My Oh My, Atami-kun: Vol. 3 Review
The third volume of My Oh My, Atami-kun keeps its feet planted in small, human moments: glances across a classroom, a surprise on Valentine’s Day, the way a feeling takes shape (or doesn’t) before it has a name. Rather than pushing toward big revelations, this set of chapters leans into the series’ gentle rhythm—funny, unhurried, and unusually attentive to how teens figure themselves out in real time.
Yen Press
Plot
Volume 3 unfolds around February, when “love is in the air.” Kunijima is distracted by a sensation he can’t categorize (fueled by the season), and Atami, ever the “romance expert,” sets about helping him diagnose it. Meanwhile, an anonymous gift lands in Atami’s shoe locker on Valentine’s Day, prompting a light mystery that he, Kunijima, and Adachi try to solve.
The selection of chapters ripples outward into late-winter/spring beats where flowers bloom and wither, so the book reads like a quiet season of change more than a single arc. It’s sweet, occasionally bittersweet, and content to let questions of crush vs. friendship breathe.
Characters
Atami remains the series’ warm center: favored, bluntly honest, and chronically smitten with boys. His kindness here reads less as idealized and more as a sincere attempt to see people clearly—including himself. And even when exploring the need to address unreciprocated emotions for an admirer (at the worst time possible to face rejection), he handles it with real care, making him a character who doesn’t entirely lack situational awareness.
Kunijima’s thread is a fun, quirky read; watching him try to label his newfound foreign emotions (while taking a survey of others’ interpretations) gives his character a zany new texture. Tsuji also continues to drift amiably on the margins as a funny and observant face, while side players pop in just enough to keep the social world feeling wider than one classroom. If the first few chapters introduced the group’s chemistry, Volume 3 turns that chemistry contemplative: who gets to be a “someone” in someone else’s world, and how big does your room need to be in their heart?
Art
Asa Tanuma’s linework still favors emotional clarity over ornament by curating clean (sometimes minimalistic) panels, measured pacing, and expressions that land through eye-lines and body language rather than melodrama. That restraint lets the comedy breathe (deadpan beats, matter-of-fact narration perfect for animation) while keeping the emotions legible.
You essentially get warmth and specificity without visual noise, and a lot of meaning is carried by where characters look, or in this instance, refuse to.
Themes
Theme-wise, this is a book about definitions, not overt declarations. Kunijima’s “what is this?” and Atami’s low-stakes sleuthing double as an inquiry into labels: crush, admiration, friendship, romance. The series has always been frank that Atami likes boys, but Volume 3 broadens that lens to show multiple ways teen boys puzzle through affection—with room for ambiguity, kindness, and the right to be unsure.
Also, the seasonal framing (Valentine’s Day into spring) underlines that softness: feelings sprout, some wither, most change shape. It’s very BL in premise, but the day-to-day tone plays closer to a slice-of-life ensemble that values care over conquest.
Verdict
A tender, funny set of chapters that treats first feelings as mysteries worth savoring, not problems to “solve.” If you’ve liked the series’ low-key observational vibe so far, Volume 3 deepens it with a gentle, late-winter melancholy.
