Kase-san and Yamada moved to Tokyo last spring. Now winter is ahead of them and they are settling in, mostly.

As Yamada to Kase-san, Volume 3 ( 山田と加瀬さん。) begins, Yamada has taken massive strides towards building a new life. It’s true that, as a first-year, she lacks some confidence, but her bouts of low self-esteem are much rarer than before. She’s learning a lot, working hard at her job and making friends. And this year, as the school festival approaches, she’s honored to take part in a special edition of one of her favorite gardening shows. The gardening club is working with their favorite teacher to do a live performance, with a special guest – a famous voice actor.

Kase-san’s school festival is on the same exact day. How they balance the schedule, Kase-san dealing with one last (and for once, rather amusing,) round of jealousy and what becomes of them when the voice actor turns out to be a good gardener, a decent person and an adult who provides good advice, is the bulk of this volume.

The other half of the story is the inevitability of a coming crisis with Kase-san’s roommate. Kase-san’s old rival from high school confides that she knows Kase-san has a lover. Fukami is trying very hard to not care, but…she cares. It is becoming harder to ignore that her feelings for Kase-san are not roommate-y. What will happen with them? We don’t know and it may be moot – because Yamada and Kase-san start talking about the next year and maybe living together.

I like that this manga is moving at a pace that is slow, but somehow feels real-ish.  That is to say, we’re not hitting multiple festivals per volume, which means that we have time to look at both Yamada and Kase-san and see how far they’ve come. Even the art invites us to see both of them as more adult. Yamada, especially. They have distinct personalities, and styles. It’s been half a year, Kase-san is finally dealing with the jealousy thing, Yamada’s low-self-esteem has really changed from her days in high school. Our little girls are growing up and it’s…nice. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 8
Characters – 9
Service – Not really, this volume.
Yuri – 10

Overall – 9

There’s no date yet for Volume 3 in English, but I bet it’ll be out in 2023!