The Quintessential Quintuplets Vol. 14

Title: The Quintessential Quintuplets Vol. 14
Author: Negi Haruba
Series: The Quintessential Quintuplets #14
First Published: April 17, 2020
Publisher: Kodansha Comics
Pages: 210
Genre: Comedy Romance, Romance, Shonen
Format: Web
Source: Web
Rating:

A juicy tutoring gig falls in the lap of poor high school second-year Futaro Uesugi... but it turns out his prospective pupils are his classmates?! And they're quintuplets?! All five are gorgeous, but they're problem students who hate to study and are on the verge of failing! Can Futaro help these idiosyncratic sisters make it to graduation?

Futaro was hired to guide a set of beautiful quintuplets who hate studying and are on the verge of flunking through graduation. Now, the final event of their high school careers, the school festival, is reaching its conclusion. Whose feelings will be requited, and whose hearts will be broken?! The story of the carefree, vibrant schooldays of Futaro and the quintuplets finally reaches its final volume!!

This is a rough one to end the series, and I say this as someone who was very happy with who Futaro ends up with at the end. This volume felt rushed once the decision was made, and the rest of it was completely phoned in. The volume was spent trying to pander to fans by giving a resolution to the other four not chosen during the ending.

So the end of volume 13 showed Futaro making a final decision, which I liked, even though it would have been nice if a little more time was given to Futaro to show him developing feelings. The three rejected sisters were, understandably, crushed. Ichika naturally knew it wouldn’t be her considering her earlier arc, and she does her best to support Futaro and his chosen. Itsuki is given a brief bit to throw in one last red herring, where she questions her feelings, but it’s poorly written.

Poor Yotsuba. Her character deserved better. She is unable to accept Futaro’s feelings because she knows that her sisters are hurt, and she tries to do the proper thing and asks them to accept their relationship, which is a wonderful thing to include in this type of story. Miku and Nino are understandably upset. Nobody wins in a harem situation when one is chosen, especially when they’re all sisters. I couldn’t stand the chapters where they took out their anger on Yotsuba. Nino reverted to her volume one terrible personality, and Miku became a worse character all around. It baffles me that her character is still so popular, and I understand how upset they are about how her character was handled. They have no time together at all without the other quints pushing into every scene.

There was a real opportunity to cement Futaro and Yotsuba’s romance further, but this was given up to pander to readers and do a silly harem ending, with a final “which one is the bride” test. He speaks about each one but doesn’t have a single thing to say to Yotsuba, which goes back to my earlier criticism that not enough time was given for Futaro’s feelings to be developed. Did they really need to force some last bonus scenes of the quints crashing their honeymoon? What a disaster. Negi Haruba had some good ideas with this series, and parts of it had the potential to make it one of the greats, but the sloppy way that the last two volumes were handled was disappointing.

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