Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka? - Ch. 175

[MangaDex]

 

[Airzpool]

🥰🥰

Any new will a new anime season is been make?

 

[LTalon]

Nice to see Cocoa actually in senpai mode and helping out.

 

[Flame-2-Haze]

Reason Yura came running is because those twins are HER toys, though in reverse, those twins think Yura are their toy.

 

[KZO]

That sorry Chino feels like a gomen Yuuka.

Jealous Chino is so cute.

 

[Berta545]

🥰🥰

Any new will a new anime season is been make?

Yeah, they announced it like 2(?) months ago

 

[BryanPliskin]

thanks for the chapter!

 

[BryanPliskin]

Yeah, they announced it like 2(?) months ago

but i dont think they said that it was a new season, they just announced they have a new anime in the works. Could be either another OVA, movie, or a new season either way im not gonna complain

 

[Exkalamity]

I've been watching too much Hololive I thought the color art at the beginning was showing cocoa with FuwaMoco

 

[Shieldon]

but i dont think they said that it was a new season, they just announced they have a new anime in the works. Could be either another OVA, movie, or a new season either way im not gonna complain

I believe it is going to be an OVA to bridge the end of the third season and the beginning of the Graduation Trip arc, which then most likely will be adapted as a movie.

 

[hotaruhi]

Goddamn Koi manga artstyle is so amazing in this chapter,

Its almost impossible to draw this much of cutest and loveliest style anymore without a strong True love

 

[Hikineet]

Thanks for the chapter.

 

[badlist]

lotta cat this episode

 

[izumabakumatsu]

Dependable Cocoa being an onee-chan to the kouhais is giving me a lot more warm and fuzzy than I expected. ☺️

 

[Homura]

couldnt care less for the new characters
the original main cast other than cocoa and chino is being shoved into the back and forgotten
what a disappintment, about time for this series to end

 

[Dudewheresmymecha1]

...the original main cast other than cocoa and chino is being shoved into the back and forgotten...

Hardly forgotten, and to be fair, the original cast have just about all played out their character development arcs, with mentoring the next generation of characters through their character arcs being the logical next step in that development.

It kinda helps to reread the series from its beginning, to see where the original cast began, and compare to where they are now: they started the story very insecure, lonely, shy, anxious, clingy, and timid, but over the course of the story they've all matured a lot, and are serving as strong role-models for the new characters.

It's been easiest to see in Chino's story arc, but I didn't really appreciate it until looking back over the character development of Rize and Syaro (compare, for example, that early scene of Rize sharing details about her work day with her plush rabbit, and then burying her face in her pillow and insisting she isn't lonely, with the Rize we see in the more recent chapters! Or, compare the Syaro that was so embarrassed about her friends discovreing she's poor or who was almost petrified into silent, firiously-blushing inaction every time she was in a scene with Rize, with the Syaro who offers to model for a character in Aayoma Bluemountain's next story in the recent chapter where Aayoma sneaks into Le Fleur du Lapin.) And then I noticed just how drastically Cocoa has matured over the course of the story (early jokes featuring Cocoa were at the expense of how childish she could be, but in later chapters, though still a little air-headed, Cocoa is often one of the more adult of the original characters!)

Just to put things in perspective, I think we can read between the lines of the very first chapters that Chino was devastated by the loss of her mother, her Grandpa would have been lost shortly after if he hadn't somehow been reincarnated as Tippy to act as the extremely shy and gloomy Chino's only friend, while Rize's father appears to have pulled strings with his old war buddy to get his extremely lonely and sheltered daughter a job at Rabbit House in the hopes that it would be good for both girls to make friends, with Cocoa being added to the roster to help make things more lively. Meanwhile, Syaro seems to have had an awkward friendship with Chiya, with neither of those girls appearing to be very good in social situations either: the beginning of the story really looked pretty dark for the original cast of characters! In the current chapters, the girls have a very large circle of friends, they're active club leaders, and strong role-models for younger characters. Narratively, there's not a whole lot more to add to their story from there!

