Manga: If It's For My Daughter... - Volume 4

 

Content Warning: None. What? It’s a “cute girl does cute things” series. At least, for now…

Welcome back to the series that has the stupid long name but a very cute little girl in it. We’ve gotten past the first horrible thing and now get a nice long period of world building and character building. Let’s get the ball rolling.

This volume with a few little things being talked about by Latina, Chloe, and Sylvia, including discussion of the difference between human and Demon food, the main thing being that Demon food doesn’t have a lot of flavor. After that, Latina figures out that Dale is babying her, buying her everything she needs and all that. I like this because it shows how aware Latina is. But she doesn’t want to have everything given to her, she has a drive to make her own way. This culminates in a few things, the first being Latina’s decision to get something for Dale’s “birth month” (which gives us a tiny bit of world building). After some observations, Latina figures out that Dale could use a new pouch but there’s the matter of money. Sure, if she asks Dale, he’ll give her all the money she wants but that doesn’t help, as it’s important to Latina that she does this on her own. She talks to Kenneth about the whole affair and he comes up with an idea. He’ll take her on as his apprentice, officially. Sure, she’s a little young but she has been helping in the kitchen for a while now already.

Here, we get some more exploration of the setting, with talk about the gods, those they have “touched,” and a rather interesting way of explaining how the modern system of banking could work in a fantasy setting using magic. The short version is that the blue deity, Azrac, has the domains of finance and commerce, making their temples into banks. The mortals (of every race except for Demons) can be touched or chosen by the gods, given extra powers and such, so long as they obey their gods’ rules. If they break the rules, the god revokes their blessing. Which is something I think is really cool. Anyway. Using a magical registration thing, you can create an account with the church and access your gold anywhere. You can also use the vault but you can only remove stuff from the vault you put it in. You even get a debit card. I mean, they don’t call it that, but that’s what it is. I really like how they did this, with Latina being young and from a different culture, it’s a great way to explain things like this.

After this, Latina makes Dale a pouch and gives it to him, causing much happiness and rejoicing. And spinning. The story finally lets Dale know that Latina is making money and has her own account. And Rita is pregnant! Dale suggests that he and Latina move out but Kenneth and Rita want Latina to stay (they don’t care about Dale) but this does prompt Dale to take a trip back to his home.

This trip does require a few things on Dale’s end. As he’s in the service of the Duke, he has to head to the capital and lets him know about the trip. While there at the capital, he goes shopping for supplies for Latina, like Magical Tools, which will get explained a little better later on (I think). While shopping, he runs into Hermine, a lady elf that he seems to have a history with. He doesn’t really like her but will have her help him pick out stuff Latina, for the sake of Latina. This guy, I swear…

During this, Latina herself starts to prepare for the trip. She goes to Rudy’s family smithy to pick out a knife. Rudy’s dad is a little dismissive until Kenneth explains that the girl is going to travel and needs the knife for cooking on said trip. We also see that Latina is a bit of an airhead, not telling Rudy that she’s going on a trip, which causes a brief moment of confusion.

The volume concludes with Latina promising to write letters to Chloe while she’s gone and little bonus comic about Latina seeing kind of a circus act. Which I’m not going to talk about because you should buy it yourself.

Rating: 3 out of 5
Suggestion: This is a filler volume but it’s nice to have the break after the last one. You can probably skip it or skim it, as nothing important happens but it does drop some hints about later stuff.