When I tell you that Girls Kingdom, Volume 4 is worth reading, please understand that I am 100% aware of what I am saying. The series is, thus far, a ridiculous concoction of overblown Yuri tropes seen on a jumbotron screen of Light Novel excess. It’s also kind of fun. In Volume 4, it is both entirely, gobsmackingly, batty and much more clever than it has any right to be…and then it is…charming. Imagine that I write that sentence in equal parts awe, amazement, frustration and maniacal giggling.

You may remember that series is set at a school for absurdly wealthy young women, in which commoners aspire to become maids for the wealthy young women.

In Volume 1 of this series, we met Misaki, a regular girl attending this school, who has no desire to become a maid, and Himeko, a wealthy young lady who has no desire to have a maid, and who thus join as maid and mistress.

In Volume 2, Misaki and her roommate are required to jump through silly hoops for silly prizes.

In Volume 3, Misaki is both detective and diplomat and maid and one hopes her school grades are okay, but hey, she’ll probably always have work as fixer. And, oh, by the way, there is a surprise vampire.

So, by Volume 4, surely you know not to take any of this too seriously. And we don’t, as the initial scenario is a battle of the absurdly wealthy girl Salons to recruit a new member; a story whose conclusion which rests on a secret sauce of business acumen, baking and friendship.

And then the story takes a serious turn, as a maid and mistress pair faces a crisis no one can find a way out of …until a resolution is indeed found and I stopped and said, “Well, that was clever. How annoying.” ^_^ This book ends with more vampire hunting and the only actual laugh out loud moment in the book for me as Misaki seriously states, “The ‘III’ is important.”

She’s right too, because now Misaki has a magical animal mascot. And that surely must be important in this school where maids cook and clean and negotiate and fight and draw up legal contracts and arrange polite confrontations and engage in battles of eating escargot, and, presumably, go to class sometimes.

This series is too silly to hate. ^_^ You might not like it, but from my perspective Misaki is delightful and the whole story is so utterly loopy that you might as well just lean into it. And so author Nayo does. Shio Sakura’s illustrations once again illustrate the people, not the scene, so expect elaborate, yet impractical costuming. (Also, not sure what they think “evening gowns” look like here.)

Ratings:

Art – 7 lost me on the “evening gowns”*
Story – 8 Actually good in places, or am I losing some grip on reality? Not sure.
Characters – 9 Even more likeable and even more loopy
Service – 6 Still tiresome, but shifting
Yuri – 4.5 Himeko is finding reasons to touch Misaki

Overall – 8 I…liked…it?

In any case, if you have managed to make it this far, I encourage you to read Volume 4. Misaki may not be Noriko, but her relative normality at this absurdly fictitious school makes the whole thing work. You are not reading this series for either sense or sensibility, but as far as entertainment goes, you’re golden.

*Evening gowns for tea? Look, I’m not “British,” either, but that’s not how that works.