Title: I Made Friends with the 2nd Prettiest Girl in My Class Vol. 2
Author: Rin Ono, Takata (Original Story), Azuri Hyuga (Characters)
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 196
Genre: Slice-of-Life, Romance, Comedy
Publication Date: November 25, 2025
The Story
We open up our second volume with Yuu asking Maki to be friends. Because he didn’t have a valid excuse not to, he accepts. This bothers Umi quite a bit because she didn’t want Yuu to find out that they have been secretly hanging out. Despite that, Yuu’s over-energetic personality goes into full display mode as she’s over-ecstatic that Maki accepted her friendship. It even gets to the point where Maki invites them over to his house because Yuu found out that he knows how to make banana soufflé pancakes.
When they leave, Yuu wants to hang out some more, so she asks Maki if they can hang out again on Friday, but he states he has plans with someone else. Of course, this is the secret day that he and Umi spend together. Umi comes over, but while reading manga, she accidentally falls asleep. Maki was about to wake her, but when he took in the sight of her, he couldn’t help but stare until he fell asleep too! His mother comes home early and catches them, and even though she’s stern, she allows Umi to spend the night as long as Maki brings her home in the morning and apologizes to her mother.
Then, we get the thing that we cannot escape in a high school rom-com. Yes, it’s time for the school cultural festival. No one volunteers to be on the committee, so they draw a lottery. Of course, the main character’s plot armor always fails, and Maki gets picked. When the class starts making fun of him, Yuu stands up and volunteers to be the girl on the committee; however, Umi stands up and announces that she drew the winning paper. After a discussion, Yuu backs down and lets Umi have it, but she’ll still help out where she can.
After being dictated what their class would be doing by the student council, they get to work on their project. It’s during this that we get a bit of background information on Yuu and Umi, where they came from, and that some old friends they used to hang out with are coming to the festival… something that Umi isn’t particularly excited about. Also, during this… Umi and Maki get together and have a bit of a heart-to-heart talk about spilling their secret to Yuu, because they feel as if she was going to find out about them anyway. Even though it’s decided, the festival eats up too much of their time, so Umi never gets around to it. Could that negligence come back to bite her?
Characters
I still love how Maki is a loner, a bit introverted, but isn’t completely spineless. Even though he prefers to be alone, he can still get up in front of a class and speak, but it’s apparent that his loner life has caused others to view him in a certain way. Still, he’s very caring and considerate, and those qualities of his shine through here in this second volume. Heck, at one point, he even gets a bit crass (albeit very mildly), so there is another facet to him, which is kind of interesting! Outside of this, there wasn’t much in the way of change with his character, although he was pretty cool with the idea of telling Yuu about him and Umi, all because he felt it was the right thing to do.
Umi’s feelings for Maki are quickly deepening. I think wanting to tell Yuu about them was part of that because you could just see the pain and jealousy in her eyes whenever Yuu nudged her way in and wanted to hang out with Maki. Plus, I’m not sure if Yuu has a romantic interest in Maki, but she certainly isn’t shy about liking him in some capacity. That kind of nudged Umi forward a bit and caused her to start thinking about what Maki means to her. There was one point where I thought she was going to flat-out confess to him, but the trigger wasn’t pulled… and with this being just the second volume, it shouldn’t have been pulled, but if anything, it was made perfectly clear that Umi is in love with Maki… even if it wasn’t stated outright.
As for Yuu, her persistent and outgoing personality was the main focus of this volume. I swear that this girl has no off switch whatsoever. Though we did get a bit of backstory with her and Umi. I didn’t cover Umi’s part of it because there truly wasn’t much to cover. All we know is that they went to a prestigious all-girls school when Umi suddenly wanted to apply elsewhere out of the blue. That made it hard for Yuu because, in words not actually stated, but rather implied, she’s an airhead and had to study extra hard just she could go to the new school with Umi. They’ve been friends since elementary school/childhood, so there was no way Yuu was going to let her go. Still, Yuu was excited to learn their old friends would be visiting, even if Umi was clearly not. There’s something to be had there, and I don’t think Yuu knows what it is… yet.
Final Thoughts
I highly enjoyed the first volume, but the true test is the second volume. Can the second volume continue the high quality of the first and keep being invested in? The short answer is yes, but it does come with an asterisk. That is the culture festival. I know they are a staple, but I’m just so burned out on seeing every high school rom-com default to it. I know we will never escape them, and it’s something that I’ll have to live with, but I literally groan every time I see those two words in any manga I read. At least this one has a semi-interesting twist to it, but it still has the same old plot points. What I mean by that is Yuu wants to know if Maki would walk around the festival with her when it happens. Of course, he agrees because they’re friends, but that leaves Umi out in the dark. You know that’s going to stir quite a bit of drama up later. It probably won’t be serious drama given the nature of this series, but it will be awkward, nevertheless.
The backstory was a bit mysterious, but it was simply a seed to sprout later… except there is no mystery as to when it will sprout. Whenever the cultural festival happens, which is most likely in the next volume, we’ll get more of that backstory explored. Before we get there, we ended up with a bit of a cliffhanger ending, but again, due to the nature of this series, I don’t think that things are going to go down dramatically. It’s probably going to be a “oh, is that all?” moment, and it’ll be over and done with.
Outside of that, the level of cuteness in this volume was off the charts again! Maki is such a warm, caring, and wholesome character that continues to break the mold of what a typical introvert is. I said it before, and I’ll say it again, but I truly love how he’s being portrayed realistically. I’m introverted as well, so society would make you think that I have social anxiety. I don’t. I can easily talk to people, interact in large groups, etc, it’s just that I prefer my alone time because I get worn out more quickly than others. That’s exactly how Maki is. He’s a loner because he needs to recharge, but he has no issues speaking to others or even standing up in front of a class and talking. I feel it is a more realistic representation of introverts than what you find in manga typically.
The series continues to impress me, and I can see this quickly becoming one of my favorites because of it!
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press
