Elma finds herself busy doing a lot of stuff in the fifth volume of Ayami Kazama’s Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid: Elma’s Office Lady Diary manga, from trying to get a driving license to coming up with the perfect bento box.
This volume contains chapters thirty-seven to forty-five.
Front cover of the fifth volume of Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid: Elma’s Office Lady Diary, featuring Miss Kobayashi and Elma
Feed your Bliss!
Elma is a sweet, gluttonous, and occasionally airheaded harmony dragon who works with Miss Kobayashi. Follow Elma’s busy career as she helps train a new employee, gets turned into a baby (thanks, Lucoa!), and as always, eats lots and lots of tasty food. You’ll want to feed Elma yourself in this spin-off of Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid!
Lots of fun things going on in this volume of Elma’s Office Lady Diary, and also a chapter that focuses on Elma helping out Ilulu and Take. OK, I’m sure Ilulu and Take do have their fans, but I just still can’t bring myself to find their interactions with each other all that interesting. I don’t need to see those two getting all blushy because their hands touched or something.
Fortunately for me, this manga is not about Ilulu or Take, though. It is about Elma, and she remains as the star of the show throughout each chapter – as it should be, as this is her manga, after all.
This particular volume has a strong start with Elma and Tohru trying to get driving licenses – actually, it brings to mind that one episode of Dragon Ball Z. Whilst Elma and Tohru do have a completely different sense of speed compared to a normal human driver, what makes this first chapter particularly great is the interactions between the two dragons. They won’t openly admit it, but Tohru and Elma sure are close friends.
Throughout this volume, we also get interactions with Ilulu and Take (as already mentioned), Lucoa and Wakita. I do enjoy the chapters where Elma gets to spend time with colleagues besides Miss Kobayashi, since that’s not an aspect we tend to get much of elsewhere.
This manga also tends to refer to events from the original manga, and the other spin-offs. This time we get a reference to Lucoa is My XX, which doesn’t have an English release. Even if it did, I have no interest in reading it. Much like the Ilulu and Take stuff, I really don’t care for the Lucoa and Shouta stuff, either. Fortunately, said reference is just an off-hand remark; it has no bearing on the events of this manga.
This volume also gives us baby Elma. She may be a baby, but everyone distinctly recognises her as Elma. That whole chapter is pretty silly from the get-go, with Elma just eating a random mushroom she happens to find. Still fun to read, though.
Elma’s Office Lady Diary continues to be one of the best spin-offs of Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid. Elma’s such a great character, and she tends to get up to a lot of fun things – generally whilst contemplating her next meal. Really enjoyable volume from Ayami Kazama here.
Rory Muses 