Comic Girls – 10

「みちるばっかり愛されてずるい」 (Michiru Bakkari Ai Sarete Zurui)
“It`s Not Fair That Michiru Gets All the Love”

The holiday season has hit Comic Girls, and has brought with it the gift of a light-hearted episode about the trials and tribulations of Winter Break. For Rukki, her troubles come from the way she feels every holiday season as Christmas is a cruel reminder of how the characters she created are far luckier in love than she is. The many steps Rukki takes to reignite her spark are hilarious as the girls’ efforts to cheer up their friend go awry with how they constantly remind her of how unlucky at love she is. The only one who can somewhat relate is Fuura, but Rukki cuts that off quickly as soon as she dreams of a Red Christmas where Rukki channels her pen into cursing the Christmas festivities. The way Rukki was able to bounce back was very cute as all of the stress she put on herself distracted her from her birthday being on Christmas Eve, giving Kaos the chance to gift her a sexy Santa outfit to boost her confidence.

After Christmas, the dorms clear for Winter break, and Kaos finds herself staying with Tsubasa’s family. The only catch is that Tsubasa secretly comes from a wealthy family, and staying at her place means spending winter break in a swanky mansion. While it has humorous scenes of Kaos’ difficulty to adjust to the affluent life, it also shows how much Tsubasa has to keep up the appearances of being on-top of her studies outside of manga-writing. With the influence Rukki has on both Tsubasa and her family, they’re able to smooth things over to make sure that Tsubasa is still leaving on a good impression on the parents, but her mom is still shrewd and hits a nerve by mentioning that if she were to take manga more seriously than her studies, she’d have to move back in. There was a very funny gag that happened where they played tense music whenever they did an aerial shot of the mansion only to segue into a calmer or more comical scene, but much of the humor was in Kaos reacting to her surroundings as well as when Tsubasa lunged at Rukki to Kaos’ delight.

Kaos’ time in Tsubasa’s mansion merges with their New Years celebration as the girls come together to return to the dorms. As they share their wishes and fortunes for the New Year, Kaos is jinxed by the bad luck she received for the remainder of the year. As Ririka roasts sweet potatoes for the festivities, however, Kaos is able to reverse her bad luck by using her poor luck in getting her chapters accepted to utilize her rejected drafts as fuel for the fire to roast them. For the most part, it wasn’t a heavy episode to work with. Whereas there have been quite a few that delved into some of the deeper seated issues the girls have with their own self-image, this episode has been far more generous with making sure the issues they faced weren’t as harrowing to them. The closest to troubling the episode gets would be if Tsubasa’s mom ends up trying to discourage her daughter from working more on her manga since it has been the source of much of her success and excitement, but a larger dilemma is looming soon as the preview hints at the dorm coming to a close.

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