Baby & Me 3

Marimo Ragawa – Viz – 2006 – 18 volumes

This continues to be the most adorable slice-of-life series money can buy.  I’m still not sure if the characters are aging or not, but summer has come and Takuya makes a comment that gives the impression around ten months have passed since volume one, so maybe they will age as the volumes keep going.

This is the spring/summer volume, which includes a summer sports festival and a trip to the beach, along with a two-chapter story about Takuya dealing with a difficult female classmate and one about the beliefs of childhood that has been my favorite story yet.

Minoru is enthralled by a group of sentai/Power Rangers that advertise a washing machine, and he fully believes that they are real.  Most of the commentary for the chapter is about how much children idolize and believe in their childhood heroes, in this case sentai, Ultraman, and Doraemon (complete with adorable flashback complete with Takuya being disappointed that Doraemon was waylaid by a favor he promised Nobita).  There’s a crushing scene where Minoru accidentally stumbles upon actors playing the parts of the sentai, but Takuya helps him believe again.  Heartwarming stuff.

The chapter about a lying female classmate is one of those After School Special stories where the girl gets bullied by classmates for lying, and even Takuya gets angry with her for being confrontational, but nobody has stopped to listen to her side of the story, or considered how much truth she was actually telling.  The girl doesn’t help her case very much since she seems to act like a jerk, but everyone gets used to her by the end of the chapter.  I liked it, but it was a little baffling, and I was surprised more wasn’t made of her parent’s situation and what a blessing she may have been (or not, I suppose, but I can’t imagine the story bring that up, either).

Absolutely adorable stuff all around, and the strong characters are what makes the series stand so well.  I’m definiely getting more volumes, but I think this is the type of series that’s better with a lot of space between volumes.  I’m definitely not tired of it after reading the first three together, but I think it is best enjoyed as a casual treat due to the episodic nature.