Since Ichirin won their first team competition, by the rules of manga, it is time for a humbling loss. Once again, Wandance bucks the trend. The Ichirin dance team, led by On-chan and the only other male member, Iori, who has a lot of experience in dance battles, shows up and does surprisingly well. Iori takes the individual championship, then is crushed by a bonus round against one of the judges, forcing Iori to readjust his goals much higher.

Hikari has become a muse to Kabo, with all the baggage that that implies. He's envious of her dance skills, her freedom, and her ability to communicate. He appreciates her willingness to include him, but has found no way to express that. He's so mesmerized by her, he's jealous when other people approach her, when she gets opportunities, when she shines, but he is absolutely aware that that way lies a dark path and demands more from himself. A third-place win isn't enough. Thanking Hikari isn't enough. Kago is driving himself to…somewhere. Both he and I hope it's the right direction.

Once again, the art here is the star. The way Coffee depicts the speed and power of the dance movements is captivating. You can't “see” what a person is doing, but you can understand it. When Iori loses his bonus round, the judge he is competing against is a literal blur, but within that, you can understand his spins, his pops, his jumps, somehow. And, as a character, after the dance, Assay seems like a decent person, which is a huge relief. I have, apparently, read way too many books with violence and harassment to relax and accept that the dance world is just chill.

I don't listen to too much contemporary music (unless you count Caroline Shaw), so playing the tracks online while reading the battles was a lot of fun. I didn't like the music—a lot of it wasn't really for listening to, often musically repetitive—but I can see that it'd be a blast to dance to.

Narratively, Kabo is lost in a deep hole of his unformed desires, but we stop to understand his senpai, Iori, a bit better, and his relationship to another dancer, Kabe, with whom he goes head-to-head. Every student's inner demons are given the same weight, which helps Kabo understand that he's not alone. But, for the very first time, the story stops and takes time to teach us about Wanda Hikari, the catalyst of this entire series. We watch her at her part-time job, where her manager is a father figure, almost despite himself, and takes time to talk to Hikari about dance a bit. He's absolutely adorable, trying so hard not to be weird about it, but also glad that she shares his love of Michael Jackson. This section offers a simple how-to of an arm wave, in case we want to try our dance chops. In a book filled with abstracted power moves, it was a nice beginner's moment for the reader.

Kabo has noted that he knows nothing about her, and this is our first glimpse. Hikari is still a mystery, with no inner life yet, since once again we are still seeing her from someone else's perspective. She seems like a good person. We learn that her father has a disability, which goes to explain how she's so comfortable with Kabo's speech disorder. But what drives her, we don't yet know. How she got here, we don't know. We'll have to wait for Kabo to find his voice with her, maybe to find out.

My favorite scene in the book was when On-chan circles up the team to talk about what didn't go right. Every member is, finally, given a name and a personality, and everyone talks about what they could have done better. There was no judgment; everyone was allowed to choose their own levels of responsibility. And, again, Kabo could see that, as much as he feels alone a lot of the time, he is not.

Up to this point, the main driver of the story has been understanding dance. For this series to thrive, it really has to shift from Kabo wanting to be better to Kabo wanting to engage with other people more. He's learned what he can, but unless he breaks out of his shell, the story will just stall.

I'm hoping the next volumes will bring some inner resolution and a chance for Kabo and Hikari to seriously discuss what dance means to them. In another sports club manga, we'd be waiting for the big comeback after a terrible loss, but in Wandance, like in life, we're looking at days ahead of more practice and more opportunity. Hikari and Kabo will get a small glimpse into the career path of dance, and Iori has already mentioned teaching. In a future where every school has a dance club, both Kabo and Hikari can start thinking about making a living at this. But that's pretty far away right now, and Kabo is still tied up in shame and frustration with his stutter. About halfway through this series, both Hikari Kabo have a long way to go to develop as three-dimensional characters. I'm not entirely sure that Wandance will get us there, but I am hopeful.