In this volume Umino is only barely scratching the surface of what these characters can be. It will be difficult to pull this chaotic ‘gags’ together into a neatly drawn ’romantic’comedy which I believe she is headed toward. I get the feeling that she’s just testing her material before she makes a gigantic decision about her plot (which could really go anywhere at this point).

As for her art, its functional at best; it is a shame that she doesn’t render all of her panels in color (definitely where her skills lie)— even if they were scanned in b/w the quality of the manga would increase incrementally; and greatly affect the currently dimensionless characters.

…even so, I would recommend this manga; it is my experience that leads me to believe that many of these problems will disappear by the third volume. I have high hopes for this manga — and I’m really looking forward to see how Umino is going to pull it all off.