Plot: Filler, talking dogs, a dog propositioning Yori, more filler.
Oh and possible gang rape. I should mention that.
Breakdown: The first chapter has little happening in it. Like I mentioned at the tail end of volume six, Yano kisses Iku while she’s sleeping, because we haven’t had enough sexual assault in this series. She was dreaming of Yori kissing her, but she doesn’t find out that Yano was kissing her in real life.
We also get some odd scenes with their dogs. Inu-Yori growls at Yano for kissing Iku and then bites him, then Inu-Iku smacks Inu-Yori to avenge Yano, then Inu-Yori is kissing Inu-Iku….it’s really strange.
Yano meets up with Yori later that night at his gas station job and admits straight out to Yori that he kissed Iku while she was sleeping. Yori rightfully attempts to kick his ass, but stops himself because he knows he’s more in the wrong given what he’s done…..Oh….Oh! He’s growing as a person! Quick! Someone document this! We may never get another chance!
He then also says he’s in the wrong for loving Iku at all because he knows he can’t give her the type of future she deserves. You’ve already kinda been over this revelation in the past, but yes, keep going with this.
The next chapter starts with………Inu-Iku…..sexually propositioning Human!Yori?…The first frame is Inu-Iku laying flat with her butt towards Yori, then she lifts her butt up towards him and shakes her ass, then she turns around and her eyes are all sparkly…then Yori kisses Inu-Iku while calling her Iku…..
…I don’t know what to do with this…..
I’m sparing you from the actual image, though. You’re welcome.
Yano tries to convince Yori to come back home since, without him around, he feels free to keep pawing at Iku. He also wants to ‘steal Iku from (him) fair and square.’ We get fanservice yaoi prodding by having a near-kiss with Yano and Yori since Yano tries to give back the kiss he gave to Iku to Yori. *shrug* I’d ship it. Better the two of them be together so they can sexually assault each other than letting them loose onto innocent people.
Yano reveals that he brought Iku with him to receive Yori’s kiss properly. They’re about to reunite when Yano stops them and tells them to solidify an alibi before doing anything. Iku agrees and calls home only to have Yori, for some dumbass reason, start distracting her by kissing and licking her fingers. I thought you were trying desperately to keep your relationship a secret, especially from your parents, yet you’re almost purposely sabotaging her alibi while on the phone with your father. What is wrong with you?
Yano, seeing that Iku is breaking, grabs the phone from her and talks to her father. He explains that he’s with her, apologizes for keeping her out late and begs that he let him stay with Iku for the night.
Her father, quite shockingly, agrees, as long as he promises not to do anything indecent or irresponsible. Because teenage boys are so trustworthy to keep promises about not doing questionable things with teenage girls, especially ones as naïve as Iku. Father of the goddamn year.
Not that he knows this, but she’s spending the night with two guys who have sexually assaulted her in some way. Fun.
Yano gets off the phone and pauses when he sees Yori’s somber face. He admits that he’s always wanted to say those same things to their father. He says he wants to be Yano, able to admit these things aloud without judgment or prejudice. Yano claims he wants to be Yori, since he’s the one Iku really wants.
Yano leaves, and Yori and Iku kiss, reminding each other that the last time they talked they said the next time they’d meet they’d make love.
Chapter 38 is actually not bad given the interlude. Yori and Iku try to have sex, but Yori is increasingly nervous. He even asks if they can turn the lights off, though Iku refuses because she wants to see Yori’s ‘cute face.’ Yano has the hotel room next door so he can hear them, and he is even able to see them a little through the open window.
It’s actually a little sad. The poor guy has to listen to and see the girl he seemingly loves having sex with her brother, and even Inu-Yori and Inu-Iku are getting lovey-duvey right in front of him.
If he wasn’t so creepy, I might actually feel emotion right now.
The dean reports to Yori’s parents about the fact that he’s out past curfew now and previously had an incident where he brought a girl from another school into his dorm room. Their mother is quite worried, even though their father tells her that Iku’s with Yano…which, shouldn’t sate her worries either way, but still. She’s obviously concerned her children are squeaking bed springs together.
The next morning, Yano gets them up and finds that they actually didn’t have sex. Yori was so nervous, he only got some of their clothes off and then chickened out at the last second. This is kinda weird. I can’t imagine Yori being nervous just because they haven’t seen each other in so long. Is he reluctant to keep banging the bongos with her when he knows they can never be together? Is this….more character growth? What is happening!?
