by Matt Marcus, Staff Writer

In the previous volume of Assorted Entanglements, a new couple joined our problematic posse with the 3rd year high school student Sugimoto and her perpetually maidenless gym teacher, Kujou. Everybody else is still on their normal bullshit.

Assorted Entanglements Volume 4, brings something that was sorely needed to the series: character development. No, really! The series up to this point was content with short four-page chapters that loosely hung together but were mostly setups for gags. About a third of the way through this volume, Mikanuji-sensei starts writing longer chapters that expound more on the girls’ histories and their evolving connections to each other. It’s something that I would not have explicitly asked for, but it greatly benefits the whole package.

Minami has a flashback to the time she spent with Shizuku after getting out of the child services facility, which prompts a crisis of confidence. Nevertheless, she continues to think only of Iori and how she might leave her someday. After another open-handed peptalk from her older lover [sigh], Iori admits that she is a terrible person (true!), but she says that they would not have met if either one of them were normal. It’s almost touching!

Elsewhere in the city, a meaningless spat between Shizuku and Saori* leads to the two girls not talking for some time. Shizuku, never one to be fully honest with herself, finds herself feeling lonely enough that she goes out of her way to patch things up by laying out her point of view for Saori: that she is a fundamentally broken person who cannot relate to “normal” people, and thus despises them. Saori accepts this, finding common cause as maladjusted girls with twisted, unfulfillable loves. It’s kind of endearing!

Kujou’s girlfriend quest hits a snag as she gets a harsh dressing down from the cantankerous manager of the lesbian bar. Sugimoto is still trying to push her along, her last act in the volume being to offer her teacher an aquarium date as a “girlfriend test” (we all knew this was coming). We do find out in a bonus chapter that Sugimoto found the gig at the maid cafe after finding herself too gripped with panic to deal with the social stressors at school, and that seeing Kujou outside the bar everyday gave her the motivation to go back to class. It’s nearly sweet!

While all the other couples are angsting it up, Heke-san and Shinohara are still slowly circling towards each other like a binary star system. They are still the most wholesome couple here. It’s refreshing!

You may be detecting a theme here. With some space to stretch out, Mikanuji-sensei is able to add more contour to the characters and, despite all of my kvetching and faint praise, there is a core here that I do indeed like about this series. It’s still a hard recommend, but if you’ve stuck it out through three volumes already this one is worth picking up; it’s the best the series has been so far.

Art – 7 No major changes here, but Shizuku does give one the best “silent seething rage” faces I’ve seen put to page
Story – 8 It’s not going to win an Eisner but at least it’s trying
Characters – 7 Everyone’s schtick is firmly established here, yet there is some growth
Service – 2 Points are mostly for Minami’s tattoos
Yuri – 9 / LGBTQ – 9 Kujou gets a lesbian dating app

Overall – 8 Normality is overrated

Volume 5 of this ensemble story of Sapphic misfits is coming our way in June.

*I hadn’t noticed until recently that while the localization by Eleanor Ruth Summers has been excellent, Iori’s sister’s name has ping-ponged between Shiori and Saori throughout the series, even within the same volume. It’s an odd editing miss. Either may be technically correct, but after some discussion in the discord we have decided to go with Saori.

Matt Marcus is a serial enthusiast whose range of appreciations include guitars, watches, and a particular genre of Japanese popular media named after a flower. Outside of writing for Okazu, he cohosts various projects on the Pitch Drop Podcast Network, where he frequently bloviates about video games, anime, and manga. He also hosts a blog Oh My God, They Were Bandmates analyzing How Do We Relationship in greater depth.