You know how Gabriel likes to lounge around and play video games? At times when I was reading Gabriel Dropout volume 6, I kept thinking she was spending her time more wisely than I was.
The opening features Taplis’ friend Chiaki wanting to be friends with Mei. The devil is not interested though, and Chiaki gets more and more depressed as each attempt to bond ends in miserable failure. Looking back, this arc was only about a quarter of the book, but it felt like at least half the volume.
The next part doesn’t pick up the pace either. The rest of the volume covers the school trip, from its planning stages to the last night. It isn’t until after some bad advice for destinations from Raphael and Vigne that best girl Satanya finally makes her appearance. Well, more like she manages to get herself and Gabriel into receiving some “special” attention from their teacher. After Gabriel meets a ghost, the main foursome actually do some good in over to save their weekend, and that’s it.
In a word: snoozefest. I let out a few chortles here and there, but I spent most of the time just wishing for something to happen. Something major, something funny, something. Plus, as a Satanya fan, waiting half the volume for her appearance was way too long. Maybe the book would have been better if the Taplis-Chiaki-Mei sections took place after or during the school trip arc, but Satanya’s belated arrival is only one of the many problems with it. A whole chapter about the class president wondering what the heck does Raphael mean by going to the pearly gates?
Plus, Gabriel Dropout has always been on the short side, and a decent amount of time is spent on characters outside of Gabriel and company. A ghost tries to scare people, but Gabriel is not impressed. The idea itself isn’t too bad, but there is just not enough of what makes Gabriel Dropout so interesting in the first place: the main characters. The test of courage would have been funnier if Satanya had launched some sort of scheme to defeat Gabriel rather than watching a ghost trying to get their first successful scare.
Sure, we get to see the Gabriel and friends come together to save the bonfire, but I cannot believe that Satanya can’t just order something off of the Hell Shopping Network to have a bonfire. Or at least show Satanya searching for summoned monsters, which is what she thinks a bonfire is for. Although it was nice to see everyone enjoying themselves, the lack of laughs through volume 8 meant that I wasn’t enjoying myself.
I honestly was glad just to finish it and get some Gabriel-level relaxation in since the volume nearly put me to sleep anyway.