They bid farewell at the train station, but this time Iku begs Yori to come with them. Yori pushes her on the train and tells her he can never go back because she’s his sister. Yori tearfully watches the train depart.
The next chapter is uneventful and kinda boring. Yori is getting heat from the school for his behavior, and right before he’s about to be punished, Iku and Yano show back up at his dorm. They got off at the first stop on the train and doubled back because Iku wanted to be with Yori.
Yori gets his punishment – one day’s worth of being grounded to his dorm…..You all are so strict….Have mercy on the poor guy….
Tomoka has a spy now who ratted out Yori. His name’s Ogura and they treat him like I should know him, but I don’t. Is he Yori’s roommate? I forget.
Iku and Yano disguise themselves as students and wander the grounds because they’re stupid. They instantly bump into both Tomoka and Yori. Tomoka catches up with Yano, admitting she knows of their incestuous relationship and has been trying to sabotage it. Yano slaps her for calling Iku stupid, even though he agrees with her. *shrug*
Yori takes this opportunity of Iku being in their school uniform to announce her as his girlfriend, which could go wrong in so many ways I’d go braindead from facepalming.
The next chapter…acts as if the previous chapter end didn’t happen because now we’re back home with Iku. I guess this is….a special chapter or something. I didn’t catch it at first, but…okay. Shouldn’t you put special chapters at the end of a volume?
She’s being chewed out by her mother for outrageous phone bills since she won’t stop calling Yori. Iku can’t say that Yori’s the one she’s calling (even though that number should appear on the bill) but her mother tells her to cut her bill in half or they’ll cancel her contract.
I have a better idea. Make her pay for the phone bill. She had a job…once….If you want to make her self-sufficient, make her pay for her own phone bill.
So….there was a…very odd…addition to this chapter…
The dogs can talk.
Yeah….that’s a thing that’s happening. Okay, let me clarify – the dogs don’t “talk,” but they do have inner monologue that we can read and it’s played off just like normal dialogue. They ‘speak’ in thickly lined text boxes that are footnoted by a pawprint. They make observations about the situation going on around them while also talking to each other.
I have absolutely no idea why this is a thing. Why is this even slightly necessary besides maybe to spoon-feed the audience implied emotions? Inu-Yori sees Iku crying over Yori not being able to talk to her as much. He claims people die of loneliness, and he’s worried Iku will die. He restates this later on too.
Can they seriously not just get the emotional impact out enough through the art and dialogue? Do they really need a cute little dog claiming his master will die of loneliness for us to understand that she’s really really sad?
Yori calls her, and Iku explains what their mother said. She also reveals that she got zero points on her latest exam, because of course she did. Even stereotypical ‘stupid’ thug characters usually at least get a handful of points on tests. Hell, you could probably get a few by just blindly guessing, but Iku’s a unique butterfly of a person in that she just doesn’t try and has the IQ of used underwear.
I know I keep bringing this up, but I really can’t understand the appeal of this girl. She’s stupid (several characters even flatout say so, including Yano and Yori) she’s lazy, she cries at the drop of a hat, she’s irresponsible, she’s codependent to the point of a crippling handicap, she’s naïve as hell, she has absolutely no skills, and she has no desires in life outside of seeing Yori. The only positive things you can say about her are that she’s nice and pretty, and if that’s not lazy character writing in a nutshell, I don’t know what is.
Yori calls and tells her later that he’ll be able to visit for a day during the summer holiday. They’re going to a summer festival, and Yano is tagging along, but when they get there, Yori calls and says rain has made travel on the bullet train impossible so he can’t visit.
Yano and Iku have a pretty good time at the festival, but Yano pulls her aside and tells her that she’s obviously holding back her tears for his sake and feels insulted that she can’t show that side of her around him. She says she’s not doing it for his sake, but she knows if she starts crying she won’t be able to stop.
Suddenly, Yori appears. He caught a different train, putting him off schedule for over 12 hours, but managed to catch her at the festival. They start kissing in the tree line, and Yano grumbles as he walks off by himself.
The last chapter of the volume starts off with a completely unnecessary recap of everything that’s happened in the manga up until this point. When we reach present time, we learn that the slap wasn’t the end of the confrontation with Tomoka.
After she was slapped, she called Yano an idiot and instantly cried out. She claimed that Yano was a stalker from her previous school and now he’s dressed up in their uniform and followed her to her current school to harass her even more. Fellow students drag him away, even threatening to have him arrested. All Yano can do is laugh and commend her for setting a trap he so easily fell into as Tomoka looks on with a smile.
