the heavy focus on jealousy is just never gonna be my favorite, but it was nice seeing them get away somewhere for summer break! a little change in setting is always nice around this time in stories like this. and this volume had some great moments.

i gotta admit, my favorite things about this volume may have been kase's "nice" (greeked nike, clearly) gym bag and "sports!" track jacket.

i continue to love these two and i'm happy to see them continuing to navigate the challenges of both of their first serious, committed relationship while also finding time for the small joys of everyday life. i want nothing but the best for both of them.

i really didn't love the magic system and that kinda threw me off at first, and i'll be honest this certainly didn't end up being my favorite or anything, but it was pretty enjoyable once i started to like the characters and their... very specific dynamic. still glad i finally have one of these yuri book club reads that isn't gonna add yet another series to my disastrous "to read" stack.

and we're into the college arc! this feels like a good spot to pause and start on my yuri homework for mommy's bookclub. very glad everyone is happy and where they want to be. just absolutely love these two. excited to see what life has in store for them next.

almost certainly my favorite volume so far. there were a few very minor specifics of how yamada's jealousy was resolved that i didn't really vibe with. the narrative convenience of "oh it was a misunderstanding she isn't my ex, you're actually my first" is not my favorite, ngl. but this did such a good job with the big picture, and kase-san's little speech that ends with "i was always running with you, yamada" literally made me cry.

this is SO GOOD and SO GAY. it's a classic for a reason.

this was solid! it certainly didn't reach the heights of the penultimate issue in the series, and i honestly think it was asked to cover a bit more ground than i would have liked given the amount of space it had to work with, but it's really quite lovely to finally have the theros beyond death official story in some form.

... needed more ashiok, though, imo.

the ova basically covered the first three volumes of the manga, so i already knew the story, but it's interesting seeing the small differences between the manga and the ova. i actually think the ova did a slightly better job of establishing that kase-san & yamada-chan were having trouble communicating during the lead up to their graduation? and i don't really remember anything about kase-san's senpai from the track team coming up in the ova, though idk if that's because it's clearly in there as a hook for the next manga volume, or if it was also there in the ova and i just don't remember it? but i just remember the conflict in this third act being way more focused on how the two of them need to be better about communicating their needs to each other. but that's also probably because this was where the ova was concluding its story, whereas the manga is gonna keep going. it'll be interesting to see how i feel about future volumes now that we've caught up to the point where i already know the broad strokes of the story!

volume 2 sees our girls navigate some relationship-threatening misunderstandings and start learning how to communicate together in a way that's both believable and really narratively satisfying.

i've seen the ova so i already knew that i loved these characters and the overall trajectory of their story, but i'm glad i'm getting to see it in its original medium! and i can already see that it's going to be even more enjoyable when each step on their journey has more time to breathe. (the ova is still exceptional, btw, but i'm greedy and am never going to say no to MORE yuri.)

wellp, now i'm caught up on this, so they better hurry up and get a new volume out soon!

i think the two immediately preceding volumes were a bit better, but this was still a solid entry as always. this series really doesn't miss.

this volume was also great! kanna & saikawa's relationship is really growing deeper and less one-sided, which is very lovely to see, but she also got a lot of lovely times with her found family! i can always trust this series to put a smile on my face with its wholesome fluffiness.

this might be my favorite volume of kanna's daily life so far. like half of the stories in this were absolute bangers, and as usual there wasn't really a single miss. but legitimately like half of the stories in this one could have been my favorite story in another volume.

minami-kun continues to prove he's made of pure weapons-grade boyfriend material, and the rest of kuroe's friends desperately want her back in spite of knowing she's a kaiju. (or, in a couple cases, they consider her being a kaiju a perk. which, fair.)

kinara & drago's story is sweet and heartbreaking by turns. despite being a bit uncomfy about the background aura of racism from the kaiju movie tropes their story is pulling on, as they get more shaded in as actual characters i do find myself wondering if my initial reaction may have been unduly harsh.

