Hanakimi 19

Wow, I thought I was witnessing the rather exciting phenomenon of Izumi growing a pair, but there was no such luck this time.  With four volumes left, I know Izumi and Mizuki have to hook up at some point, which will likely involve Izumi telling Mizuki that he knows she’s a girl.  Then telling her that he likes her.  Because this is something that I can’t see Mizuki ever admitting since… you know, she’d be kicked out of school if he took it the wrong way.

The series is beginning to approach the problem of Mizuki’s graduation.  Here, it introduces the fact that Mizuki will never be able to see her school friends again after she graduates, and will probably have to choose her college accordingly (I’m not sure if the problem with college came with people realizing she was a girl, though I’m not sure what difference that would make once she had graduated, or if it came from the problem of the college thinking she was a boy since she went to an all-boys school).  She puzzles over the question of the future for a good part of the volume, and comes to some conclusion the reader is not made aware of.  Disturbingly, this comes to her when Umeda reminds her that she came to the school to stalk Izumi, which is a pretty weird thing.  I do wonder how her decision for the future will turn out, though if I were in her place I’d probably just go back to America to go to school to avoid the problem.

There’s more and more cute scenes between Izumi and Mizuki with each volume.  This one teases so hard, because there are several scenes where Izumi is silently putting a lot of thought into his relationship with Mizuki, and he clearly likes her very much.  There’s a really cute scene near the end where Mizuki and Izumi start acting like an old married couple while out with Nakatsu, and he asks them straight out whether they have a thing for each other.  Izumi doesn’t answer and Mizuki misunderstands the colloquialism he uses.  It was great.  The scene is made better by the fact that Izumi is getting increasingly jealous of the friendship between Nakatsu and Mizuki.  I think another talk between Izumi and Shuichi is in order.

Also, there’s another cheesy sharing-the-bed scenario, which will never get tired as long as it’s done right.

Speaking of Shuichi, his mother comes to town towards the end of the book.  This was pretty fun in general, but the best thing to come out of it (aside from the Mizuki-Izumi bed sharing) was the perfect image of Nakatsu with his hair combed and his clothes ironed.  I honestly did not understand what was going on for a couple panels until he messed his hair up again.  Great gag.