In this volume, Hime and her classmates play softball, Shino deals with a bully and becomes a younger centaur girl's big sister-figure, Hime and her friends form an after school study group, Manami's little sisters play with other kids while she's at a student council meeting, the boys fight over control of the TV, and Hime's class gets a new student.

My favorite part of this volume was the nearly wordless bit with Shino. She was so cute as she tried to be a good big sister-figure, just like Hime. I thought she did a pretty good job considering that she had to deal with both a bully and with the little centaur girl getting jealous as other little kids started wanting to be around her. The only part of that section that I disliked was that, once again, Shino's mother acted like there was something either romantic or sexual about Hime and Shino's affection for each other. Please, stop. Just let them be two family members who care about each other. Even if she was just joking, it really wasn't funny.

Aside from that, this volume was serviceable, but boring. The second-best part was probably the softball game, which was messy and a little hard to follow, but otherwise not bad. I also liked the peek, later in the volume, into the student council president's home life.

This is the last volume I have on hand. I'd be fine with quitting the series at this point, except for one thing: the new development at the end of this volume. Murayama had been hinting at this since the very first volume, and I'd kind of like to see what this new development adds to the mix. Just not enough to buy more of the series. Maybe I'll put in an ILL request for volume 4.

Extras:

- Two full-color illustrations.

- More information about Kanata City on the inside front and back covers. I still fail to see what any of this information has to do with anything.

- Several informational pages about the gods and supernatural beings of this world. Oddly enough, magical girls are included in this list. Apparently, magical girl shows come in two different varieties: one with a team of magical girls representing all the major races, and one in which the main magical girl character changes every season.

- A 2-page manga-style afterword. It's intended entirely to poke fun at the perviness of the series' most openly lesbian character. ::sigh::

(Original review, including read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )