Gabriel feels strange around Satanya, her Boss can’t figure out high school girls or languages, Taplis meets a demon, Gabriel’s descent into slacker-dom is revealed, and Satanya and Gabriel don’t make Sherlock and Holmes proud.
Man, this volume is hilarious.
Right from the get-go, Satanya has once again bought something from her beloved Hell Shopping Network. This time, she’s actually purchased something neat: candies that cause an emotion. Gabriel sneaks one before Satanya can launch her plan, and, of course, it’s the red (love) one. What should be a golden opportunity for the demon is, of course, missed because she just chases after the runaway Gabriel, who can’t understand why she keeps blushing around the demon. Satanya’s “genius” comes through again later when she and Gabriel follow the mysterious Raphael. It goes about as well as you would expect considering it didn’t dawn on her she called an angel to spy on another angel.
Speaking of Gabriel, her backstory is explained in full by Vigne. I found this the slowest part of the volume, but Vigne’s regret and Satanya’s uninterest made this section better than if it had just been a normal flashback. The funniest chapter, on the other hand, was Master trying to get into the minds of the young folk. Unfortunately for him, his chosen test subjects are Raphael and Taplis. What follows is a social-slash-customer service experiment that spans multiple languages. Poor guy doesn’t even get a guaranteed slot in Heaven for all his hard work. Evidently, as the members of the school cooking club learn, you have to feed Gabriel for that.
While that chapter introduces a couple of classmates as well as the class president’s name, it’s a member of Taplis’ class who may be promoted to recurring or main character. The innocent angel picks up a handkerchief for a creepy classmate, and then goes to school to find a pentagram with candles on her desk. Unlike Vigne and Satanya, this demon looks and acts very much like a typical demon: creepy smiles, hiding in the shadows, and soft murmuring. But it turns out Kurona, whose name is revealed later, was actually trying to thank Taplis. The two later get stuck on day duty, and we see more of Kurona’s own brand of off-beat thought processes. At the very least, I hope to see her with Vigne and Satanya. Kurona is casual enough that could destroy the town without thinking of the consequences, and I’d like to see how the angelic-like Vigne and the proud but dumb Satanya would stop her from doing demon-like things.
Even if Kurona is limited to being Taplis’ friend, I think someone who can whip out a bomb-deploying spear with a broom and dust pan could add even more humor to this series. That’s a tall order considering this Gabriel Dropout volume was already chock-full of laughs. To steal a line from Master, I was “très pleased”.