After School Nightmare, v6
I was intending to come up with something more analytical and have instead pretty much just summarised the volume (ie, massive SPOILERS), but this continues to be excellent in unexpected ways. Highly recommended, plus if you start now there are, I think, only two volumes left to come out in translation (ETA: 4 volumes. I have counting problems).
Another new student - Suo, a former model scarred in an accident, who appears in the dream world as a mermaid. Ichijo picks her up and tries to rescue her from the water that starts to flood the school, in the process failing Kureha (squashed by the giant hand) and the knight, who drowns when his armour weighs him down; Suo then turns on Ichijo, saying he was in love with the idea of being a prince and saving her when, in fact, she was just waiting for the water to rise enough for her to swim. She stabs him with his own paired blades and swims back down again to the door with the key.
This is not Ichijo's volume, as Kureha and Sou then also go on to call him on his behaviour; Kureha, who is really looking for him to deny this, says that he needs a girl like her to make him feel like a man, and Sou is also - helpfully unhelpful, really. I do feel sorry for him even while thinking that they all have perfectly valid points; Ichijo can’t decide what he wants, can’t deal with what he has and all his decisions seem to turn back on him.
The next visit to the dreamworld again has him failing to rescue Kureha, this time much more explicitly as a failure for him to feel enough, and another confrontation with the knight (and a bunch of snakes?) before he falls, again. And, in the real world, Kureha breaks up with him. He skips the next class and ends up with Ohara, another student, and both of them actually leave the school, on a sort of date - and my god. Ohara is the hand. She’s skipped two classes already, and can skip no more without facing the consequences; which she does, leaving an altered school uniform for Ichijo and then fading, despite the teacher’s attempts to get her to attend. Arrgh.
Another new student - Suo, a former model scarred in an accident, who appears in the dream world as a mermaid. Ichijo picks her up and tries to rescue her from the water that starts to flood the school, in the process failing Kureha (squashed by the giant hand) and the knight, who drowns when his armour weighs him down; Suo then turns on Ichijo, saying he was in love with the idea of being a prince and saving her when, in fact, she was just waiting for the water to rise enough for her to swim. She stabs him with his own paired blades and swims back down again to the door with the key.
This is not Ichijo's volume, as Kureha and Sou then also go on to call him on his behaviour; Kureha, who is really looking for him to deny this, says that he needs a girl like her to make him feel like a man, and Sou is also - helpfully unhelpful, really. I do feel sorry for him even while thinking that they all have perfectly valid points; Ichijo can’t decide what he wants, can’t deal with what he has and all his decisions seem to turn back on him.
The next visit to the dreamworld again has him failing to rescue Kureha, this time much more explicitly as a failure for him to feel enough, and another confrontation with the knight (and a bunch of snakes?) before he falls, again. And, in the real world, Kureha breaks up with him. He skips the next class and ends up with Ohara, another student, and both of them actually leave the school, on a sort of date - and my god. Ohara is the hand. She’s skipped two classes already, and can skip no more without facing the consequences; which she does, leaving an altered school uniform for Ichijo and then fading, despite the teacher’s attempts to get her to attend. Arrgh.