I FLEW THROUGH ALL 14 VOLUMES IN A MATTER OF WEEKS AND THAT'S WHERE I'M STUCK WAITING FOR MORE THAN SIX MONTHS???? ARE YOU KIDDING ME??????

hey about that ending, super quick question: WHAT THE HECK????????????????????

i was v curious why my partner got this for me, since porn really isn't generally a thing i'm super interested in (i mean this in a very neutral/nonjudgmental way, it just doesn't tend to spark joy for me), but then all the girls started bullying the protagonist and making him do all their chores and i was like "oh, yeah, okay." like, being forced to do domestic labor for a group of girls that could snap me in half sounds great, actually, i'll take 2.

sadly all the sex in this is painfully vanilla. even the character who briefly cosplays as a dominatrix turns out to literally be a submissive. but i enjoyed it anyway, even though i'm squarely not in the target audience for this.

this one took quite a bit longer than the others to finish because i started actively working on updating my librarything catalog for the first time since 2022 (whoops!). i'm really glad sayaka got her happy ending, and it feels very earned. also i understand why my wife enjoys hitoma iruma's writing now, and i might have to check out some of his other work.

main story was fine, backup story was objectively also just fine but i'm actually incapable of being objective about damian so i'm just so damn happy to get a new damian appearance that isn't a glorified cameo.

warning y'all in advance: i am going to be as smug as damian if my little anger gremlin ends up saving everyone in this crossover.

i'm sorry for being boring or whatever but i like the part of the planet of the apes where it's, y'know, a planet... of the apes. this series seems to like the part where a bunch of humans argue & shoot each other about apes and there are sometimes apes in the general vicinity but they're not really doing much.

hey i heard marvel is doing a planet of the apes comic, that's so cool! anyone know when it starts?

sorry for being salty, just, NOTHING happened in this issue. also there weren't any freaking ape characters. just a lot of humans talking about apes. yawn.

i wish the characters looked a lot more like their film counterparts considering this is explicitly meant to evoke nostalgia for tmp, and unlike a lot of other recent star trek comics the dialogue (especially kirk's) oftentimes super does not sound like how the characters usually talk.

i've been wanting to read some zatanna stuff, and she's such a great fit for this event, so it's no surprise this one was pretty great! and this is by far the most badass that all the nightmare monsters have looked in any of the stories from this event i've read so far.

(also, the baddie had me at "submit and kneel before your new queen." i love a dommy villain.)

kinda wish hal's story had committed to something instead of just jumping all over the place, and it was also super short thanks to the sinestro backup story that i didn't especially care about. like, i get why they would want to include him in a story that's all about fear, but i've just never found him that interesting, and this did nothing to change that.

*patiently waiting for the plot to arrive*

*or for more hot fighting, at least*

it's pretty straightforward and basic, but like... it's tmnt vs street fighter, that's basically what you want, right?

i was gonna joke about "i'll have what he's having" about chun-li strangling mikey with her legs & demanding he submit, but i gotta be honest that i've never been into chun-li like that. maybe if it was vega or someone idk lol

i gotta be honest, i don't have the most experience with starfire as a character in the comics medium. most of my experience with her comes from cartoons & dc's excellent direct-to-video animated movies. so compared to the limited exposure i've had to her in her original medium, it was refreshing to see her doing something other than will-they/won't-they romantic drama with nightwing.

i love the titans, and i love the idea of this anthology miniseries showcasing a different member in each issue. and this did exactly what that kind of series should do by making me immediately more interested in its featured character than i had been before. hopefully the rest of the series will do the same with each successive character!

what if the real nightmare was half an oedipal complex

this was fine but not one of the standouts in this event so far. i did enjoy when they were dragging nightwing into nightmare-arkham and it sounded like the other inmates were gonna heckle him about being fresh meat, but then it turned out they were genuinely happy to see him because he "killed batman." boo. the excessive bondage & pigmen guards were kinda hot tho.

i love a good anthology, and i loved 3 of the 4 stories, not a bad ratio!

not quite as good as the first issue, but still liking the overall direction, and glad there's a bat title like this going again

i liked three of the four stories well enough. still really not interested in stormwatch. i understand that it's gotten good reviews, so that's just a me thing, but i don't know or care about any of the characters and i'm kinda full up on dc characters to care about at the moment so i'm just not interested.

but yeah, still really liking this anthology series on the whole.