From the back cover:
Friendship and love are put to the test when Asaoka reveals to Yoh that he likes Haruna. To settle things once and for all, Yoh and Asaoka strike a deal—whoever loses the school sports meet will give up his feelings for her! Who will win the meet and Haruna’s heart?

Review:
Once again, the back cover blurb is wrong. I wouldn’t like Yoh at all if he’d participate in such a stupid wager! What actually happens is that Asaoka proposes that if Yoh performs better than he does at the sports festival, he won’t tell Haruna how he feels, which is something Yoh said would upset her to find out. That’s it. Yoh should sue the blurb for defamation of character.

Outspoken fan of the series that I am, it should surprise no one that I loved this volume to pieces. Uh-oh, I feel a list coming on. Brace yourselves.

1. How, during the sports festival, we get lots of low-dialogue pages featuring Yoh watching Asaoka watching Haruna or Asaoka watching Haruna watching Yoh.

2. Asaoka’s attempt to pass it all off as a joke on his part, which neither Yoh nor Mami buys. I particularly like his anguished eyes, when Haruna dismisses his impromptu confession as teasing, as he realizes that all of his jesting has cost him his credibility in serious matters.

3. The entire chapter where Yoh ends up hanging out at Haruna’s house, including but not limited to: the talk he has with her dad, her brother’s starry-eyed admiration, and the handful of freshly picked radishes he receives as a parting gift.

4. Even the less-good chapters involving a rude girl at Yoh’s prep school are still lots of fun.

In summation, in Kawahara’s hands, plots like sports festivals and romantic rivals are imbued with a special warmth that can both move and amuse. I really hope we get some of her other series here after High School Debut finishes serialization.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Narumi’s father has goaded him into entering the Scissors Project into the All-Japan Beauty Tournament in order to prove he’s serious about forming his own salon with his schoolmates rather than inherit the family salon. In this final volume, the outcome of both the tournament and the love triangle between Narumi, his friend Ochiai, and protagonist Kiri, is revealed.

I was pretty disappointed in this conclusion. Kiri is sidelined for most of the first half for an incredibly contrived reason—she catches a cold by going out in the rain to forgive the rival hairstylist (I lost count, but I believe he’s the fifth or sixth to appear in the ten-volume series) who stole her special scissors but who we are supposed to care about because he is a sad orphan—and a lot of the romantic momentum built up in the previous volume is squandered. The outcome of the tournament is treated as an afterthought and while we do, courtesy of a comedic bonus story set ten years in the future, ultimately learn which boy Kiri ends up with, we never see her admit any feeling for either of them or witness any reaction from the boy not chosen.

Ultimately, Beauty Pop is a silly and cute tale that shows occasional glimmers of a more satisfying story but fails to deliver in the end. In some ways, I am reminded of the conclusion to Hana-Kimi, which had similar issues involving the unsatisfying resolution to a romantic triangle. How one felt about the final volume of that series would be a good indicator of what to expect from this one.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

From the back cover:
After kissing Kiri accidentally, Narumi struggles to keep his composure during the All-Japan Beauty Tournament. With everything on the line, can the Scissors Project even make it through the preliminaries?

Review:
Sometimes the overall feel of a volume is so cute that I can’t help but like it, even though it also contains myriad things at which I roll my eyes.

We start with the continuation of the All-Japan Beauty Tournament. At the end of volume eight, Narumi and Kiri accidentally bumped lips when they were tripped by a scheming competitor. We resume with both of them sitting, dazed, and realizing just in time that they should get a move on if they don’t want to be eliminated in the first round. Round two involves taming a brat of a kid, which Kiri awesomely does by giving him the haircut of his favorite TV hero, though why she waits 45 minutes into the 60-minute round to actually talk to the kid, I couldn’t say.

The competition adjourns for a week, leaving time for romance drama to ensue! I like that Kiri is pretty nonchalant about the accidental smooch, saying, “I didn’t hate it,” while Narumi is the one who flees and freaks out. When Kiri’s dad is conveniently whisked off to America, extracting a promise from Narumi to look after Kiri, the two spend some time alone wherein Kiri acts clingy because she’s afraid of cockroaches and Narumi valiantly vanquishes one on her behalf. By various means, Ochiai finds out about that, Narumi finds out about Ochiai’s feelings, Ochiai declares that he won’t hold back any longer, and it’s a whole big tangle of cute drama, pretty much.

