Amagami-san Chi no Enmusubi Vol 11,12 - Yae focus! She's taking the lead, but...

Volumes 11 and 12 of Amagami-san Chi no Enmusubi continue to spin the wheel, landing this time on a big chapter all centered around Yae and her life before coming to the shrine. We already knew that she was sent away from her house at a young age and adopted by the shrine, but...

Things were more complicated than that: the first sign was her father appearing at an art contest in which Yae participated. Then Yae disappeared and went back home under the blackmail threat that they would let the shrine be bought and destroyed otherwise, and from there, it's one of the most classic tropes in anime.

The theme is autumn, seems like together with Asahi being Summer they're trying to do a theme.

Of course Yae would get spring, so who's getting winter instead? I haven't peeked at the next volume cover yet...

Uryuu, Yuna, and Asahi prepare to storm the house with the help of Makoto and free Yae. At that point, I already knew: clearly, the parents must have been misunderstood, and in fact, it is revealed that the parents themselves decided to send her to the shrine, and not with bad intentions.

I know that it's hard to find completely new developments, but this was so cheesy and predictable that I had trouble following it in the latter stages. Of course, there were nice moments, but they were all in the pre-discovery phase, mostly centered around the date between Yae and Uryuu at the art convention.

The intermission art of Asahi and Yae is great because of the gap between the pure flatness and the mountains

I was trying to understand why she was upset and turns out she was just too stressed.

Yuna was almost completely absent from the focus of these two volumes, but Asahi got some interesting development instead. One aspect was that she's starting to fall behind compared to new students and had to go to great lengths to be approved as a regular again on her track and field team. I like that there's some hurdle for her to fight against, and it's nice to see Karen be so supportive of her.

Oh, and one thing that left me puzzled was a line said in the middle of the volume without much explanation, referring to Uryuu's situation with the sisters. The line alluded to the idea that Uryuu doesn't know he doesn't have to marry just one of the sisters. For some reason, the way it was structured could easily be interpreted as "you can marry all three," but will they actually go that way?

This was a great shot for Yae, I remember the whole art angle of her character, but I wasn't expecting it to be a defining moment for her character to this level.

I think Yae is overall more beautiful here, but I still think the paint image is stronger.

The supernatural elements were very thin in these two volumes, and the next volume seems like it won't be much different as they add yet another character to the cast. A new character in the next volume seems weirdly similar to Yuna. She has short hair, but the way she behaves reminds me of her; who is she?