くまクマ熊ベアー 8

I admit, when I saw this volume was going to concern another birthday party, I was somewhat dreading it, fully expecting a rehash of the Emperor's birthday arc from volume 2. This series has had a tendency to recycle similar plotlines in different context, but this ended up not only being a refreshing change of pace but probably the strongest single-volume story of the series so far. Some volumes have the first half as one plot (sometimes tying up the previous volume's story) and switch to something else halfway through, but this volume was focused and was stronger for it.

Yuna is indeed invited to another birthday, this time it's Misa who we last met all the way back in volume 2, but when she gets to Misa's town she finds the political situation is more complex than she expected. It turns out ownership of Misa's town is split between two powers and the birthday party becomes a pawn in a game of politicking and there's a great scheme that hatches beautifully halfway through. I wasn't expecting 48 laws of power type stuff to go down in what seemed like a fluffy filler arc, but seeing how each piece of the puzzle slots together for a brilliant payoff was immensely satisfying.

Language-wise this volume has some political words that haven't appeared before and a couple new turns of phrase that are repeated fairly often. Each successive volume has definitely been easier to read and I feel like I'm hitting a good pace for the more standard vocab and sentences and only really looking up fresh words when a new topic comes up.