by Eleanor Walker, Okazu Staff Writer
The harem is assembled, Renako is officially dating both Mai and Ajisai, and Satsuki has also thrown her hat into the ring under the guise of “well if you’re already dating 2 people, why not add a third?” and Kaho is just sort of… there?
So begins Season 2 of the novel series “There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless…” the previous 4 volumes of which I’ve also reviewed here on Okazu. Like so many stories which continue after the main couple (or throuple in this case) gets together, these two volumes definitely suffer from the “what now?” problem. As cute as it is to read about happy people in love, stories without any conflict don’t tend to be very interesting.
Volume 5 introduces a brand new rivalry with a group of 5 girls from Class B, who as far as I can remember have never even been mentioned in the previous 4 volumes. They stylise themselves as the 5-ddesses as opposed to our main characters the Quintet in Class A (for those who don’t speak Japanese, 5 is “go” so it should be read “go-ddesses”. I kept reading it as five-ddesses even after it was explained, but puns are hard to translate so…) Their leader is Takada Himiko and for reasons unbeknownst to the reader at this point, she’s declared a rivalry with the Quintet and challenges them in the upcoming inter class athletics competition. Most of the rest of this volume is dedicated to the training and competition, and I honestly found it so boring I don’t really have much to say about it.
It should hopefully be obvious at this point that I found volume 5 rather a slog to get through. It’s much thicker than any of the previous 4, and even the author in the afterword says it probably should have been split into two smaller volumes. I would agree, either that or cut a lot of it out, which they say was also an option but they couldn’t get rid of any of it. I personally disagree, and am of the opinion that there was a lot which could have been cut out. The whole book read to me like the author wasn’t expecting the series to continue past volume 4, and now suddenly had to come up with a new external complication to try and advance the plot and relationships. If we’d been introduced to this other group or at least Himiko right from the beginning, them challenging the Quintet wouldn’t now seem so sudden and out of place, especially as we later learn that Himiko was a model when she was a child and had lost out to Mai. It just seems odd that we are now several months into the school year and they’ve just appeared out of nowhere.
Volume 6 however was more enjoyable because unlike the 5-ddesses, we have encountered Renako’s younger sister Haruna since the beginning of the story. She’s always been the opposite of Renako; sporty, extroverted, popular and fashionable. She’s the one who helps Renako change her image for starting high school, and often seems more mature, despite being the younger sister. In volume 5 she does agree to help Renako practise basketball for the inter class competition, but in volume 6 she takes a larger role. She, much like Renako did in the past, decides to stop going to school one day and it’s up to Renako and the Quintet to try and figure out what’s going on between Haruna and her friends Minato and Seira. Because she’s actually been a part of the story right from the beginning, this arc is actually interesting enough that I do want to know why the sudden change in her behaviour and how this will force Renako to grow as an older sister and support her for a change. Another mystery character called Lucie randomly appears too, and it’s not until the very end of the volume that we are told she’s claiming to be Mai’s fiancee, which just feels like it was added in as a cliffhanger to end the volume on, rather than actually being an important part of the story. This volume is the first part of the Haruna story, which will conclude in volume 7, and Season 2 itself will conclude at the end of volume 8 according to the afterword of volume 7. Volume 9 doesn’t currently exist in Japan, there are 2 side story volumes which will be released in English later this year and summer next year according to Seven Seas’ website.
Overall, if you’re really desperate to see what happens beyond the anime, give this a go but I’m of the opinion you could comfortably skip volume 5 especially and not really miss much. I hope if this arc does get animated they cut out a lot of the padding, as there’s definitely some potential under the bloat. Either that or the editor does a better job for the next volumes.
Ratings:
Art – 6
Story – 4
Characters – 4
Service – 8 The obligatory colour page bath illustration at the beginning of both volumes is a tradition at this point.
Yuri – 7
Overall – 5
No pictures were allowed in the exhibit, but I was enchanted by all the preserved books and novels from the 1920’s and 30’s. There were also newspaper and activism articles, my favorites being about female political movements. I tried to scribble out a few memorable ones in my notebook!
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Matt Marcus is a cohost of various projects on the 
