Evergreen Volume 3 Manga Review

***SPOILERS***

Soga confronts Niki over her treatment of Hotaku. Niki gets angry over this, then discovers Hotaku is at the pool, so she runs away until she collapses. She’s found by Hotaku, where she confesses her love for him before being taken off on a stretcher. The next day, Niki is jealous over On-chan, but On-chan realizes it and defuses the situation. Hotaku confesses his love for Niki, causing them to begin their romantic relationship. Meanwhile, On-chan confesses to Soga, however, he tries to take advantage of her, simply to keep her at bay. Niki and Hotaku begin calling each other and eventually set up a date at a local, summer festival.

Review:

I’m glad to see that Niki and Hotaku are finally in a relationship. I would hope for a long run of them being in a relationship, but then I discovered that the next volume is the last volume. Bummer.

I can’t help but enjoy Niki’s and Hotaku’s burgeoning relationship. I may be long out of high school, but I do know the incredible feeling of knowing that a girl you like feels the same about you. I imagine the feeling is much the same for a girl toward a guy. And of course, in those early days of a relationship, there’s the excitement of the phone call from the one you love and just spending time together. This is what makes the fact that the series is about to end a little depressing.

There’s another depressing element that the end of this volume brought up again — the fact that Niki and Hotaku have the same key to the same house. Hotaku’s father’s mother stated she had two grandchildren. Obviously, one of them is Hotaku. Logically, for Niki to have a key, she has to be a grandchild as well. So that must mean that Niki and Hotaku will be cousins, but somehow don’t know it.

Frankly, I’m not happy with the thought of this. Why couldn’t this manga have just been a sweet, high school romance title? I guess we’ll see what happens.

The other relationship thread here is On-chan and Soga. I think Soga liked On-chan because she was the one girl who didn’t fawn all over him like all the other girls. Why she likes him is more of a mystery, but then in real life, we don’t always fall in love with the person we might think we would. Still, it is interesting that Soga would attempt to keep On-chan at bay by hurting her feelings in the manner he did.

Oh well, I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

On the Seven Seas side of things, we have a couple of color pages, one of which is the clean version of the front and back cover art. As usual, Japanese honorifics are included in the adaptation. There are no translation notes. A preview of Takemiya-sensei’s work Golden Time is included.

In the end, while I am pleased with Niki’s and Hotaku’s new relationship in the Evergreen Volume 3 manga, I’m not pleased with the direction the foreshadowing is taking us.