One of the most delightful things about Wandance is that it continues to buck narrative trends repeatedly. In other sports/club stories, the focus would be on the way the team seems to lack cohesion, while one character or another fails to live up to their promise. Here, people do well sometimes and not so well other times and it's all very….normal and real.

Kabeya invites Kabo to a two-person breaking battle. While Iori-sempai tells Kabo he's got the chops for house, he's feeling breaking in a way that he's never felt. He and Kabe-san win, but at the cost of his body. Kabo, already full of doubt about being able to dance as a part of a team, is now also feeling a lot of pain from the physicality of breaking. Worse, he's skipped practicing this choreography for battle. His heart isn't in the club, but it's his only point of contact with Hikari. Until she suggested he get a job at the place she works.

Hikari is off doing her own thing, unbeknownst to her, people around her are crashing on the rock that is her dancing. Other dancers are going through full-on emotional collapse, imagining Hikari to be aloof and unfriendly. When they open up to her, they find her to be a really nice kid.

All Kabo can see is that he and Hikari are drifting further and further away from one another. He learns that there may be a path to a professional dancer that does not require speaking, and he still hasn't really told too many people about his stuttering. As a result, Kabo finds that he's still often misunderstood or just misses out. Hikari being not being there for him is leaving him vulnerable in ways he's used to…but doesn't like. Who would? It's hard for me to sometimes scream at everyone on the page to shut up and give him a second to answer already! That said, I think it is important to the manga that Kabo isn't “getting better” and the people around aren't suddenly more sensitive or aware of his needs. If anything, when Kabo takes on a job at Hikari's workplace, we are made to understand that this is an everyday, all-the-time limitation that Kabo has to deal with, and many people are unlikely to understand or be tolerant. While this makes Wandance very real-world, it's also a limit placed upon it. I wonder if the manga could be used, rather than merely illustrating the fact of life with a speech disorder, to show how to accommodate it. This is an ongoing complaint I have about media in general. We spend so much time relitigating the trauma that builds the character, we forget to show a better way. I know, I know, it's not that kind of manga. But I say to you, it could have been that kind of manga. Every manga could be that kind of manga. We can want our media to not just explain and show what life is like with disorders and disabilities, but also help people to imagine making a more accessible world.

Despite this (deeply personal) complaint, Wandance continues to make Kabo's struggles, with his dance, with his peers, and most of all with his relationship with Hikari, interesting.

As we reach the end of Volume 10, having had his muse largely removed from his view, Kabo is flailing a bit. He's dancing better than ever, but as he gains attention, he's also picking up criticism. Will he collapse under the pressure, or will he find whatever he's looking for? Additionally, I'm hoping we can turn back to Hikari for a while to see what she's got planned for herself.

Finally, Hikari and Kabo have a moment together. He invites her to join his world and dance battle with him. She enthusiastically agrees, as long as he agrees to join her world as well. And she won't let him just say that he can't. It's the very first time we've seen Hikari demand anything at all from Kabo. It'll be interesting to see what his reaction is. I'm desperately hoping he doesn't go all spoiled baby on her.

If you had told me at the beginning of this series that I would find myself captivated by the school club performance/freestyle dancing manga, I might not have believed you. But coffee's art is so incredibly vivid, the thought behind this series so not-stereotypical, and the surrounding characters well-developed beyond just having a tragic backstory, that I find myself rooting for them all. Iori, trying to find a way to build a dance career, On-chan, looking to shake up dance, Kabo, Hikari, and everyone they dance with. I'm rooting for them all.

The only thing this manga does not make me feel is a desire to dance. It looks really hard. It's kind of funny, too, when I consume media about physical activity, I need to move. I tend to read this manga while pacing, just to be able to get my body moving. But yeah, I'm not dancing.