I read most of this volume during Fanimecon 2005. What else is there to do while waiting for the few events I care about?
Unlike the other volumes of the novel, this volume is entirely of one story, although it's still split into four chapters. A few new characters are introduced in this book. One is Aoi, Hiroshi (Dai-chan)'s childhood friend who is the only child of a powerful family, kind of like Hiroshi's family. Another is Kasumi and her ferret Fia- (actually Fear). Kasumi is from the same world as Shia, by the way, and so is Fear.
Hiroshi invites everyone, Kotarou, Misha, Takashi, Koboshi, Shia, and Nyaa to his family vacation home in the mountains. Okay, so he didn't actually invite Shia and Nyaa, but they all end up going together. There, they meet Aoi, Kasumi (and Fear), and have an adventure of sorts. Kasumi noticed Aoi's isolated and sad feelings early on, so she slowly manipulates her to bring out her "dark side." Kasumi's eventual goal is to take Aoi to Hell, which would help her move up a grade in the Hell's ranking system. Man, why does that remind me of the ranking system at my work place? Uh, let's not go there.
With help of everyone, things turn out okay, but a lot of interesting, and often fairly scary things happen during the course of their adventure. When I look back though, I can see that it's still written for children. Still, I doubt most American children are exposed this kind of literature until they're in at least middle school. This was written for elementary school kids in Japan.
I can decisively say that the last volume (3) is the best of the three, then this one, then the first volume. I guess it's not unusual for the author to get better with time. I think I'm done with Pita-Ten. I've watched the anime, bought and listened to all the Pita-Ten related CDs, bought and read all the manga, and bought and read all the novels. Is there anything more?
