Title: Fly Me to the Moon Vol. 12
Author: Kenjiro Hata
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Genre: Slice of Life, Romance, Comedy
Publication Date: August 9, 2022
The Story
Love and jealousy are the central themes here in Fly Me to the Moon Vol. 12. Nasa is continuing to work at the all-girls high school and this causes Aya and Kaname to get inside of Tsukasa and Nasa’s heads, respectively. They each offer the same advice… for Nasa to make Tsukasa feel jealous and for Tsukasa to pretend to be jealous all so Nasa could compliment her and bring them closer together. This leads to a bit of a running gag over a couple of chapters.
Things take a turn when Nasa is having trouble getting his students to understand programming. In order to discover what the true problem is, he administers a test to the school’s staff and learns that they, too, barely know any programming at all. He looks to revise the entire curriculum to help bring their grades up.
Meanwhile, one of his students, Shirogane, accidentally sends Nasa a text saying that she loves him. Playing off the whole jealousy theme, it sends the wrong message but Shirogane quickly deletes the text. When they meet at school, she explains that she has a crush on someone and wants Nasa to help her. The person it turns out to be is quite hilarious with an outcome that was to be expected!
A side plot that developed into a bit of the main plot is that the class “Princess” understands coding and Nasa finds one of her formulas on the blackboard. He’s super impressed but the volume ends with Princess passing by Tsukasa and asking her a really peculiar question.
Characters
I wouldn’t necessarily call anything that happened in this volume as development. They spent so much time on the whole love/jealousy gag that it really prohibited any growth between Tsukasa and Nasa. Kaname and Aya were just cheerleaders throughout the whole ordeal so nothing really stood out there, either.
Shirogane did get some time to shine and she just came off as a dumb high school girl who has no clue what true love really is. Falling in love with a guy because he looked like a hunk without even meeting him, talking to him, or getting to truly know him seems like a dumb girl move so I guess it fits for a high school student. The fact that she had to ask Nasa for help really shows her inexperience. Luckily, this is a cute manga so, of course, Nasa was going to help. Better him than me because I probably would have destroyed that girl’s brain with a straight-laced explanation of how she’s an idiot, haha.
There could be some development happening with Tsukasa based on the ending but since that veers in the direction of major spoilers, I’ll refrain from offering my thoughts until Volume 13 if this angle is expanded upon.
Final Thoughts
While cute (as expected of this series), I felt that the whole love/jealousy joke went on for far too long. Honestly? If I were married and I had to be questioned multiple times and forced to say cheesy stuff like Nasa did over and over again, I’d probably just start telling my wife the worst possible answer just to make her angry.
“Do you find those high school girls cuter than me?”
“Of course! They’re younger, newer models! I’m considering trading you in for one right now! Just think how much cuter I would look with a younger girl hanging off my arm over you?”
I mean… there are only so many times I can say “I love you,” “you’ve always been the one for me,” “I don’t look at anyone else but you,” etc. before I just can’t prove it anymore. So, if the wife doesn’t want to believe me after multiple declarations, then I’ll just start telling her what she’s expecting to hear until she either stops or she leaves me and I got back to being happy and single because Josh don’t play no games like that!
Can’t you tell I would make an amazing husband?
Right… back to Fly Me to the Moon since this isn’t a personal ad… Outside of that one little annoyance, this was just your typical dosage of sugar one would come to expect… although that ending has an old theory of mine coming into play and we might be headed towards a genre shift. The last time we had a major genre shift was after 7 volumes of 7th Garden and it completely destroyed my interest in that series. Don’t do it to me again, please!
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This item was provided for review by VIZ Media.
