Shonen Beam

[scanlation by Red Hawk Scanlations]

I love the job Haqua is doing filling in for Elsie. Her disguise is flawless, except for the fact that she gets questions right in math class.

Specially mentioning Akari now is a bit odd. It is true that Keima still doesn’t know her true identity, but she does feel a little out of place when talking about the other conquests. While her arc was an interesting one to read, it seems more out of place in hindsight.

Akari’s also eliminated from consideration by virtue of the now-defined borderline: only girls Keima could plausibly encounter in a regular school day could have goddesses. This category includes Chihiro and Ayumi, as well as Shiori (the library girl), Tsukiyo (the doll girl), and Yui (the body-swap rich girl). Chihiro and Ayumi are fairly obvious at this point, but as for which of the other three are going to be in there, I can’t be sure; all of them feel equally important at this juncture.

The montage of girls who have been systematically been eliminated from the plot disappointingly includes some very interesting ones, particularly Sumire and Nanaka. At least they earned a mention.

Seriously, the shop could have been a sweet hangout spot

Of course, knowing where the goddesses are is exactly half the problem. The key point of this search is that they have to be dragged out from hiding. I expect this necessity of the arc to shift Keima’s focus from analysis to action.

Haqua’s sleeping over? Excellent. The evolving chemistry between her and Keima as partners is becoming increasingly fun to watch as she gets more and more dragged along by him.

The mention of Kanon is being used a lot to prompt serious mood swings. I do get that Keima regrets what happened, but there’s a limit to how much that point needs to be hammered home. We could do with a little less of that at this point.

Haqua’s shower was a fairly obvious setup for what happened next: an oblivious Keima walking in on her. While this situation is as old as it comes, the author still gets props for avoiding the pitfalls Kimi no Iru Machi has encountered of late by not stuffing the shower scene with full frontal. He gets even more props, however, for this:

A sound effect to define the decade

Haqua provides a typical Tsundere reaction, prompting a peculiar statement from Keima. Now he’s going to be a demon? Does that mean he’s going to start acting like a Black Rainbow protagonist? The impact of this statement is only magnified by the fact that he delivers it buck naked. Gotta love this guy.

Final Flash: Serious development at the end aside, this chapter got good results out of deepening the chemistry between Keima and Haqua.