There IS still a little more mileage to go for the original characters before being demoted to background characters, but a lot of the plot threads that remain dangling feel like they're being saved up for Cocoa's graduation, which feels like a logical place for the story to end anyway, if indeed it ends there: the Manga began with Cocoa's arrival in the Half-Timbered Town and start of her job at Rabbit House, so her graduation and leaving for college seem like the natural concluding book-end to the entire story. In the mean time, the character development for the younger characters is moving along at a much quicker pace: I can't really see much room for the new characters to grow and bloom much further past the graduation.

I try to think of how the story would even play out past that, and the only things that come to mind are:

Spoiler: Some Ways to Continue the Story

• Shift focus entirely to the younger characters. We could keep following the younger characters through their character development while the older characters are away at college, and show the new characters acting as mentors for an even newer group of characters instead. There doesn't seem to be much need for this, and one wonders how far the new characters could keep the series going, and it might not be a popular or satisfying option, but it's one way to keep things going, perhaps as a spinoff?
• College hijinks with Yura, Rize, and their immediate juniors. While it might be fun to see them in that setting, I don't see much room for further character development there, so I can't imagine this being more than a volume's worth of mostly joke material and "shaggy dog" stories.
• What happens after college. The girls' dreams for what they plan to do as adults - running cafes and bakeries and so on - seem to have been a landmark in their maturing character development, and seeing how those dreams play out, and the challenges of getting there, might provide some storytelling material. A story arc following the girls through college, concluding with achieving the beginning of their adult careers, might work, but seem a bit more natural if explored, perhaps, as a reunion epilogue to the current story.
• I've noticed a lot of open-ended, read-between-the-lines points of "lore" involving the girls' parents, which haven't been given a definitive conclusion. The parents all seem to know each other, for example, and there are a few points that were never really explored much, like where Rize's mother is, what the dynamics in the little jazz band with Chino's mother were like, what really happened with Rize's and Chino's father (and apparently Yura's father), and so on. There also seems to have been a lot unsaid about the rivalry between Chiya's grandmother and Chino's grandpa. Some one-off flashbacks might have revealed a lot of interesting background material here, but - aside from one flashback between Grandpa and Cocoa as a toddler whre we see the origin of the Manga's title - this doesn't seem to be a flashback kind of manga, and if they haven't done flashbacks to the parents' stories by now.... The story we've gotten almost feels like a spinoff from the parents' story, and perhaps a spinoff prequel manga might work instead, though one can't help imagining that the tone would surely feel very different!
• Alternatively, the "multiverse" angle seems to have been a surprise success for this story, from its humble beginnings as (apparently) a one-off joke. A lot of interesting "lore" and so on has since played out in mirror universes, dream sequences, Aayoma's stories, and so on, and perhaps a lot more can be revealed that way, too, including glimpses of the past (the parents' stories) and the future (the girls' college and adult futures). The world-building for how the "multiverse" and other supernatural elements (like Grandpa's reincarnation as Tippy, or Chino's mother appearing as a ghost on Halloween) hasn't really been thoroughly explored - I prefer it that way, but there's probably an audience for filling out more details. I don't see this working as anything more than a one-off chapter here and there, as it's played out so far, but these feature of the story do offer some possibilities, up to an entire spinoff series set in a an alternate universe.

Honestly, though, I don't see many ways to justify much more than a few bonus epilogue chapters, or at most a volume or so of content, beyond Cocoa's graduation. Until then, I expect we'll be seeing the last few loose ends getting tied up, while we see the positive influence that the original cast has on the new characters.

What do you think?

Assuming the story is about to conclude shortly after graduation, what would you like to see Koi do next?

A spinoff series involving the original characters? The new characters? The parents? An alternate universe?

A new story in this genre? A new genre altogether?

Is there something you feel the current story hasn't thoroughly tied up yet, that requires many more years of storytelling with the original cast of characters?