Title: A Star Brighter Than the Sun Vol. 5
Author: Kazune Kawahara
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 185
Genre: Slice-of-Life, Romance
Publication Date: March 3, 2026
The Story
The school festival is here, and Iwa is torn between whether or not she will ask Kamishiro to watch the fireworks with her, but before she can even think about getting to that point, she needs to do her part for her class, which is holding a space exhibit talking about stories from space rather than relying on facts and data. Of course, the exhibit isn’t the only thing she has to do, as there is a physical challenge aspect to the festival in which Iwa ends up setting a new school record at the expense of some unflattering comments.
Meanwhile, Ayumu is keeping a close eye on Iwa as he notices a few things between her and Kamishiro. Despite trying to work up the courage to ask him to the fireworks event, she is also supposed to be manning the space exhibit with him, but he’s nowhere to be found. This is because he was busy helping out elsewhere when the battery in the classroom clock died, so he had no idea what time it was! When he makes it to the classroom, the topic of the fireworks event pops up, and Kamishiro admits to Iwa that he’s going to invite his crush. She takes this the worst way possible!
Can Kamishiro repair the bridge he just accidentally burned, or will Ayumu use this as his chance to make his move!?
Characters
I cut the story section off about two chapters short because some major developments in this volume surprised me for a couple of reasons, and a lot of them have to do with Kamishiro and Iwa’s development.
On Kamishiro’s side, he was pretty casual for the majority of the first half of the volume; however, he finally mustered up the courage to come clean with Iwa by telling her that he was planning to invite his crush to the fireworks event. Of course, the reader knows that his crush is Iwa, but she, as a character, had zero clue that he was talking about her. I can understand that he wanted to try and keep things as a surprise for her, but when he saw her reaction, he instantly realized that he should have just been direct, but then again… sitting in a classroom when anyone could overhear probably wasn’t the best moment to execute that plan, which also begs the question of why he didn’t just wait until their duties were over? I feel like Kamishiro jumped the gun here, and now he is in panic salvage mode!
Iwa, on the other hand, was hyper-fixated on finding a way to invite Kamishiro to the fireworks event. She enlisted several people to offer her encouragement, one of whom was Subaru… Kamishiro’s cousin. Subaru even said she would play her song request for her during the event, which led to a funny moment that is a direct reflection of Iwa’s personality. Because she was so fixated on asking Kamishiro, and steeling herself for her eventual confession, it was no shock that when he was vague about who he was asking to the event, she felt crushed and ran away. Hopefully, things work out, but at the same time, this is the natural reaction as a byproduct of them never truly saying who their crushes were.
Subaru has turned into quite the little cheerleader for them, but she also needs to learn how to take care of herself. In the previous volume, we left off with Kamishiro carrying her, and now we learned that she was anemic due to overworking herself. We saw this coming with everything that she had elected to take on, but something tells me that she isn’t going to learn her lesson… especially when she tried to protest when Kamishiro said that he would do his best to fill in for her while she recovered. Despite that, she learned to take it easy and focused mainly on the fireworks event, where she didn’t seem to have a single problem with Iwa wanting to confess to her cousin. Now that she has settled in, being the cheerleader on the side is the perfect role for her.
Final Thoughts
I will say that the pacing for this series is pretty good, and without going into too many spoilers, it does something that not a lot of romance series will do. With this series still ongoing in Japan, the events here leave a lot of room for exploration in its aftermath. You rarely get to see that outside of an epilogue chapter, so it’ll be interesting to see what other challenges they are going to face moving forward. With Ayumy, Kamishiro, and Iwa all having their positions with one another, it is going to be quite interesting to see how it all unfolds over the coming volumes.
The festival was just as one would expect it to be… a few class events, an exhibit, and a tale of love. If you’ve seen one festival arc in a romance series, you’ve seen them all, and this one was no different. The biggest swerve here was Kamishiro admitting that he intended to invite his crush, but Iwa got the wrong idea. Of course, when he wanted to chase after her, a couple of students walked up as a plot device and prevented him from chasing. That caused a bit of (good) frustration as you just wished he would have been more straightforward and honest, rather than trying to beat around the bush… plus there was one thing that didn’t make sense from a logical standpoint…
If he told Iwa that he was going to invite his crush, only to keep it as vague as possible, then what would happen when he actually did invite Iwa to the fireworks? Had she not reacted like that, would there have been a second meeting where he asked her? I mean, the fireworks event was that night, so telling her his intentions only to come back and tell her again seemed redundant, which is why I wondered why he didn’t just come clean, to begin with. I don’t see a point in telling the person whom you plan to ask that you’re planning to ask, not to mention it’s them, and then come back and execute that plan by asking them. A bit nonsensical, but the reaction Iwa gave was the right one.
Next time, we will be taking a look at the aftermath of the second half of this volume, and that’s the part that has me excited the most!
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
