I'm consistently impressed with this manga and the way it handles issues that feel essentially timeless and highly relevant to the past couple of years. The volume starts with Kadode finally ending things with Watarase (the teacher). I hope it's done, but who knows if he'll be back since this series likes to bring folks back. We've also got the S.E.S. girl, Sumaru, meeting with the president of the company Takarada to be shown the interior of the escape ark disguised as a stadium. The more that this private corporation becomes involved the more troublesome things to get, their profiting off of violence is something too relevant to human history. A great chapter that happened in the middle of this volume, was scenes of our main players interspersed with a government report being read to the Prime Minister, who cares more about moe girls than the actual politics. When this manga plays with the format of story telling I'm always impressed and excited to read about it. Basically we have the government (who is in the hands of SES and looking to use their violence against the aliens as a way to prove themselves to the world,) the Youth United Front which is a group of youths looking to kill all the invaders personally but running into issues with the state sanctioned killers, and SHIP which has been working hard to peacefully get people to stop supporting the invader killings. Futaba plays a role here as she believes in the peacefully methods and what the group stands for, but now her beliefs are being used to potentially get her to shoot the politicians. So much for peaceful. Kadode's mom is doing fine at the moment up in Nagano and even gets a news special done for her. Oba, the alien everyone has been hanging out with, is revealed to be an invader who was put into a human body when their ship crashed and after a run in with the invader who has been in the background this whole time he decides he needs to set off and try and stop the extremists from blowing up the ship. Also, turns out that the alien's look a lot like us inside their cute little helmets, which isn't too surprising.

At this point, I’m eager to learn more about the invaders.

The final chapters are always the most exciting, and while I love Inio’s dialogue and character development, I find myself craving more answers and information about the invaders.

I’m hoping we’ll get more insight into them in the next volumes, though I have my doubts. Unfortunately for me, it seems likely that Inio will maintain this slower pace right until the end.

We’ll see.

This series is getting so bleak at times. Inio Asano’s work seems to resonate with me though. This seems so plausible, if invaders came here, I could definitely see it going exactly this way. I guess I’m a pessimist. But, there is the contrast too. He shows the good side of humanity too. The characters are great. It can get funny at points & there are humans who want to co-exist with the Aliens. Will it all go to crap & we’ll get de-de-de-de-destruction or will we co-exist? Or something in between. Either way I’m looking forward to finding out.