This is the fourth volume, and it’s about this time that a series should try mixing things up. What’s something new that Ukami can do with a group of angels and demons on Earth? Why, send them home of course!
Relaxing at your house is usually a nice way to spend a vacation, particularly for lazy Gabriel. However, Heaven has a policy against human technology, so she has to try to smuggle her goods. If that wasn’t enough, Satanichia makes a quick appearance trying to smuggle herself across the border… only she doesn’t put as much effort into hiding her identity as Gabriel does with her tech.
Meanwhile, Taplis tries to learn how to use a computer to help Gabriel, Raphael has a wardrobe issue on the day of the sports festival, and Vignette is stuck with Satanya as her practice interview partner.
Okay, I wasn’t doubling over with laughter, but I was laughing out loud with this volume. Poor Vignette is bewildered when their teacher makes no comment about the cat Satanichia pulls out of nowhere and starts petting like a B-rate comic book villain. Meanwhile, Gabriel proudly tells the principal of Heaven’s school about her accomplishments of freeing poor helpless countries. Of course, she leaves out the tiny little detail about these being from video games, and it was a surprisingly tense moment for me as I waited to see whether Gabriel’s story would hold up. That’s really where this volume succeeds. It’s full of little moments that may not seem like much on their own, but by the end, I was full of cheer.
I also found myself liking Taplis a little more here. It’s very common for a fifth (or sixth) girl to be added to a main cast in a cute girls comedy, and although she’s still the fifth wheel in the manga, her chapters were my favorite since back when first she arrived in a spacesuit. It’s not easy to be an angel who arrives to find out that the nice “person” is actually a demon. She’s perhaps the most realistic of the cast, as Gabriel, Raphael, and Vignette have had little trouble adjusting to life on Earth — a little too easily, as in Gabriel’s case.
Gabriel Dropout also managed to throw some curves at the readers with some visual trickery. Any time an author can take full advantage of the manga format and mislead me gets an automatic thumbs up from me. As for Heaven itself, readers don’t actually see much of the locale. The chapters are limited to a couple of basic locations like the check-in station and Gabriel’s living room. We know from Gabriel’s obsession with technology that Heaven is behind the times, but otherwise, from an artistic point of view, it truly was plain. Perhaps if they ever go back, we’ll see some more heavenly influences on the cities and architecture. Still though, with a great volume like this, I’ll be waiting anxiously to find out.