relationship and not realizing it.
Besides that, this story with Mayu and Takuma is very nice, and every time these two are brought up I wish I was reading a manga about them and not these creepy morons.
But that’s not all this chapter. Iku actually manages to have a brain and states that Yori hasn’t slept with Tomoka since back when they were dating, so she has to be lying. Good girl, Iku. Way to think! I’ll tell Yano to put extra fish flakes in your tank.
Tomoka admits that she was lying. Oh, good. I’ll just take these couple of paragraphs from the previous page and just flush them down the toilet. However, she states that her outburst is proof of jealously, which means they must be in an incestuous relationship, and she threatens to tell everyone about it…..Uh…what? Iku didn’t indicate jealousy. She freaked out at pregnancy news involving her brother and stated the obvious fact that it was impossible.
Even if this did indicate jealousy, how is that proof that they’re currently in a romantic relationship? At most, it just proves she has romantic feelings for him, and even that could be a stretch.
Hey writer! Why not just have Tomoka say ‘I know you and Yori are screwing’? That’s basically what she’s driving at anyway. This pregnancy scare had no purpose but to make an end-of-chapter cliffhanger, which is dumb, because her telling Iku that she knows about the relationship is a very suitable cliffhanger. Or did you just want to drum up fake drama?
Last chapter!
Yano now has a puppy he names Inu-Iku…..*sigh* Iku is freaking out about what Tomoka said, but Yano easily quells her fears by stating she’s stupid to believe her since she has no evidence, and most parents would find such a claim to be ridiculous. Even with her mother’s suspicions, he knows he can keep convincing her that he’s dating Iku and not Yori. She cheers up, falls asleep on a bench, Yano says she looks like an idiot, he hears her say Yori’s name in her sleep and kisses her, wishing to be the one to replace Yori since all he will do to her is make her cry.
Soooooooooo, nothing happens then suddenly a wild sexual assault appears. Ah, I’m getting early volume flashbacks.
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And that’s volume six. Outside of one good moment for Yori and quickly wrapping up several hanging plot threads ridiculously quickly (“I’m blackmailing you with photos! Make love to me!” “Formatted computer. Bye, bitch!” – “You might not be twins!” “Eh, forget about that by mid next-chapter” – “I’m pregnant!” “No you’re not!” “You’re right! Lol” – “I still know you’re porking your womb roommate.” “Oh god!” “She has no proof.” “Thank god!”) this was a pretty uneventful chapter.
This volume really just made me want to keep rooting for Iku and Yori…to find other people. If Iku really needs a crutch, fine, go with Yano. He’s a creepy sexually assaulting weirdo, but at least he’s not as bad as Yori can get with her. Yori definitely shouldn’t be with Tomoka, but anyone else but Iku. I keep finding more and more proof that their relationship is terrible and that they’re better people when the other isn’t in the picture (well, Yori is anyway).
Next time on ‘Wow, You’re Still Reading This? Why?’ Dogs can talk, Tomoka’s a bitch and suddenly gang rape?!?! WHAT?!
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