Ogura shows back up to talk to Tomoka about it, and she uses her feminine wiles to coerce him into finding Yori and telling him to meet with her. She claims Yano and Yori are friends, and wants to ask him a question about the situation.
As he leaves to do just that, Tomoka looks back with a smirk, verbally expressing how much enjoyment she gets out of manipulating men. She is working the villain angle so hard I’m waiting for thunderclaps whenever she appears. Wasn’t there a point where she was a nice character or am I imagining things?
Meanwhile, Yori and Iku take advantage of the ruckus caused by Yano and Tomoka to have some time alone. Yori tries to kiss Iku since she looks cute in her disguise glasses. Even though he asks permission, he doesn’t wait to get it. Even Iku, surprisingly, points out that she never said ‘okay.’
He brings Iku to his dorm room and he’s about to…Hmm what’s a super clever innuendo for this?….Uhm….do an oral report on Iku’s southern hemisphere.
Ogura interrupts them and calls Yori out of the room. He tells Iku, who’s concealed by the curtain on his bed, to hide herself until he gets back. She’s a loyal puppy about it (Not my words. They put the puppy ears and tail on her and everything) until Tomoka enters the room. She knows Iku’s in there….and….
Okay, so if there was any doubt Tomoka’s a full-on villain now, let me dash it – she recruits a bunch of guys from school….and brings them into the room. The cliffhanger of the volume implies that Iku’s about to be raped by these guys and she can’t make a peep about it because she’ll be betraying Yori’s command to stay quiet and, additionally, Tomoka will tell her parents about their relationship.
…..Yup.
That volume went from zero to holy shit real quick. Seriously, I was just about to write off this whole volume as being basically filler. What really happens in 99% of it? More Yori and Iku fluff and making out, Yano feeling like crap because he can’t stop babysitting a girl who’s boning her brother, their mother yells at Iku for a high phone bill, the dogs talk for whatever reason, but not really, then BOOM the start of a gang rape.
Tomoka is just pathological at this point. Blackmailing Yori was high-level bitch stuff, but smiling as she’s about to blackmail Iku into getting gang raped? What the unholy fuck?
What does Tomoka even hope to gain at this point? Is she really so messed up in the head that she believes she still has a shot with Yori? Because, oh yeah, getting his sister/lover gang raped (She never said Iku couldn’t tell Yori about it) will no doubt put her in his good graces.
Or is she resigned and fueled by a sick desire for vengeance on the person she believe stole Yori from her? Because from the very beginning their relationship was built on a lie. She knew she was just being used as a sex doll in place of the person Yori really liked, and she seemingly had no issue with this. Was the fact that this person was his sister the thing that made her fly off the rails?
Even if she was angry at that, this is going too far for her character. Then again, you could argue that, since she was blackmailing Yori before and had every intention on coercing him into sex through that blackmail, that she was fine with rape even that early on.
I don’t know what they could possibly do to her character in future volumes to make her pay for these horrible acts. How would they even get her to stop? She seems like she’s getting some sort of sick pleasure out of it now. Don’t say this series doesn’t have character development because Tomoka has somehow edged out both Hair-Sniff McRape and Molester Sexualassaultberg.
————————————–
Outside of that final moment, this whole volume is nothing but filler. Nothing was gained, nothing was lost, even the consequences for Yori’s actions with Iku are laughably minor. He’s grounded to his dorm room for one day. Just one. His parents are notified, but who cares? He doesn’t live with them anymore.
It doesn’t even negatively affect his social status. Wanna know why? Because Yori was right. The student body is mostly just impressed that Yori’s getting some tail. Ogura is annoyed by him, but who cares about Ogura? If he is Yori’s roommate, he’s been an annoying little shit since day one. Yori was curt to him upon greeting, and I guess that was enough to continuously rat him out. Snitches get stitches, and then they get bitches. Have fun with Tomoka, Ogura.
Iku seems like she gets into more trouble for sneaking around, and even that’s unrealistically lenient. ‘Oh sure, Yano, you can have a sleepover with my teenage daughter. I totally trust that there won’t be any genital interaction on this innocent get-together.’
Next time….we find out what happens next….Sorry, I feel super awkward saying something like ‘Next time, is Iku really about to get gang raped? What will this mean for her incestuous relationship with her brother?’
If you enjoy my work and would like to show your support, please consider donating at my Ko-Fi page. Every donation goes to helping me pay my bills and keep this blog afloat. Thank you! ♥
The Anime Madhouse 