Title: My Special One Vol. 7
Author: Momoko Koda
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 177
Genre: Shojo, Romance
Publication Date: August 6, 2024
The Story
Volume 7 of My Special One focuses on Kanato and Emika’s developing relationship. The theme of this volume is “near miss” as they go through situation after situation in which they have opportunities to confess their love for one another but somehow, something gets in the way and ruins it all.
After feeling as if she struck out at a chance, Haru mentions that their next gig is in Chinatown, where they will explore many different romantic spots. Emika feels that it’s the perfect opportunity to try her hardest to get his attention and confess her love. Kanato feels the same way; however, no matter what, the opportunity never presents itself. In fact, at one point, they were making meat buns, and the one who made theirs the worst had to engage in a punishment game. Kanato’s was by far the worst so he had to eat a plate of tofu… with bugs! Wanting to try her hardest to make an impression… guess who ended up eating the bugs instead?
They also visited a fortune teller who got Kanato’s prediction completely wrong in a hilarious way but got Emika’s right on the nose; however, the fortune teller wouldn’t say who she had a crush on because she realized that he was sitting right next to her. This leaves Kanato guessing which plays a role in the remainder of the volume, including the ending… but not before Kanato asks her out on a date, unfortunately, it starts raining so they end up spending a night together in a tent! This also played a role in the ending as well because something that happens in that tent may have turned a light bulb on for one of them!
Characters
For a volume that was solely dedicated to two supporting characters, not much in the way of development was had between them and that’s because the volume focused heavily on teasing their relationship and progressing that story rather than fleshing out the characters.
All we learned is that both Kanato and Emika are dense when it comes to their feelings for one another but, then again, in a slice-of-life romance series, the main characters are typically dense until it’s super painfully obvious. One funny thing was that Momoka Koda is aware of this and even pointed out in the narrative that both of them were dense as their subtle confessions went right over their respective heads.
Haru is still a little brat, though. One of the repeating gags throughout the volume was him either silently laughing to himself or bursting out laughing. Every time he did, it was because of Kanato and Emika’s naivety over their feelings. I would say that Haru is trying hard to bring them together but he’s working hard in a lazy way. Just standing back and watching the two of them fumble through this is causing him immense entertainment!
Final Thoughts
In the last review, I said that this change of gears was refreshing and that most series don’t put this much attention on their supporting characters and while we were given a full second volume (and a third, from what it looks like) dedicated to Kanato and Emika, I have to say, this one fell flat and fell flat hard.
The reason I say that is it was the same running gag throughout the entire volume just in different scenarios. By the time I reached the halfway point, I had gotten the point… both Kanato and Emika couldn’t find an opportune time to confess their feelings for one another so they found another scenario and failed at it again. Then, you sprinkle in some acting scenes for their roles which conveniently line up with what’s happening in their real lives and it just creates this long, drawn-out scenario that got old, fast. By the time I got to the last chapter, I began to flip through it just to see if it was going anywhere and, sadly, it didn’t.
I mentioned how a break from the main story to focus on the side characters was a refreshing change of pace because it can keep the main story from going stale but when the side story goes stale this quickly, that’s a problem. It would have been perfectly paced if the goal was reached here in this volume but it looks like we have another volume to go before we get there. Hopefully, it will end in the beginning so we can move on because right now, what started as something truly promising and refreshing was barely able to hold my interest.
Not the best entry into the series but this arc looks to be over soon. Hopefully, it can stick the landing. We’ll see next time.
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This item was provided for review by VIZ Media.
