Continues the contest arc. The female cast finally collide and try to take each other's stuff, but all get accidentally electrocuted in a hotspring bath by Toono-san.
Ikuto fights and beats the Lord of the North, and wakes up with his head in Machi's lap. Some chatting, and then he goes back to sleep.
Ikuto wakes up high in the sky as Machi's shikigami is carrying them to what I think is that tree everyone ended up at in that very first get the groom contest from volume 1.
Ikuto finds out the last lord, the lord of the west, is actually Kaarage-san (the chicken) who's been within him all this time.
Ikuto and Kaarage go off to the side to start their duel while all the island's girls start congregating at the tree where Machi's waiting.
The main course starts. Ikuto and Kaarage start fighting. Machi wipes out all of the unnamed girls of the island with a single blast. The rest of the female cast have teamed up together and arrive at the tree, and then all rush at Machi. Cue awesome wtfpwnage as Machi wipes the floor with the rest of the entire female cast all at the same time.
Kaarage adds an additional stake to the battle. If Ikuto loses, he has to leave Suzu's house.
Ikuto manages to beat Kaarage. Thanks to Ten Ten Daikon, Ayane and Suzu, the last female cast members standing against Machi, manage to beat Machi.
Machi and Ayane try to grab the rest of the girls' stuff and win the match, but Michiru conveniently falls out of the tree branch she was sleeping on and knocks the two sisters out. Suzu grabs the prizes but turns out Ikuto had already beaten Kaarage-san.
The end of the volume, Ikuto chooses Suzu and the two go on the private hot spring vacation. They have some close doki-doki moments broken up by Sakuya walking in on them. Meanwhile, the rest of the cast is trying to sneak in, but Sakuya beats them all back with no effort (making her currently the strongest female castmember in the story), but the group finally sneaks in.
At the end Ikuto and Suzu are about to have a hot spring bath together but the rest of the cast members jump in. Cue some stuff about Ikuto being happy about everyone or something, and then huge nosebleed geyser due to the rest of the castmembers being all naked.
This would be a great place for the anime to end, if it ever gets that far.
The volume's not over though. One Ayane chapter and her relationship with Monjiro and their past. Extremely touching, for me, and totally humanizes Ayane for me, if you can call it that.
A Mei Mei chapter, where she does some crazy contortionist stuff and....well..... it has to be seen rather than told:
Michiru's formal introductory chapter. She's had earlier appearances but this is where her character really gets her screentime. Michiru is a sixteen-year old Hanyou, a cross between a human and a mythical folklore creature, in this case a
Yuki-onna, "Snow Woman" I guess, which makes her basically half-human, half-yuki-onna. Her heritage makes her extremely weak against the heat and the summer but she is totally fine with the cold, and can walk around the island's freezing mountain tops with practically almost nothing on. She fell in love with Ikuto when he first washed up. You don't see it in volume 1 and episode 1, but she helped give Ikuto lunch at that time. He was all staring at her for some reason and she went all doki-doki from that.
Here, Ikuto gets captured by a giant snowman and gets taken to Michiru's mother, who lives in the snowy mountain tops. Suzu goes off to rescue him, almost gets knocked off by the snowman and Michiru comes to the rescue. The two go inside the igloo Michiru's mother lives in and find her just chatting with Ikuto (namely trying to convince the guy that she's a yuki-onna and him totally not believing it).
We find out Ikuto's tendency to stare at Michiru was because she resembled his sister. He wonders why he didn't realize that earlier and the reason is because of:
*BOING*
Omake: Something about some really hot-looking nine-tailed kitsune. Mmmmmm, reminds me of Ran, but with long hair. Mmmmmm x 2