Kyutaro Horikita, the tall, dark and handsome cleaning expert of Kurokado High, is about to meet a sleeping maiden at the school: transfer student Fumi Nishioka! Fumi’s going to learn how to rid the school of nasty spirits with Kyutaro’s help, and her heart will surprisingly be “cleansed” too…!
Fumi’s image keeps overlapping with that of Fuyu, Kyutaro’s childhood crush, who remains in his thoughts to this day. Meanwhile, Fumi starts to work as a Sweeper with Kyutaro’s family, but she struggles with keeping her past a secret. Has Fumi finally found a place to call home or will her cursed past catch up to her?
For more information on the premise, see my review of volume one.
This volume went in a completely different direction than I expected. It’s not a bad thing, it’s rather good, in fact. The pacing is spectacular. Normally with these sorts of manga we have several volumes of little nothing cases that gradually build to a theme but this volume pretty much cuts to the quick and we go head-on into Yumi and Kyutaro’s past.
I’m not sure I like that. I mean, I do love that it’s getting right to business with the quickness, but I enjoyed the concept so much I wanted to see them play around with it more before getting into the character’s problems. We have one one cleaning case this volume, and it’s more of an aside to what’s really going on with Yumi and Kyutaro.
If it wasn’t obvious before, this volume hits you over the head with the fact that Yumi and Kyutaro’s past are intertwined. While the first volume was divided evenly between Yumi and Kyutato’s POV, this volume mostly sticks with Yumi outside of a few scenes.
What is nice about reading Yumi and Kyutaro is they’re both growing as a person as a result of knowing each other. They make mistakes but they’re there to pick each other up afterwards. It makes their relationship rather heartwarming, even factoring out their past relations.
There is more drama than humor this time around, but the few humorous scenes are a welcome reprieve from the seriousness.
Because so much of the volume is spent on character development, it’s hard to talk about it without spoiling everything. The volume closes on an ominous note, so I really can’t wait for volume three to come out.
The artwork stays clean and neat. It’s not going to win awards, but it’s perfect for telling the story and you can’t really go wrong with clean action and clean art.
If you picked up volume one and like it, this volume expands things in a way that doesn’t feel rushed along with giving a lot of character development. Highly recommended and I look forward to reading where this goes for the last volume!
My heart scale is defined as follows – 5 hearts = a story everyone will fall in love with, regardless of preferences; 4 hearts = a well-done story that people who love the concept will adore, and people who don’t may end up liking it; 3 hearts = if you like this type of story or this type of hero, then you will enjoy this, but those who do not like either of those things will probably not; 2 hearts = it had potential, it squandered it; 1 heart = just a waste of time from the get-go; 0 hearts = why was this made?
All of my favorite moments from this volume are H U G E spoilers, so none this time. 