That’s it. The jig is up. Desumi and Fudo’s cute, romantic fling is over. Pink Gelato Haru has caught them red-handed! The relationship between hero Red Gelato and villain Reaper Princess is now known by someone who shouldn’t know about them being together, and now they can expect to have their faces plastered all over the newspapers and TV stations for days!
…Except the next day comes, and in a meeting with the team, Haru only says she and Fudo need some time off for school finals. Days go by and things appear as normal. It’s only when Fudo and Desumi get together in secret that has them wondering why Haru hasn’t exposed them yet. But once Desumi tells Fudo to go home, Haru appears before her…and challenges her to a duel.
For what? Well, this does revolve around the guy that got sent home…
I don’t think it’s been a major secret that Love After World Domination’s not intending to be a super serious sentai, so my expectations were that despite Haru finding out that Fudo and Desumi are dating, she would actually want to support them. And I was right. As it turned out, Haru did have a crush on Fudo and that was one of the reasons she joined the team. The other? Haru was actually saved by Desumi some time ago, and finding out the enemy is actually someone she knew and inspired her made it somewhat easy to support what’s going on. I say somewhat since it still did hurt Haru to know that Fudo was taken..it was nice that she was able to get along with Desumi after this though.
After this, most of volume 2 continues Fudo and Desumi having their cute moments — sometimes at the hospital, sometimes at the beach — but we get a bit more insight into Desumi’s past. We first learn how so far everything that’s lead to Desumi joining Gekko was not from her own choice. We even learn that her family’s in the lower levels of the organization! We then learn more about her through someone unexpected in Green Gelato, Daigo. This part can be summarized as thusly:
- Daigo was a member of his dad’s karate dojo.
- Desumi was incredibly strong as a third-grader.
- Desumi then said the following when she was introduced: “I break everythin’ I play with, but I’ll do my best not to break anythin’ here.”
- Daigo was tasked by his dad to look after her.
- Desumi then proceeded to “break” Daigo in their first training session, his dad (and that convinced him to shut down the dojo), and Daigo, who decided to still try and train her, again a number of times despite her actually being way stronger than him (she just doesn’t know it).
So in other words, Daigo is seemingly calm, cool, and collected, the true stable person within Gelato Five. But the scars of his past with Desumi flare up once he realizes the Desumi he met at the beach was the same person he grew up and trained. And now he’s going to overcome his fears and do one of his tasks within the team — scout Desumi to be a part of Gelato.
S-secret sentai Desumi in the future?!?!
Anyways, that’s just a part of the stories in this volume, which did focus on a few more of the Princesses in Gekko (Beast Princess and especially Steel Princess finding love? But it’s forbidden!), some more of Yellow Gelato’s teasing nature, and maybe the Professor is kind of incompetent. But it’s still about Fudo and Desumi continuing to be adorable and sweet to each other as they clumsily navigate being in a relationship. With still wonderous art and its comedic timing, Love After World Domination remains entertaining.
