I knew this volume was going to be a good time once I got to the very first panel. And after I finished it, I was not wrong. So it’s time go into why this was my favorite volume of The Daily Lives of High School Boys.
First though, a criticism. For most comedies you’ll have your main cast of characters you know, but there will be side characters that either enhance or detract from the hilarity. In this manga’s case, there are a good amount of high school students that appear in this work, and at times they’re indistinguishable from everyone else. The point is, the art in this manga is actually a real sore spot at times. If the humor reaches any lows, it doesn’t have much else to prop it back up.
That’s why it’s great that the chapters were actually humorous in this volume. Last volume was just merely ok. Volume 3 starts us out with three skits involving different girls opening the Student Council’s door in various ways, and it was all uphill from there. Tadakuni’s sister, who was part of the opening skit, appears a good number of times in this volume. For whatever reason there are three different spellings of milk in one chapter. Hidenori and Literature Girl’s interactions continue hilariously.
But this time, it’s the other high schoolers that steal the show. The funniest one out of all of them was this poor boy moping around in the playground. That kid spent four hours there for a reason. His friends were pretty concerned about it too — but they basically can’t believe he spent that time sitting on the swing brooding because his parents found his porn. Yeah, I get feeling down about it, but it probably is best to suck it up and go home!
In any case, the timing and pages for this volume of The Daily Lives of High School Boys was just right. We spent the right amount of time watching three dudes play pretend Dragon Quest er D****n Quest, Yanagin understanding there’s someone that’s smarter and can eat a large bowl of ramen better than her, and Tadakuni’s sister, Hidenori, and Motoharu learning what happens when you throw your bags too high and next to a nearby tree. One hopes by the time volume 4 rolls around that they asked for an adult to help them…