Title: Love Me, Love Me Not Vol. 2
Author: Io Sakisaka
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Digital
Pages: 184
Genre: Slice of Life, Romance
Publication Date: May 5, 2020
The Story
Love is a mess and that is clearly evident here in Love Me, Love Me Not Vol. 2. By that, I mean that love can cause a lot of complications and our main cast of characters experience all of that first-hand. The thing is, in most love stories, it seems to be a triangle of feelings between three people; however, in this case, it’s more like a love chain.
Yuna loves Rio. Rio loves Akari. Akari loves a boy from her past named Eiji. You can see a chain of love that’s unidirectional; however, the ending to the volume mixes that up just a little bit and begins to make things more interesting as it brings about the typical triangle scenario. Which characters end up in that triangle, though, I’ll leave it up to you to read and discover on your own!
One of the things the story does well is that it explores the implications of love and how the characters need to deal with it. This volume did focus a bit more heavily on the characters which were expected as any good series will use the second volume to expand the depth of their characters in order to make them meaningful. That meant that the main overall story would usually suffer by slowing down its progression. That wasn’t the case here as the story did end up moving forward as Io Sakisaka found a great balance between the two mediums in order to deliver a fantastic volume!
Characters
Our characters get a lot of development in this volume!
First off, Yuna learns about Rio’s backstory. He learns how he was in love with Akari and how it ties into him hating the rain. In short, on the day Rio was going to confess to Akari, he found out that Akari’s mom and his dad were going to get married. This caused Rio to lock away his feelings for Akari. After hearing about this, Yuna decides to confess her love for Rio with the intent to be rejected. In fact, she flat out tells Rio to reject her which it does. This causes the bulk of the volume to be centered around Yuna’s rejection and how she fights to accept it.
Akari gets her time in the spotlight as well. She talks about how and why she got into a fight with her mother, her attachment to Eiji, and just what he meant to her when she was growing up. Akari, herself, has to accept her own feelings and come to an understanding of the entire Eiji situation. It’s a basic story about trying to attach yourself to a past that lingers in your mind and finding that will to let it go and move on from it because you know deep down that it’s futile to hang on.
All of these characters have their own stories, yet, they intertwine with each other’s so well. This allows each character to move forward on their own and together as a collective simultaneously. Of course, the ending the volume may just throw a monkey wrench into all of that but that’s okay. Not everything can remain in constant parallel and it shouldn’t if you want to keep things interesting!
Final Thoughts
Love Me, Love Me Not’s second volume truly builds upon everything that had been established in the first volume and does so in a good way. The characters and their stories are interesting, their personalities are beginning to shine a bit more, the story direction is a little on the trope-ish side as we’ve seen love stories like this before but I think that there are enough things in place to where it won’t be that run-of-the-mill experience. I would probably think differently had the story started off as a love triangle rather than building a straight-forward web between the characters first. When you think about how the story has gone so far and where it could be going, this seems like it’s not going to be a simple love triangle. There’s going to be way more to it and, for once, I can’t really tell who is going to end up with who here.
Io Sakisaka is definitely trying to do something different, yet, familiar with this series. So far, it’s working well and it is providing for a great read! If you want to check on a new slice-of-life love story that doesn’t cause you to roll your eyes because everything is predictable, then I would recommend picking up this series while it’s still early on! You won’t have much to catch up on and you should be entertained all the same!
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This item was provided for review by VIZ Media
