I'm starting to think that the first volume of this series was the roughest, because everything after that one was much better. Volume 4, in particular, was really good.

At the beginning of this volume, Yoshida gets upset when some of the girls call him “ugly” and say that he looks a lot like one of the monsters in an amusement park haunted house. Although Yoshida is terrified of haunted houses, Sato forces him to go to the one the girls mentioned. After that, we get an extended flashback to Sato's elementary and middle school years. When he's 12, his parents tell him he'll be going to a boarding school in England. What they don't tell him is that the “boarding school” is actually a brutal fat camp that uses dangerous and unorthodox methods (like combat against wild animals) to help kids lose weight. The volume ends in the present, with Nishida and Sato battling for the right to date Yoshida and the school's girls battling to win a contest that will give them a full day with Sato.

The beginning of volume 4 was probably the weakest part. I felt a bit sorry for poor Yoshida, being forced to go through a haunted house when just the thought of being there terrified him. Sato couldn't seem to decide whether he was being too hard on Yoshida or whether he was enjoying Yoshida hiding behind his back too much to stop.

The flashback, though, was excellent and gave me something I've been wanting for a while, an extended peek into Sato's mind. This entire part was from his POV: being saved from bullies by Yoshida; the day Yoshida got his cross-shaped scar; being shipped off to England by family members that didn't seem to want him around; surviving his three years at that brutal school and even somehow making friends there; and the weird and upsetting feeling, after he returned to Japan, that his fat self had somehow been erased as though it had never existed.

Sato was about as screwed up as I had expected. In elementary school, he emotionally distanced himself as much as possible from the people around him and the things being done to him. His family members didn't even get proper faces, just big black spots with “Sis,” “Mom,” and “Dad” written on them. He even tried not to care too much about Yoshida's efforts to stop others from bullying him, probably so that Yoshida wouldn't have a chance to disappoint him later on.

Tanaka kept the section set during Sato's middle school years from being too grim by making certain elements over-the-top ridiculous. There were races conducted with wild animals running behind the kids as motivation, and combat classes in which the kids had to either defeat wild animals or be carried away on stretchers. I thought it was a little bit too ridiculous, at first, but, combined with some of the other things going on at that school, I think this section would have been too dark if Tanaka had played it all completely straight.

You know how Yoshida found out in volume 3 that Sato wasn't a virgin? Well,

So yeah, even with the wild animal combat sessions this section was a bit dark.

One thing that hadn't really occurred to me, prior to reading this volume, was that it wasn't just Yoshida and Sato who'd gone to elementary school together. Most of the students at their high school had also gone to the same elementary school, and some of the guys who wanted to be Sato and some of the girls who wanted to date him might have been the same ones who bullied him a few years earlier. That had to be a bizarre feeling.

After all that heavy stuff, Tanaka decided to end the volume on a lighter note. I absolutely loved the “battles” between Nishida and Sato, even though I agreed with Yoshida that they should have talked with him first. Sato didn't even try to be a better person than Nishida – he'd have had to be a saint. Instead, he thoroughly embraced his role as the over-the-top villain, complete with a panel in which he shouted corny evil lines while looking down at Nishida from atop a cliff (“Yoshida is mine, and it's about time you knew that...in Hell!” (153)). This entire section had me laughing so hard I cried.

After a so-so beginning, this turned out to be the best His Favorite volume yet. I can't wait to see what else Tanaka comes up with.

Extras:

This volume includes one full-color image and a short postscript.

(Original review, with read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

The series continues to have a bit of an episodic feel, as each chapter has its own “story.” In this volume: Yoshida feels stressed and preoccupied because a cute girl has asked him out; Yoshida gets upset when he learns that Sato isn't a virgin (I had thought he and Sato had had sex already, but apparently not); a heat wave makes everyone feel gross and cranky; Nishida, an openly gay student, confesses his love to Yoshida; and readers get to see more of Torachin and Yamanaka now that they're a couple.

This series has grown on me, even though I still have some issues with it.

I'm glad that Sato seems to have mellowed out some. He's still a secret jerk, but he doesn't mess with Yoshida quite as often as he did in previous volumes, and there were some nice panels of Sato and Yoshida just hanging out and enjoying each other's company. I still wonder if Tanaka ever plans on digging a little deeper, bringing Sato's emotional issues out into the open, and really dealing with them.

