くまクマ熊ベアー 2

Not as good as volume 1 but picks up

The first half of this volume drags a lot because of several chapters that retell the preceeding chapter from another character's perspective. Volume 1 did this a bit, but they were spaced out enough that it felt more like a recap, but in volume 2 most of the recaps come immediately after the chapter they're retelling, which made it a bit of a drag.

The book really picks up in the second half though, with Yuna using her talents to perform various acts of philanthropy and help out different characters in town. Since she's more established in this volume, we really get to enjoy the deepening friendships she has with other characters, and how the world starts to get used to her as she gets used to the world. Near the end there are some perspective-flip chapters that really do add value to the existing story and I particularly liked Cliff's chapter which was basically a self-contained short story that explains something Yuna had noticed earlier, but didn't get to confront herself.

The digital edition had a sizable amount of bonus material after the main chapters were over, including a three chapter short story that follows up on a bonus in Volume 1, and two different chapters from other characters that are also worthwhile because we learn more of their perspective and thoughts rather than having the same events repeated. Vocab-wise this builds nicely for learners who finished volume 1, as the familiar setting and terms are good reinforcement, but there are a lot of recurring words that are introduced with the new plotlines. I finally got a couple troublesome words and grammar points to finally stick seeing them repeated so much, and I do enjoy the author's style of prose.