Sweetness and Lightning Volume 06 Manga Review
Amaama to Inazuma Manga Volume 06

–> Buy Sweetness and Lightning Volume 06 from Amazon.com!

***SPOILERS***

Tsumugi finds a stray, young cat. She becomes attached to it after Kouhei allows the cat inside. However, when the real owner shows up, Tsumugi doesn’t want to give it up. Later, Tsumugi goes to a campground with her dad, friends, and her friend’s parents. Kotori, Shinobu, and Chiyo also show up at Tsumugi’s request. Yuuka informs Tsumugi and Hana that she’ll be attending another school than them, leading them to make a pact.

Kouhei’s older brother shows up to avoid issues with his family. Kouhai and his brother argue, leading Tsumugi to get her dad out of the house. After a chance meeting with Kotori, Kouhei buys ingredients for food to make amends with his brother. Later, Tsumugi stays with her grandfather while Kouhei chaperones his class’s trip. Chiyo gets offended when Kotori seems more interested in food than spending time with her and Shinobu.

Meanwhile, Tsumugi enjoys her time with her grandparents and great-grandparents. When she returns home, her father takes her to Megumi’s so they can cook something yummy with Kotori.

The Romance Thread

Amagakure-sensei seems to have splashed some cold water on the Kotori x Kouhei romance in Sweetness and Lightning Volume 06. Things start with the trip to the campground. When Chiyo remarks on finding Kouhei the best of the dads on the trip, Kotori gets a bit offended and thinks it is gross. Maybe she was a tad jealous and didn’t know how to express it.

However, on the school trip, Chiyo and Kotori have a big chat after their dust up. Kotori doesn’t mention Kouhei, but she does say there someone she’s interested in. And while she’s not sure if it is love, she doesn’t want folks telling her that her feelings are love. Their conversation seems to try to reset things so that there’s just a platonic friendship between Kouhei and Kotori.

Still, Sensei teases us a little. Shinobu’s reaction to Kotori boldly coming to Kouhei to speak openly with him at the end of the trip suggests she thinks Kotori still has romantic feelings. And then in a splash page, Kotori is all interested in seeing pictures of a young Kouhei.

I don’t know where this non-romance is going. I recall in the anime, it didn’t go anywhere. For all I know, that’s how the manga will be. And while it is inappropriate for a student and teacher to be in a romantic relationship, it should be fine once she graduates.

Cooking

I almost forgot — the meals of Sweetness and Lightning Volume 06. First up is corn soup. Then there’s bread sticks (not something I’d think of making while camping). Next is kabayaki made with mackerel pike. After that is onigiri, which shockingly, the translators used the correct name for on the recipe. Unfortunately, the incorrect “rice ball” was used during the story. Finally, there’s a chicken stewed in cream (whatever the Japanese call this).

Omake

The omake chapter is about inago no tsukudani, which are specially boiled, then fried locusts. 🤮 While there has been a modern push to get folks to eat bugs (and leave the beef to the ruling elite), I don’t think this has anything to do with that. As I understand it, in mountainous regions of Japan, folks ate the locust, especially if said locust devastated the rice crop.

Sensei has the usual thank you note. There’s a page of translator notes, a preview page for the next volume, and ads for other Kodansha Comics manga titles.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

I’m insanely busy, so let me wrap up my review of Sweetness and Lightning Volume 06 with some final thoughts.

• I like how Tsumugi has to deal with tough issues in this volume. First was the cat that she had to return to its owner. Next was learning she wouldn’t be in the same elementary school as her friend Yuuka. Then there was Tsumugi’s stay with her elderly relatives. And of course, there was the issue with Kouhei’s older brother.
• Speaking of Kouhei’s brother, that situation seemed forced to me. It isn’t that siblings can’t be at odds. But if I had a teenage girl be annoyed with me because I stayed home, I wouldn’t flee my own house just to cause drama at my little brother’s house. Oh well.

In the end,  I did enjoy Sweetness and Lightning Volume 06 a fair amount, though I wasn’t that keen on the dampening of the possible Kotori x Kouhei romance.