The development of Eagle Jump’s new game continues in the eleventh volume of Shotaro Tokuno’s New Game! manga, with a particular focus on the character designs this time around. Before that, though, a beach episode.
Front cover of the eleventh volume of New Game!, featuring Hifumi Takimoto and Aoba Suzukaze
This volume of New Game! kicks off in spectacular style, with the girls in Okinawa – we get full colour pages of the Eagle Jump ladies in their swimsuits. Shizuku certainly seems to be enjoying herself, although perhaps a little too much. Fortunately Umiko is able to reign her in before the topless Aoba incident causes any major problems.
Something that we haven’t seen in New Game! for quite a while is the relationship between Aoba and Hifumi. Volume eleven is here to put a change to that, with Hifumi concerned about being a good senpai for Aoba – and then Shizuku goes ahead and gives her advice. Hifumi acknowledges that it sounds like romantic advice, and is only quick to deny it when Aoba actually joins the conversation. Hmm…
It’s been far too long since we’ve seen any development on the Aoba x Hifumi front, but it sure does feel good to have it come back to us. In Shizuku’s words, hopefully this “yuri romance” will develop further.
As fun as the events in Okinawa are, Eagle Jump gets back to work, and this volume focuses on Aoba’s character designs. What makes it particularly interesting this time around is that the designs for the characters are based on a few of the Eagle Jump employees. It takes Aoba a little bit to reach that inspiration as she is designing the main player character, but everything soon falls into place.
What we get here is an insight into how Aoba sees her colleagues through her character designs. And whilst some of them ask not to be used as models, Aoba still manages to get some of their personality traits in there.
There’s also a development for Momiji as she builds up the courage to have her input on one of the character designs for the game.
Outside of Eagle Jump, Hotaru steadily moves towards making a decision about what she wants to do, by returning to her old school. It seems meeting some of the aspiring students really helps her to realise the path she wants her life to take.
All told, this was a fantastic volume of New Game!. Starts of incredibly strongly, and remains so all the way through.
Rory Muses 