Now that the focus is on Kiri and the two boys who like her, the annoying side characters are left far in the background and I don’t miss them at all. Arai’s art, delicate and perfect for drawing hair, also excels at more romantic scenes, and there are many panels in which Ochiai’s and Narumi’s softened expressions really catch the eye. Too, I like the gradual way Arai has built up the possibility that Narumi and Kiri could actually feel something for one another; it certainly didn’t seem possible earlier in the series.

From the back cover:
Just as the Scissors Project is getting stronger than ever, forces are at work to discredit Kiri and disband the club. What’s even more surprising is the person who is behind it all…

Review:
Most of what happens in this volume is pretty dumb. There’s a rival stylist, hired by a mysterious boss, whose tasks are to get the Scissors Project to disband and to retrieve a pair of special golden scissors that were given to Kiri a few volumes ago. The rival causes the rest of the students to suspect Kiri of trashing the S.P. club room, but is eventually unveiled in a highly unlikely fashion. His boss then tells Narumi that he can prove he’s serious about the S.P. by entering and winning a tournament.

It’s all incredibly contrived, but this silly plot does serve to provide some good moments. When Narumi catches some girls planning to pull a nasty prank on Kiri, he gives them an earful, not realizing she’s nearby and has overheard. In fact, ever since their talk about why they want to be beauticians, relations have thawed some between them. In this volume, they’re giving each other thank you gifts, we get to see Kiri laugh, and I feel, for the first time, a romantic vibe. Ochiai’s not to be outdone, of course, and tries in his way to protect Kiri, too.

Overall, it’s not a very good volume, but it leaves off just as the tournament’s getting underway, and I expect I shall enjoy that.

From the back cover:
Kiri is undecided about what career she wants to pursue after graduation, but for Narumi it’s plain and simple—he’s always wanted to become a professional hairstylist. Can Narumi’s passion help persuade Kiri to face her dreams?

Review:
The Beauty Pop series is actually split in two parts, and this volume sees the conclusion of the first part, a smattering of bonus stories, and then the resumption of the series as Beauty Pop, Stage 2.

The conclusion to the first part of the series hinges on Kiri finally admitting that she does want to be a beautician after graduation. It’s time for the second-year students to fill out their career choice forms and she dallies over it a bit until Narumi’s passion for cutting hair, and recollections of the happiness of her former makeover subjects, prompts Kiri to make her decision. After talking to Narumi, she actually smiles at him, which, of course, causes him to go “b-bmp,” just like happened to Ochiai after he caught a glimpse of the same rare sight. Even the imposter from the last chapter ties in with the whole “go for your dreams” theme, even if his motivation for impersonating Narumi is totally ridiculous.

The bonus stories are not very good—surprisingly, the one featuring Chisami is the best of the lot. In “Twisted Typhoon,” most of the cast is contrivedly visiting Los Angeles at the same time, and Kiri saves the schedule of a movie shoot her mother is working on by correctly interpreting the drawing made by the temperamental child star who insists on a particular hair style. In “I Want to Be a Prince,” we see Chisami through the eyes of her childhood friend, Takeda, and discover that she’s a lot more lonely than she lets on. There’s one panel of her just waving and smiling sadly to Takeda that single-handedly goes a long way toward making her more tolerable. “Extra-Curricular Daydreaming” is the worst of a lot, about a dog who has returned as the ghost of a human boy to repay Kiri’s kindness to him in his canine life, an aim that he accomplishes by stealing pencil cases and snacks for her. Hana-Kimi did this—randomly inserting a story about the supernatural into its school-based narrative—and I disliked it then, too.

Stage 2 starts with the rather subtle revelation that Kiri has finally joined the Scissors Project. She’s been resistant and apathetic all this time, but now we see her sporting a certain bracelet and then are introduced to the significance of that bracelet a little later on. It seems that Ochiai is getting more serious about marketing the group, and Kiri even seems to be seeking out people to practice on rather than simply stumbling upon folks in need. A Scissors Project performance, with Kiri as a willing participant, ensues, but is interrupted by yet another famous stylist who, for some reason, enjoys interfering with the efforts of amateurs. Yawn.

I’m happy to see the change in Kiri’s outlook and that she is both participating and having comparatively civil conversations with Narumi. But with only three volumes left in the series, I hope the story quits introducing these tedious rivals and starts devoting more of its time to her character arc.