It’s time for the school trip, and that means the gang has to confront their demons — er, angels — er, you know what I mean. For Gabriel, it means having to leave the comfort of home. Satanya is scared of flying. Taplis is worried about her senpai’s safety. Vigne ends up with post-trip blues. And Raphael…well, the only thing Raphael seems afraid of is missing out on a chance to mess with others, particularly Satanya.
As with many schools, the first thing the girls need to do is pick a group. This chapter involves Vigne convincing Gabriel to go on the trip, but there’s a few pages about the class president thinking she needs to join their group because of numbers, but it turns out there was a group for her. She muses to herself that there are bound to be problems, but in fact, the class president doesn’t do anything, and things go surprisingly swimmingly overall. It seems like it was a plot that was abandoned to make room for the real twist of volume 11: an angel-demon pair working together at the inn!
If you expected a lot of laughs from this, well, there are certainly some. I mean, mythological beings are speaking in an Okinawan accent! I will be looking forward to seeing them again (I hope this isn’t an abandoned idea like with the president!), as they are fully friends without worrying about their backgrounds. And Satanya’s old friend is quite different than how she remembered her!
Also, speaking of the Okinawan Japanese, instead of adapting these phrases into an English accent, they are left in (romanized) Japanese and have footnotes. These are also included in the translation notes page, which seems a bit redundant, but hey, why not.
But more than the story focusing on these new characters, they do spur a few suggestive girls’ love moments. Nobody pairs up or anything, but one of the questions in a game they play is who they would date. Combined with the usual comparing of chest sizes, I’m sure some readers’ yuri imaginations will get some fodder here.
The kouhai duo also have their own mini arc that turns out predictably, but there are still a few hilarious scenes from their adventures. Otherwise, readers follow along as the girls explore Okinawa (food, the sea) and hang out with their old buds from Heaven/Hell. Nothing here made me bust a gut, but the pacing was good, and I enjoyed seeing the girls out of their normal element. It’s just plain enjoyable, which is more than I can say about some of the other volumes in Gabriel Dropout.