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You don’t need to change your personality to be a part of society. You’re free to express your individuality, of course, but you must take other people’s feelings into consideration as you venture out into the world.

Short summary of the review
Due to a new enemy being introduced in this volume it might it immediately appealing and interesting to see how things turn out. A new perspective is being shown than in previous volumes > Ayanokouji barely interacts with the girls but more with the boys. Due to the terms and rules of the new special exam, this volume felts way more tense than some previous ones. This tension was also shown to influence some characters, making it hard to know till the end who was expelled and who wasn't. This new special exam allowed room for intimacy which was also shown, making this volume having an aspect which is seldom shown due to Ayanokouji's usual demeanour. Ayanokouji was also honest to himself in this volume and showed consideration towards his classmates. Since the special exam required big groups it was sometimes hard to distinguish each character.


The Review

This is the first time while reading the first year volumes where I absolutely can't remember anything from it in the anime I watched. I watched the anime before reading the light novels and I honestly can't remember this whole 'chapter' of the story, which is astonishing as I liked this volume a bit more than the previous ones.

To be real honest, I like when a new enemy appears for the protagonist, makes things a bit more exciting so of course this volume where Negumo was featured was more interesting than the last one which was the end of the last enemy (also the principle the last enemy worked with was kinda ridiculous). This time the enemy is way more cold-hearted and quite cruel. I prefer such a type of enemy, especially for Ayanokouji-kun who has people he wants to protect. I can already see that Ayanokouji's and Negumo's conflict will be way more exciting to see than the previous one. But I'm glad that this is the order of the enemies as it would otherwise be disappointing. I hope this author continues to make the story more and more exciting the further it goes, as I myself prefer stories who have a weak start but finish strong.

I even ironically liked how the girls weren't a big part (almost no part actually) for this volume. Since Ayanokouji seems to have more female than male friends I found it interesting to see more of his male friendships and perhaps also new ones forming. This whole volume just gave a different perspective to the story than I usually experienced and I like that it was a bit different this time and not always the same. So far, this volume had regarding perspectives the greatest variety.

This volume was also more tense than some other volumes and I really thought even near the end of the volume that some character I liked will get expelled. Since I can't remember this part of the story anymore (or maybe the anime didn't include it for whatever reason) I felt tense again like the first time, but I have the feeling that the light novel did it better than the anime once more. The characters also felt very tense and the responsibility for own actions which also influenced the whole group made it even worse.

My favourite parts where one can see that Ayanokouji has feelings even if it doesn't look like it on the surface is when he is asking Sakayanagi if she is alright. I mean, I get it that they are enemies and he might even do it to use her as a tool, but another scene, which didn't happen yet so I don't spoiler, showed that he actually cares for her wellbeing. Sakayanagi is physically weaker than the average person and one can see that even though students seem to show respect towards her many actually secretly look down on her 'cause they see her as weak. A weak body doesn't mean a weak mindset and that's exactly why I like Sakayanagi so much. First impression of her is that she is weak, unimportant and just nothing special but she is so much more and I really like her for that. She isn't the perfect character and even with her disability she is still so strong.
Anyway, my main point here, which I realise even better now after reading the light novels is that Ayanokouji might use people as tools but that doesn't mean that he can't feel anything specially towards others. Even if it's just a small gesture he sometimes does, it shows that he has feelings and is human after all.

Ayanokouji-kun isn't the emotional type of protagonist but we still got some intimate scenes in this volume. Though it didn't concern him, I found it interesting to see how people's relationships can develop so fast in a more positive direction by intimacy, especially by one that is linked to achieving the same goal. I always thought people get more intimate/honest when they are sleepy, which is still true, but I didn't know that it also works for talking in the dark. I do understand why now, as it gives you some kind of freedom of expressing your thoughts and emotions without feeling the eyes of the person you speak to, after all it's dark. It fascinates me so much 'cause I experienced in my life the same and always wondered why the person was so honest when they weren't sleepy enough to just sleep instead of talking to me, now I understand why.

Lastly for my positive aspects for this volume is that Ayanokouji showed lots more feelings compared to previous volumes. He didn't change his personality or anything no, but he showed more consideration towards his peers. For instance, he had the idea in his head to protect everyone from his class and only discarded this thought as it wouldn't work for the special test, but concluded to protect a few anyway. Of course he needs to protect them from being expelled from school if he wants to continue using them for his own advantages, but since he favoured the people he had already formed some kind of relationship with, shows that he might actually cares for them. There were some other smaller moments in this volume, but for me was this one the most important one.



Even though, as I mentioned in my last review, I like how I can distinguish every character as they each have their own unique personality and also get introduced slowly and not too fast, I found myself for this volume a bit puzzled who was who again. That's probably 'cause of the type of special exam, which required lots of students to form a group, but there were quite a lot we didn't know beforehand and I had some struggle finding out if they are relevant now and if I need to remember them or not.

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This might be totally irrelevant, but the meditative discipline called Zazen was way more difficult than I imagined. As I was curious what the characters did their on their special test, I tried to do it myself and it was way harder than I initially thought. I fortunately didn't try to stay in this posture long as I read shortly afterwards that Keisei got numb legs from it. That's some crazy mediation discipline!