Something’s Wrong with Us Volumes 11 and 12 Review

When we left protagonist Nao in Volume 10 of Something’s Wrong with Us, she had her sights set on taking Kogetsuan for herself as the rightful heir. Now with another two volumes in hand, it’s time to see how the story develops from there! 

As we reunite with our cast, we find Nao confronting Tsubaki’s grandfather, the Old Master, wishing to talk to him about the fact that she’s actually ‘Sakura’ and his granddaughter who has a rightful claim to the store. With these facts in front of him, Tsubaki’s grandfather decides the only way to solve the dispute is for Nao and Tsubaki to compete with one another. He challenges them to each make a single sweet and whoever makes the most delicious one will be the person who can take ownership of Kogetsuan. 

While the two throw themselves into creating a sweet that will satisfy the Old Master, there’s plenty of drama happening surrounding them. Tsubaki’s mother is unhappy that Nao might end up inheriting the shop instead of her son and is determined to find a way to ruin Nao’s sweet or prevent the Old Master from making a decision. 

Meanwhile, Tsubaki’s ex-fiancée finally comes clean about the night of the fire three years ago. She reveals that Tsubaki didn’t go into the fire to save the special tools passed down to the inheritors of the store, but instead, he wanted to make sure Nao was safe. All this time he’d been led to believe otherwise, due to simply not remembering the night in question, but now his emotions are thrown into turmoil. 

At the same time, Takigawa who’s been by Nao’s side since she opened a shop of her own to rival Kogetsuan, asks Nao to marry him in a bid to ensure she won’t disappear from his side. But we readers know that Nao is still in love with Tsubaki, so Takigawa’s proposal may serve to do nothing but confuse her at such an important moment. 

Then in Volume 12, the Old Master passes away, but not without having made his decision about the results of the contest (which I won’t spoil for you). Our cast is left reeling as their lives change drastically, both for good and ill. Some are happy with the outcome, others devastated and no matter the results, Tsubaki is obviously very upset by the death of his grandfather and now has no one support to him. 

There’s also yet more drama that throws everything into chaos. Just when you think we’ve gotten to the end of the interpersonal twists and turns, mangaka Natsumi Ando throws something new into the mix. Just like the storyline surrounding the fire a few volumes ago, it’s hard to believe some of the things that get thrown into the narrative. 

Yet the series remains oddly compelling, despite how ridiculous it gets and I think that’s the secret to its success. No matter how silly it may get, you still want to see it through to the end in the hopes that Nao and Tsubakai will find a happy ending in whatever form that may take. They may be rivals, torn apart by secrets and schemes, but there’s a clear attraction between them that leads us to believe they will be far better off together than apart. Of course, life isn’t that simple which is why they stumble from problem to problem without a moment to orientate themselves. 

Something’s Wrong with Us Volumes 11 and 12 come to the West thanks to Kodansha and continue to be translated by Sawa Matsueda Savage with lettering by Nicole Roderick. The translation reads well and as we’ve come to expectm there are insightful translation notes included at the back of both volumes which talk about the sweets we’ve seen. 

Volumes 13-14 of the series are already available with Volume 15 scheduled for release in June. There’s nothing scheduled beyond that at the moment, so we may end up with a bit of a gap as we approach the conclusion in Volume 19, but hopefully, it won’t be too long. 

Overall, once again these two instalments of Something’s Wrong with Us change the playing field considerably for our cast. We’re used to seeing crazy twists coming out of nowhere for this one, but even so, I think readers will be shocked by some of the events here. Still, if you’ve made it this far then like me you’re likely to be firmly on the hook for more.