As a reviewer, I understand that spoilers are sometimes unavoidable in order to make a review make sense. As a reader, I don’t particularly mind spoilers…until I do. But I am really in a bind here, trying to review Tsukiatte Agetemo Iikana, Volume 5 (付き合ってあげてもいいかな) without giving anything away. I mean like…I can’t comment on the things that happened, because I couldn’t comment on the things that happened previously to them that made them important. OR why. Or the fallout. Or basically anything. Aaaaarrrghhh!

Some things that happened in Volume 4 turn out to have a long tail and some other stuff happens because of those things. And then….some other things happen with people whose roles in the story has changed and absolutely nothing is anything I can talk about until you’ve read at least through Volume 3, which won’t be for a while, since How Do We Relationship, Volume 2 just came out last month and literally anything I could say about any of it would be a huge enough spoiler that I don’t want to mention anything.

I can say this – I have a lot of complicated feelings about this series. I liked Saeko and Miwa, then I didn’t like Miwa, then I didn’t like both of them and now I am once again coming around to liking them for entirely different reasons. They are vastly more three-dimensional now than they were in Volume 1, and the entire story has gone in directions I never expected, could not have predicted and it is a MUCH better story for all of it.

Watching both Miwa and Saeko deal with stuff has been an interesting situation for me. There’s a great deal of the character building that feels wholly real and some that seems ripped straight from a soap opera plot. But, ultimately whether the story is informed by fact or wholly fiction, I’m going to give Tamifull full props for writing a story that I can’t stop reading, even when I’m not sure it’s going to…ack, spoilers!

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8 More complicated with every volume
Characters – 7 I’m still rooting for everyone
Yuri – 7 / LGBTQ – 6 It’s getting queerer, again
Service – 5

Overall – 8

Recently someone asked me for a “messy relationship” story I can recommend. I guess…this is it. ^_^