Title: Let’s Do It Already Vol. 2
Author: Aki Kusaka
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 168
Genre: Romance, Comedy
Publication Date: September 3, 2024
The Story
We pick things up with Kasuga announcing how he’s part of the family spy cell and it’s his job to break up Yuri and Keiichiro! After he realizes that Plan A has already failed, he moves on to Plan B… which Keiichiro shoots down immediately. After getting on his knees and pledging his support of their relationship, he initializes Plan C… to break them up from within and pretends to kiss Yuri to cause jealousy between Yuri and Keiichi!
Needless to say, his antics backfire and he’s forced to apologize again. Keiichiro then proposes to go on a date for the lengthy time of 4:15 PM until 4:30 PM! Of course, Kasuga is plotting to thwart these plans so realizing this, Yuri leaves for her date eight hours early… yeesh. While she has so much spare time on her hands, she wanders around to find the best possible route and spot to spend her generous fifteen minutes with Keiichiro. She bumps into a woman and drops her phone, breaking it. Fearing that she caused harm, the woman takes Yuri out.
In case you haven’t guessed it, the woman is just Kasuga in disguise as he has altered Plan C and is trying to get Yuri to go on a date with him. Thankfully, Keiichiro is too keen on Kasuga’s schemes and comes up with a plan to get out of his business meeting; however, the result of his plan impacts his date plans with Yuri… or have they?
Once everything wraps up, Keiichiro comes up with a plan to keep an exchange diary between them. Yuri feels that this is a great way for the two of them to learn more about each other; however, as things move along, Keiichiro says that he has arranged for something… that something is where we’ll pick up in volume three!
Characters
If I had to say anything about Keiichiro’s development, it’s that he’s already becoming more and more loose as time goes on. He came off as very by-the-books in volume one but as he realizes that Yuri is an important part of his life, he’s trying to find as many ways as possible to break his traditions while maintaining his traditions… if that makes sense. The result of this has him come off as something who is way more flexible than he had been previously but, at the same time, is still trying to uphold the expectations of his family. It’s a tough act but in the process of doing so, we’re beginning to see a bit of a shift in his personality which makes you wonder just where he’s going to go character-wise from here on out!
Yuri hasn’t truly changed at all so we can skip over her to talk about the one character I have come to loathe… Kasuga. Sorry, but this character just isn’t working for me. I know that he’s meant to be the comic relief but instead of adding drama and an actual threat, he comes off like an over-the-top 80’s cartoon villain. I know he’s not meant to be taken seriously but that’s working a little too well to where not only am I not taking him seriously, I don’t even want to see him in the story at all. He’s just one of those characters, and if you subtracted him and just stuck to Keiichiro trying to find new and creative ways to please his family while dating Yuri, then the story wouldn’t change or be impacted at all. The jokes added with him aren’t really all that funny… they’re just annoying and a chore to read.
Hopefully, the story shifts and writes this character off for good but with the way he has been written, it looks as if he’s going to be an annoying thorn for the remainder of the seven volumes we have left in this series. Ugh.
Final Thoughts
I said that the first volume didn’t blow me away but it wanted to make me read more. The second volume has come and my opinion hasn’t changed and it’s all thanks to Kasuga. If I had replayed the entire volume in my head and just removed him from the story and re-wrote some of the parts that would need altering because of him, this would have been a MUCH better second volume. That’s how much he as a character has negatively impacted my enjoyment of the series.
Looking past that, I loved the idea of the date between Keiichiro and Yuri. Only allotting fifteen minutes fit with the theme of the series and Keiichiro could have still left the meeting early to be with Yuri which would have made for a really sweet moment. The exchange diary was also really cute and even with the ending that Keiichiro arranged, that still could have happened because it was another defining moment of him trying to circumvent his family’s traditions and put Yuri first and foremost. Like… it’s pretty sad that if you subtract one character and take everything else in and analyze it, this volume goes from two stars to possibly four stars.
The fact that there was a lot of good to be had here makes me want to keep reading but each time Kasuga gets any sort of screen time, it becomes a challenge to find the good in it. I do want to check out the next volume… I want to see if Keiichiro’s plan lets the two of them be together and alone but if Kasuga shows up, and I have a bad feeling he will, I might just throw volume three across my room. I hate this character that much.
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