One thing I did not like, however, was how Sato acted during the heat wave chapter. He was absolutely awful to Akimoto, Yoshida's overweight friend. He absolutely destroyed the guy in only two sentences. He claimed it was because Akimoto got between him and Yoshida, but I imagine that his own usually hidden feelings of self-hatred and fat phobia played a large part as well. He's gone from being the guy who was bullied when he was fat to the guy who spews hateful words at Akimoto when the heat causes his “nice guy” mask to slip.

I cheered when Yoshida immediately jumped to Akimoto's defense and demanded that Sato apologize. However, Yoshida seemed to forget how awful Sato had been to one of his best friends the instant he realized that Sato was probably just as stressed out by the heat as everyone else. Okay, yes, the heat was making everyone cranky, but only Sato reacted so viciously. I wish Yoshida had continued to be angry at Sato, or given him the cold shoulder.

I enjoyed most of the rest of the volume, though. Nishida, in particular, was a fun new character. He was ridiculously and hilariously kind, at one point simultaneously helping an old lady carry heavy things, catching a thief, saving a little kid's balloon, and saving a drowning puppy. Although Yoshida didn't seriously considering dumping Sato for him, Nishida's wonderfulness did highlight how much more awful of a person Sato tended to be. I'm still waiting for a satisfactory answer (beyond “Sato won't leave him alone”) for why Yoshida continues to go out with Sato.

I was thrilled to see more of Torachin and Yamanaka, although the end result wasn't quite as good as I had hoped. Torachin was perfect – the tough guy who's a secret softie. The problem was Yamanaka. Falling in love with Torachin did not cure of him of being a good-looking sleazeball. He and Torachin haven't had sex yet, and he wanted their first time to be good...so he asked Yoshida “Is it okay if I screw you once?” (142) Thankfully, Yoshida gave that proposal the response it deserved.

It sort of helps that both Yoshida and Torachin are aware that the guys they're going out with kind of suck...and yet it doesn't. I want better for both of them.

Oh, one thing I should mention: throughout the series so far, almost all the female characters have been boring rabid boy-chasers. Tsuyako, who made a brief appearance in the first volume and who was basically a female Sato, was one of the few exceptions. Happily, this volume provided readers with another. Inoue was one of the few girls who wasn't afraid of Torachin. She acted as a middleman, asking Torachin for help on behalf of a female classmate, but she also made it clear that he was basically being used and that she wouldn't blame him if he decided to refuse. I liked her attitude and her pragmatism, and I hope she becomes a recurring character.

Extras:

This time around, the entire volume is devoted to His Favorite. There's a 4-page one-shot in which Nishida and Sato publicly fight over Yoshida (their classmates think they're practicing some kind of comedy skit). There's also a short postscript and one full-color illustration.

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

This. This was exactly what I needed last year. I couldn't seem to read anything, so anime was my staple. But I kept hearing everyone sing the praises of this new series, so I had to give it try. Superheroes in manga/anime seems to be a thing now. Not too long ago, Tiger and Bunny came out. Now, One-Punch Man and My Hero Academia have come out roughly at the same time. I've only read the last but if the others are as good as this one, I may finally jump on the Superhero bandwagon!

Our hero, Izuku Midoriya, lives in a world where 80% of the population has a "quirk," a superhero ability that can range from water, gigantism, explosions, and even stranger ones. With so many people holding powerful abilities, the police forces were unable to handle them and so some rose up to take the mantle of hero and keep the peace. The best known hero, All Might, is Midoriya's personal hero as well. He wants to save people with a smile just as All Might does. There's just one problem. Midoriya is one of the rare 20% born quirkless. How can someone without powers ever be a hero?

One half of this volume is devoted to the main story, and the other half is mostly a couple completely unrelated shorts. I never know how to handle stuff like this, but I suppose I'll treat the shorts like extras.

The main story starts off with Yoshida and the other less popular (and less attractive) guys in his class being forced to act as cheerleaders in the upcoming school sports matches. After the sports stuff is over, Yoshida learns that Sato is modeling for one of the school's art students. Then Yoshida encounters a friend from junior high at his current school.

