"I know a lot of stuff happened, but in the end...everyone's the same as always"

Wow.

ueno u will never ever make me a fan of u

Tw/cw physical and verbal abuse bullying ableism and a character attempts s***ide
This volume made me so angry-I only liked the chapters from Shoko’s perspective. Why on earth did the other characters just stand by and let Shoko be beat up by Naoka?! That is no way to treat someone who is clearly going through a major mental health crisis and yet all the characters act like it’s Shoko’s fault for being depressed when I’m reality some of them are the ones who caused it. Also the ableism/ignorance about disabled people is becoming more and more noticeable with each volume. Even Tomohiro makes it clear that he views Shoko’s deafness as a “problem”. Deaf/disabled people are not problems to be fixed. I do not know why this manga seems to send that message. I’m going to read the final volume but I’m still very unhappy with the direction this series has taken.

This volume honestly made me legitimately angry. In the wake of a tragic event, we get to see through the eyes of all of the side characters. Some parts of this are great, like Shoko's chapter, in which an imaginary, idealized past is interspersed with a painful present and her hearing limitations are visually represented by misspelled and partially missing text. But most of this volume is sympathetic point-of-view sequences for absolutely horrible people. There is no sympathetic backstory or perspective that can redeem a person who literally beats someone for attempting suicide. The beating goes on for a few pages. And some characters honestly wonder if it was "right" to put a stop to it. This is NOT how helping a depressed/suicidal person works. This is how isolation and abuse works. In fact, the number of times Shoko gets hit in this volume is honestly disturbing and it's made all the worse by her persistence in getting the group of "friends" back together. Some of them are worse now than when they bullied her as kids. I can't stand this volume.