Manga: Aoharu x Machinegun 12

Aoharu x Machinegun Vol 12
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

The opening match of the TGC begins with Toy*Gun Gun vs. Friendly Fire! In this "king match," where one hit to a team's king means defeat, Toy*Gun Gun decides to launch a surprise attack, sending Tachibana, their king, to the front lines to stop Samejima! But not only is Samejima a formidable former mercenary, he also has what some might call the ultimate ability! Will Toy*Gun Gun's strategy of going big send them straight home?! 

Once again we're straight in with the action from when we left off, and Hotaru is facing off with Samejima and while she's holding her own...she's up against a formidable opponent and cut off from the rest of her team. 

Meanwhile, Matsuoka is in the midst of a little freak out about losing and Hotaru getting taken out and this causes him to manage to access some weird kind of spidey sense that he has when he works at the host club. I'd be lying if I said I didn't side eye this development a little bit. It was a bit...odd. 

We get a nice amount of backstory to Akemi and Tamako as well as finally finding out Samejima's secret power. It was nice to see some more of Friendly Fire and how they came to be a team and why they did or didn't do certain things in the match. I do like how this series puts a lot of detail in to the opposing teams and let's you get to know them. 

As you may recall from last volume, Haruki is still missing and we get to see so much about the relationship between he and his twin Haruka. It was actually pretty emotional, I really felt for the both of them because we saw Haruki's side and then Haruka's and it kinda made me loo kat Haruka in a different way after seeing his side of things. He wasn't at all what I thought and I did really like this little development in the storytelling. 

With volume 12 our support characters are brought to life a bit more with some more background on them, and two of our main characters also get to be a bit more fleshed out and have some added depth. After an action heavy opening few chapters, we take a break from the action towards the end ready for the next match. Star White are about to face off against Nine Tails and the volume ends with a rather tense moment between Yukimura and Matsuoka...as well as a shady figure lurking in the background.