I thought the first part was kind of cruel of the other students, although Yoshida's friends, at least, tried to embrace their roles as cheerleaders. The art modeling stuff was okay, although I wasn't a fan of Sato's hypocrisy. He agreed to be an art model and found the idea of Yoshida possibly becoming jealous appealing, but then he got mad when Yoshida agreed to be an art model too. On the plus side, Yoshida showed that he still had a spine by continuing to be an art model even though Sato told him to quit.

The best part of this volume, though, was the last part of the main story, which featured a secondary romance between Torachin, Yoshida's perpetually scary-looking friend, and Yamanaka.

In the first volume, Yamanaka was the second most popular guy at school. He was determined to be more popular with the girls than Sato, and he was the only one who noticed that Sato and Yoshida seemed to have become a couple. He then proceeded to take things too far by trying to kiss Yoshida. Sato's response, after saving Yamanaka, was to completely and utterly destroy his reputation by spreading nasty rumors about him (readers were never told the specifics of those rumors).

Yamanaka was left with a bone-deep terror of Sato. He also no longer had any friends, at least until Torachin, another outcast due to his scary looks, took pity on him and tried to befriend him. Then both of the guys started to become interested in being more than just friends.

This was the cute mismatched romance I had been hoping for from Sato and Yoshida. Neither Torachin nor Yamanaka knew that their feelings were returned, and so both of them went to Yoshida for advice. Torachin was worried about how Yoshida would react when he admitted that he was attracted to another guy (he didn't know about Yoshida and Sato), and Yamanaka knew he'd been pretty good with the ladies back before Sato spread those rumors about him, but he wasn't sure how to move forward when the person he was attracted to was another guy. There was a sweet flashback to a scene early on in Torachin and Yamanaka's friendship, and I loved that Yamanaka's thoughts of Torachin had little sparkles in them. I hope that this isn't the last readers get to see of this pair.

All in all, this volume was much better than the first. Sato didn't try to mess with Yoshida quite so often, and, although he still displayed some jealousy issues, I was pleased to see that there wasn't a single jealous comment when Yoshida told Sato they couldn't walk home together because Torachin wanted to talk to him about something. Considering Sato's past behavior, that was actually extremely surprising.

Extras:

- The first short manga was called “A Turtle's Love Is Eternal.” For some reason it made me think of CLAMP. The setup was a little confusing, although I didn't realize how much I'd missed until I got to the second short. Anyway, it starred Shiro Kazama, a school Discipline Committee member, Masami Kaito, and Chiaki Komiyama. I had assumed that Chiaki and Kaito were also both Discipline Committee members, based on the dialogue, but they were actually known rule-breakers Shiro had been told to keep a closer eye on. In retrospect, their lack of armbands should have clued me in. At any rate, it was fairly obvious that Kaito had a secret crush on Shiro, although Shiro didn't realize what was going on until after he spotted Kaito secretly dealing with a local snapping turtle problem. This story was okay, but maybe a little too cute for me.

- The second short manga, “Love or Bust,” starred the same characters as the first one. This time around, Kaito was being pursued by Tetsuya Honjo, a known rule-breaker who was in trouble for not only breaking the school's dress code by wearing a black uniform (the school's uniforms are white), but also for trying to force other students to wear black uniforms too. This story also made it clearer that Chiaki is actually transgender (or possibly just enjoys cross-dressing? I wasn't sure). Although this is a boys' school, she prefers to wear a girls' uniform. Her uniform breaks the rules, but it's usually tolerated, unlike Honjo's actions, because it's not like she's trying to force other students to wear girls' uniforms too. I enjoyed this short more than the first one.

- A 3-page His Favorite short featuring the art student who wanted Yoshida to model for him. It was...weird.

- A one-page postscript written by the author, with a reading-related illustration that makes me smile every time I see it.

- A full-page color illustration of Yoshida and Sato. I like this one, although the setup looks more like a guy teasing his younger brother than like two guys on a date.

Rating Note:

I feel like I may be rating this volume too highly, maybe focusing a bit too much on my love of the Torachin/Yamanaka secondary romance. The bulk of the volume is probably more like 3 stars. But I liked that secondary romance a lot.

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)