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Middle child syndrome
I think in a way this has middle child syndrome because it feels like the weakest of the three (although I'm only halfway through the 3rd right now). I would say that I felt myself less invested in this story line for reasons I'll write about in a spoiler section below.
But overall it was still good and it ended in a way that made me hopeful for the third book (which is so far paying off), and it still left me overall enjoying this series, it just wasn't as good as the first one.
In terms of language learning, the author does repeat a lot of words that have been unfamiliar to me so that has been great. Also, there is an Osakaben character.
Now onto thoughts about the storyline: I found myself less invested in this new character and the competition that comes out of it. I think because the competitiveness between our main characters was part of the story's charm and and also a fun dynamic of our main characters, but here I find I don't care. I think the stakes with it was just to make Ryo jealous and maybe do stupid things?
But ultimately it was good to see them tackle their insecurities and start to resolve them. It ended up with an "us agains the world" setup instead of an internal relationship struggle, which I much prefer and left me hopeful to continue the series, and so far book 3 has been meeting my expectations.