From the back cover:
Ever since the day he helped her up from a nasty tumble, Black Magic Club member Reiko Kanazuki has been obsessed with Hunny. She is devoting all her knowledge of the dark arts to curse him and steal his soul. Will the sweetest member of the Host Club fall victim to her spells?
Review:
This series is starting to remind me of Hana-Kimi, which isn’t a compliment. While I enjoy some recurring characters, especially Kasanoda, I don’t particularly like it when long-forgotten characters reemerge out of the woodwork, like a coworker of Haruhi’s dad and a fruit-obsessed rival of Kyoya’s did in this volume.
A new character is also introduced. Mei is the rebellious daughter of the aforementioned coworker, and she’s not very interesting in and of herself. She does work well as a catalyst, however. When she decides to romantically pursue Tamaki, it prompts a tiny bit of progress from Tamaki and Haruhi regarding their feelings, which she picks up on. When she relates this to Kaoru, it coaxes out a bit more development. So, I suppose she’s useful in that respect.
One thing I wish is that the entire Host Club didn’t always have to show up to everything. It turns out that Tamaki was trying to help Mei and her father reconcile, and Haruhi decided to help him. It could’ve been so great if these two had just been doing it on their own. But no, the whole gang has to turn up and tip the scales in favor of hilarity.
There’s one completely random thing I do like, though. Towards the end of the volume, Mori is seen a few times with a baby chick in tow. Puzzled, I had to flip through the previous chapter until I finally spotted the panel where, quite unobtrusively in the background, Mori is seen patronizing a baby chick stall at a summer festival the gang attends. I like silly little things like that.
Yeah, I kind of didn’t like the reappearance of the football player, either. I kind of prefer side characters that disappear once the story arc is over, but I wonder if bringing old characters back has something to do with editors forcing artists to bring back popular characters. I honestly can’t imagine the football player being that popular, though.
And as much as I like the two of them, it’s probably for the best that Hunny and Mori “graduate” before too long. I’ve always disliked the way every single one of the 7 main characters has to appear in every chapter, and those two often don’t seem to have a place in those situations.
I can’t imagine him being popular, either. I think Hatori just went, “Ack, what am I going to do? I know—a sports festival!” and went from there. He doesn’t add anything to the story—at least Kasanoda has amusing moments, because he’s better-defined as a character.
I agree about Hunny and Mori, but I’m not sure whether that’ll happen. It’s been Spring at least three times in the series, and everyone’s still in the same years they always were. I’ve come to realize I don’t really like Hunny much. He rarely has anything serious to do, so his chapters are all kind of like filler. Mori’s cool, though. 🙂