Shonen Beam

[scanlation by JS Scans]

The very idea of Minamoto sorting Barret and Tim’s doujins is awesome. The poor fellas have no privacy at all.

Minamoto and Sakaki show up to the meeting place to find Momiji got there early. As is standard in this manga, the guys are being followed, and the support staff is monitoring them in an extremely obvious observation van. Even the diplomat is getting in on the action this time.

Also typical in these situations, the date-followers are having a much more interesting time than the ones they’re observing. Kaoru is still Kaoru, coming up with an oddball cabaret club analogy out of nowhere. Kashiwagi’s contribution to the scene, getting hit on by (and subsequently hitting) the one diplomat guy, is befitting of her minor character status.

She's not fooling anyone

Looks like Momiji is a savvy enough character to know she’s being followed. Just when all hope for any kind of success for this mission seems lost, Sakaki busts out his Psychometric bag of tricks. Initial D-style escape driving is about what I’d expect from a guy who can put a scalpel through the barrel of a sniper rifle from 50 yards away. Smooth.

How much tofu is in the car, etc.

The guys may be ditching their pursuit for a good reason, but odds are they’ll be in more than a little trouble once they hit debriefing. For one thing, Kaoru’s reaction face is a very confused mixture of anger and shock. For another, they’re taking her to Babel HQ, probably in violation of at least a few security protocols.

Momiji knows a security flaw that will allow the three to sneak in unnoticed. Sneaking into Babel should be fun, but I’m a little disappointed that the first real focus on Momiji paints her as being on Hyoubu’s level of total nonchalance towards anything the main characters attempt. One character like that works, but rehashing makes it go stale very quickly.

Final Flash: There were a couple of entertaining moments, but we didn’t really get anything interesting about Momiji, who should be the main focus of this arc.