The six members of the Crimson Field High School girls’ volleyball team have come a long way and are now participating in the Newcomers’ Tournament, an important stepping stone to their ultimate goal, the Spring Tournament. They win their first two rounds handily, but are faced with a tough opponent for the third round. Meanwhile, Nobara and Yushin are still keeping their feelings for each other a secret.

Even though I am far from athletic myself, there is something about sports manga that I adore. Crimson Hero does particularly well at giving each teammate a moment to shine and in recent volumes, each of the supporting girls has improved her skills in some way or another. The matches are also a lot of fun and easy to follow. Frankly, I wish there were more of them.

I’m a little frustrated on the romance front, though. Nobara has liked Yushin for a long time, and was firm about this even when she realized that another boy, Haibuki, had feelings for her. Now, when Yushin has finally reciprocated, Nobara’s suddenly starting to be affected by Haibuki, thinking things like, “These days your smile messes with my heart.” I was really hoping this series wouldn’t go down this road; the fact that it seems poised to do so is disappointing.

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

From the back cover:
Just when Nobara is set to play with the Eagles against the men’s team at Central Sokai University, Yushin shows up on campus! Has he come to make a play for Nobara?

Review:
At last! I love seeing good things happen for characters I like, and this volume is immensely satisfying in several important ways. Nobara gets her first taste of victory when the beach volleyball team manages to beat the elite college team, though I am kind of getting annoyed with all of these games that go all the way to the very final point. I guess that’s supposed to show how hard the struggle was? There’s also some awesome stuff between Nobara and Yushin.

But the very best stuff actually happens when Nobara returns to Crimson Field. In her absence, one of her teammates, Kanako, a relative newcomer to volleyball, has been training really hard. She’s proud of her new skills and shows them to Nobara, who is appropriately impressed. Alas, the coach is more interested in what Nobara has learned to do and is dismissive of Kanako, who’d been receiving personal attention up ’til that point and whose goal was to become better than Nobara.

Nobara realizes later, upon seeing the tattered state of Kanako’s equipment, just how hard she’d been working and refuses to accept Kanako’s resignation from the team. There’s this great scene where they meet up in a café or something. Kanako says, “I’m not going to lose to you!” To which Nobara replies, “I’m not going to lose to you, either!” Then they both break out in tears. There’s one panel of the two of them sobbing away with the sound effect “Waaaaah” going across it. It’s wonderful, funny, and in character, too. I think I read that sequence over, like, four times.

And, as if all that weren’t enough, the Newcomers’ Tournament (which has some bearing on the attendees for the Spring Tournament somehow) begins and the Crimson Field girls handily win their first game. It’s a feel good volume all around.

From the back cover:
Coach Shima sends Nobara to train with the men’s team at Central Sokai University. However, these college guys have no intention of letting a girl join their practice—unless Nobara can find a way to gain their respect.

Review:
It took me this long to start to get tired of reading this series, which is probably a compliment. And really, this volume is pretty decent. Nobara is training with a beach volleyball team and learning to see her skills—like her amazing jumping ability—objectively. Her teammates are rather silly, but overall these chapters are pretty fun. In fact, they’re very shounen, with lines like, “I’ve got to become stronger!” and “There’s got to be an attack only I can do!”

Alas, there are also some lame, kind of retconny moments. Nobara having a particular childhood hero has never been mentioned before, but suddenly we are told she had one and turns out to be, of course, Ryo, the guy she’s been sent to train with. Worse, though, is that Nobara goes practically bonkers during a typhoon and rushes out to the beach to physically hold onto one of the posts holding up the net so that it won’t get destroyed because she must become stronger and all of that. She later explains that she often goes nuts during storms on account of the childhood trauma of being locked in a storage room during one. Normally Nobara is not the type of heroine to have a “too stupid to live” moment of such magnitude. It was pretty crapulent.

Anyway, it is at least clear that Nobara is improving. I look forward to seeing how her new skills will translate on the court.

From the back cover:
Nobara’s drive to get the girls’ volleyball team ready to qualify for the next Spring Tournament has tensions running high. Have Nobara’s dreams finally outgrown those of her teammates?

Review:
Yay, volleyball once again takes precedence over romance! This volume begins with the girls team in shambles, reeling from yet another defeat, and Ayako telling Nobara that they’re not like her and never really believed they could make it to the Spring Tournament (Nobara’s big dream). After a brief stint at a special training camp makes Nobara realize that it’s her own team that she wants to play with, she returns and the team gets itself together. Training begins in earnest, with the new coach leading the girls through intensive drills.

The problem is that Nobara’s simply enjoying playing so much that she’s not trying her hardest in the practice games. I love that the other girls are worried about her talents going to waste and are working hard to try to challenge her. Finally, at the end of the volume, Nobara realizes that she isn’t pushing herself, and departs to go study with some surfer guy who I can only assume is a volleyball guru of some sort.

With things mostly stable on the girls’ team, it’s up to the boys to provide the drama. Alas, I found this segment of the volume pretty boring. Basically, now that the third years have retired to focus on their college entrance exams, the second years are feeling overshadowed by the new crop of talented first years and quit in a huff. Yushin is ultimately the hero. No big surprise there.

This volume is better than the last, but still isn’t as exciting as it could be. Hopefully there’ll be another fun game before too long.