From the back cover:
Kyoko helps the LME president’s granddaughter heal from a childhood tragedy, and in return she should have earned a free ride through the LME training school. But the other students throw a fit, and now she still has to pay. In order to support the high cost of the program, Kyoko gets a job as a seat filler on a TV show. But when one of the characters gets sick, Kyoko has to fill in—in a chicken suit! To make matters worse, Sho is the guest star! Will Kyoko destroy her only chance of revenge?
Review:
This was a truly excellent volume. The resolution to the cliffhanger from the previous volume was good, but the best part was definitely the variety show and its aftermath. I’m generally not one for silly gags, but putting Kyoko in a chicken suit for her first chance at confrontation with Sho was genius. In that guise, she was able to switch some questions from the audience and generally contrive to humiliate Sho, culminating in a fabulously absurd badminton match.
Kyoko was frustrated both by her lack of success in getting revenge on Sho and also by getting fired for going berserk in his presence and losing sight of the job she was supposed to be doing. This was further support for her realization in the last volume that she truly does want to do a good job, so I enjoyed seeing this thought continue to grow within her. She also realized just how far she has to climb to truly be able to challenge him.
There were also some really good scenes between Kyoko and Ren. In one, it was hinted that they’ve actually met before when Kyoko was quite young. Later, she saw an unexpected side of him and actually made some headway toward figuring him out. Too bad the bonding moment happened while she was still in the chicken suit, which she wore from page 92 on.
This volume felt like a near-perfect balance of comedy and character development to me. I find I’m really looking forward to Kyoko’s climb up the celebrity ladder. I just hope she doesn’t mellow so much on the journey that the big confrontation with Sho never actually happens.
Yeah, I really, really liked this volume. For some reason, even though I know it ought not to, anything involving Kyoko and Sho just kills me. I laugh so hard whenever the rivalry comes up. It’s great motivation for the series, but both those characters are so perfect against one another that the situations really are funny.
This volume had both Kyoko against Sho and Kyoko with Ren, which made it perfect. I also really get into the relationship between Kyoko and Ren, but I think that has a lot to do with the fact it develops so slowly that I’m satisfied whenever any hints are thrown my way.