What does one do when someone with 5 million Instagram followers who is also the granddaughter of Gelato 5’s commander wants to be with you when you’re already secretly dating the Reaper Princess? Well, naturally, you avoid trying to do anything with her or turn her down, as Fudo attempts to do, but even that can backfire when you are in a public space for anyone to witness the interaction. See: Desumi seeing Fudo getting kissed by Hyoka!
…Or not!
So counter to what you might’ve thought in the previous volume, Desumi does not see Fudo making out, she sees him dodging all kiss attempts by Hyoka. Desumi manages to intervene and not have this turn into another he said she said or lack of trust breaking this relationship apart. (This has been essentially already done!) Instead, these two end up challenging each other to be Fudo’s girlfriend — as to why Desumi goes along with this? She just gets caught up with the moment. Fudo manages to avert disaster by suggesting they not fight, but this then leads into Desumi and Hyoka engaging in a series of battles that are “peaceful.” Yes, cooking is supposed to be peaceful. But one opponent hiring essentially 4-Star Chefs probably is still a bit much!
This final volume of Love After World Domination is a slightly mixed bag, a lot of it is moving towards the essential climax, and that’s more or less due to this series ending a lot earlier than the authors intended. At least it feels that way.
The good: actually having a sixth Gelato member is perfectly on brand for a series that’s following the core super sentai tenets. Now whether said member should be the one that’s been attempting to woo Fudo/Red Gelato is worth questioning though, even despite her realizing that money and likes doesn’t mean everything.
And now the more mixed to probably terrible: the swift focus on the last Gelato member to get a backstory spotlight, and the final battle. The unfortunate issue is that we didn’t really know before why Yellow Gelato, Misaki, joined Gelato 5. How it happened was pretty typical. The untypical part was her saying that she thinks she’s going to quit the team. I guess it’s a change up compared to everyone else’s backstory? I can get having doubts but I think a different direction would’ve been fine, even if everyone thinks she just drinks all the time — there’s nothing completely wrong with that.
The last battle, believe it or not, does actually get serious for Gelato 5 — and Gekko! An actual evil organization shows up out of nowhere. They are a major threat in terms of strength and what they want to do, which ends up leaving Gelato 5 and Gekko having to fend them off. Yes, this is pretty bad, if only because throwing an unrelated organization into the narrative now feels awkward. And one of the reasons they eventually overcome it involves Desumi turning into exactly the creature she didn’t really want to turn into. The only good news about that is even despite that awkwardness, Fudo still loves her anyways, but it was just awkward overall.
The few things that did salvage this volume — though the last one may be conflicting for some readers — was the anticipated reveal of Desumi and Fudo, two supposed enemies, to everyone that they actually are in a relationship. That of course was the big thing that couldn’t be shied away from since the very start of their relationship in volume 1, so it for sure had to happen in the final volume. Maybe it could’ve been executed cleaner, but it’ll work. But what happens to the members of Gelato 5 and Gekko is something that either you’ll like or hate since both are essentially upended in a way. The only reason it could work is mostly due to how goofy Gekko has been since their introduction, but that might not be enough.
Overall though, Love After World Domination volume 6 didn’t quite land well enough for my tastes, but in reflecting on the series as a whole, there’s just me wishing we could’ve gotten to know the rest of the Gelato 5 more than we did, but Desumi and Fudo’s enemies-to-lovers relationship was just the dorkiest thing to read, and it was extremely endearing. There might be a series in the future that can replicate this formula better, but there’s a charm to these two that’s gonna be tough to match, and even with a big change at the end, I would’ve loved to see how they’d continue their lovey-dovey relationship, but now in public. I will just have to imagine how it goes in my head instead.