Manga: Again 4

Again!! Vol 4
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

It's day two of the joint practice between the ouendan and the cheerleading club. Having been made ouendan captain for a day, Kinichiro takes the drastic action of ordering Usami to perform the cheerleaders' choreography, which supercharges the practice session, but at the price of Usami's rage. The once-unified club descends into arguing, and once everybody's cards are on the table, will they be able to recover at all? 

First of all, as we start the volume we see Imamura's grand plan and it's an interesting mashup of the Ouendan's moves and the Cheerleaders and it certainly seems like it'll breathe new life in to the Ouendan. The club finally comes to an understanding with each other after a little cht, and everyone agrees to collaborate and bring some new life to their moves, and I'm actually pretty excited to see what they come up with. I'm feeling quite proud of Imamura and his brief stint as Captain for achieving this! 

Then, just as things are looking pretty bright for the club, we have a shock twist. Or at least it was a shock for me. I had been wondering how long this could go on for, and how the time travel had initially worked. Where they dreaming? Had they legitimately gone back in time? How long can this last? How do they get back? And certain parts of the story do seem overly drawn out. But this volume switched things up and got me excited for the series all over again.

Like I said, I was genuinely surprised, I didn't see this coming this early in the series. I figured how things stood currently in the series would be how it carried on for X amount of volumes. Either way, Imamura has a lot of adjusting to do and a lot of questions to wrestle with and I found it all very intriguing. The poor guy really is dealing with a lot this volume. Time travel theory isn't an easy thing to understand. 

Meanwhile, thanks to Aki, we get some more insight in to Imamura and his past. Aki's boyfriend? Not boyfriend? You know...that Hiro dude? Well he pops up a lot this volume, I can't decide if I like him or not, he might be about to be Imamura's new bro friend. Or at least his accomplice and I actually enjoyed seeing the two of them work together to piece things together. 

The story is taking an interesting twist this volume, and we see some of the potential logic behind the time travel and Imamura trying to figure it out. Aside from that we get some more depth to Imamura, and we get to know Hiro who so far has just been there briefly. It would also appear the Captain and Imamura are getting....closer? They also finally slip up with their secret, which should play out quite interestingly next volume! Honestly, kids these days just don't know the time travel rules. *sigh*