Title: Shortcake Cake Vol. 3
Author: suu Morishita
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 176
Genre: Slice-of-Life, Romance
Publication Date: February 5, 2019
The Story
Volume three of Shortcake Cake starts off rather normally. The residents of the house are all acting in their own way but the normal, everyday slice-of-life portion of the manga quickly shifts back to our original love triangle between Riku, Ten, and Chiaki. Chiaki is still pretending to be Ten’s boyfriend in order to help stave off Riku’s brother Rei. Meanwhile, Chiaki gets a phone call from his brother who shows up at the house and then disappears….
…like for the rest of the volume.
I guess that makes covering him in the characters section pretty easy. With Chiaki’s bishonen brother out of the way, we’re back to the love triangle but it isn’t without its share of drama. Chiaki believes that Ten and Riku should be together but Ten doesn’t think it’ll happen because she already rejected him. On top of that, Riku heard everything that Chiaki said and the two of them get into a bit of an argument over Chiaki. Chiaki takes this pretty hard and feels that he has become nothing more than a nuisance.
The rest of the volume focuses on Riku wondering if he should give everything another chance. He does some little things to try and get closer to Ten but things take a dramatic turn during a thunderstorm and the power goes out at the house. Riku offers to get some batteries for a flashlight but Ten is scared of thunderstorms and wants to accompany Riku. Some sweet little moments happen there but it’s nothing more than a tease. The power suddenly gets restored and our volume comes to an end.
While it doesn’t seem much like a cliffhanger at first, when you realize that the two of them are staring at each other face-to-face with the power on, after all of the events that lead up to that moment, it really does act like a cliffhanger because you want to see exactly what happens. It makes you wonder if this will be the defining moment where the two of them will end up together. If so, you have to wonder about how Chiaki truly feels about all of this. Also, what of Riku’s brother Rei? He’s going to end up finding out about this sooner or later and he’ll probably do his best to interject. He was already seen spying on Riku and Ten in this volume so if that isn’t foreshadowing, I don’t know what is.
Characters
Riku and Chiaki got the bulk of the development in this chapter.
I’ll start with Chiaki because it seems they teased something with his brother. Apparently, Chiaki didn’t enjoy talking to him but when he showed up at the house, he seemed like a pleasant person. Then he disappears and he was never to be seen or heard from again! Introducing a new character in this way is rather interesting because it plants a seed in the reader’s mind and lets it sit there until it’s ready to be revisited. I’m sure we will see Chiaki’s brother again.
As for Chiaki himself, you kind of has to feel bad for him. He’s putting his feelings aside for Ten in order to see Riku be happy. At the same time, Chiaki feels like he became a nuisance and took it to heart pretty strongly. Even through it all, you can see he still cares about Ten since he offered to remain her pretend boyfriend to help keep Rei away from her. It makes you wonder why he’s doing all of this when he could have Ten any time he wanted… especially since Ten actually likes Chiaki. Even Ran thought that Chiaki was a better match for her than Riku!
Speaking of Riku, so many cute moments were had between him and Ten while the power was out. Everything from holding hands to Ten’s sweaty hands causing her phone to fly out of her hand and bean Riku in the face. Even though Ten turned him down and Riku doesn’t want anything to do with a relationship, they sure were flustered around each other. It’s obvious there is still something there between the two of them and that ending shows that the two of them are not done yet!
Final Thoughts
A pretty straightforward volume of Shortcake Cake. It does seem a bit too predictable. I can foresee Ten finally accepting Riku and the two of them becoming a couple. This will lead to Chiaki becoming jealous and possibly wondering if he made the right decision in trying to get the two of them together. The reason why I think this will happen was because of the obvious foreshadowing Morishita did with the Rei character. If Rei hadn’t been there, I probably would have just thought that everything was just an awkward moment in their lives and moved on with it but Rei’s presence changed my thinking altogether.
So with Riku and Ten getting together, Chiaki will eventually lose his façade of pretending to be Ten’s boyfriend. The truth will become known to Rei and he will do everything in his power to destroy Ten and Riku’s relationship. Chiaki will come in like a knight in shining armor and fend Rei off after he succeeds and it’ll cause Chiaki to end up with Ten.
I know I kind of went off on a bit of a tangent there with my prediction but predicting the future of a series you are reading is pretty fun! Still, I’m really enjoying this series as it’s pretty light and sweet. Nothing really over the top… except for Rei… but he does add some great comedic relief.
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
