Hanamonogatari: Flower Tale

With her former mentor, his reformed girlfriend, and the amnesiac class president all having graduated from their rural high school, self-proclaimed Sapphist and retired basketball ace Suruga Kanbaru now begins her senior year entirely alone. As the narrator of this volume, her voice is far more introspective than the brash athlete readers once knew. Bereft of familiar company, her only remaining connection to the world of aberrations is Ougi Oshino, a mysterious underclassman who claims to be related to a certain Hawaiian-shirted folklorist. Left isolated and melancholic, Kanbaru is consumed by dread that the devil residing in her left arm—a lingering curse courtesy of the Monkey’s Paw—might awaken and act up while she sleeps. Driven by fear, she begins investigating a troubling local rumor that threatens to lead directly back to her. This search draws the former star athlete into an abyss of pure negativity known as Rouka. She soon finds herself trapped in a pit so profound that escape seems impossible for anyone but the singular girl capable of executing slam dunks at the national basketball championships. Yet, stripped of her allies and forced into penitence, Kanbaru faces a harrowing question: can she still summon the aggression necessary to survive when everything she once relied upon has faded away?