In a series featuring an ensemble cast, there’s always a risk in introducing a new main character. Will they fit in? Is it a sign of the story jumping the shark? Reinvigorate the series?
Play It Cool, Guys volume 4 has Igarashi officially being promoted to main cast member as he formally starts hanging out with the rest of the gang. Or as Igarashi put it, he “stole all [Mima’s] cute friends”.
And it seems in the process Igarashi also stole all the blue pages!
While the manga sometimes has different shades for the same color, in general, you can look at the edge of the pages to jump to a chapter starring one of the male leads. There should be five guys now, so five colors, right? But yet it seemed there were six colors at a glance. It made me doubt the pattern of one color = one guy.
But now I can safely say Ichikura — aka Mr. Blue Pages — gets the short stick in this volume.
As usual, the five male leads all tackle their daily doses of silly mistakes and bad luck. But now that summer has rolled around, it’s time for some seasonal fun. Futami doesn’t want to do his homework; The five friends head to the beach; And since Japan also likes ghost stories in summer, it’s the perfect time for Mima to try out a horror game. Through these episodes, there are some fun gags, especially with Mima both being really bad at gaming and being really freaked out by the zombie survival theme. Shun’s enthusiasm for the beach is another highlight.
But there are two main storylines in volume 4. One is Shiki starting to find his own path in life, wanting to work in advertising like Mima. Play It Cool, Guys may be about those everyday “duh!” moments, but seeing Shiki gaining some experience through side work and favors is a nice way of adding some meat to the manga while keeping the lightheartedness. The other major event here is, as I mentioned, integrating Igarashi into the fold. He hits it off with Shiki and Futami right away, but Ichikura is extremely nervous around his favorite author. While this seems like it would be the plot of his chapter, instead, the manga chooses to show them becoming friends from Igarashi’s perspective. He’s very casual, and we see him trying to figure out how to get Ichikura to chillax around him.
So you could argue that one of Igarashi’s chapters is more like a dual chapter between him and Ichikura, but if you enjoyed Ichikura’s blushing whenever he messes up (or just like to see the manga have at least one chapter per guy each book), volume 4 is going to be disappointing. #23 and #24 weren’t serialized on the web, so Nata could have definitely planned it out to have at least one Ichikura chapter here.
This may seem like a lot of rambling just to say one character didn’t get a lot of attention, but that’s not the only reason I found this volume the most unbalanced. Futami only gets one chapter while Mima and Shiki get two chapters and Igarashi gets one chapter and the end-of-volume extra. Futami’s is also the least interesting of the bunch. His is mostly him trying to weasel out of his schoolwork and getting ragged on a bit by his sister. It’s an especially big letdown after Mima and the zombie game. But because of the the characters who are in focus, we end up with minimal amount of Ichikura’s blushes or Futami’s adamant denials, both of which are fun.
Still, volume 4 has some great scenes with comedy that doesn’t just fall into the brain farts category. I like having a mix of humor from the guys’ own screw-ups and interactions with those around them, but more Ichikura and Futami would have added even more variety.