The third volume of the series continues to develop the many subplots, providing enough fragments to comment on a variety of subjects. Surprisingly, one of these is actually art, but we’ll get to that in a moment. Anyone who wanted to know more about Zip from the last volume will get more information, but otherwise it’s more of the same.

His character enters the milieu, providing a change of pace from the otherwise crowded scenes. Though he has connections to the surfing world like the rest of the characters, he is of a slightly different type and it is a welcome change. Along with this, it is nice to see Ray developed as a person. In the last volume I had some fears that he was going to be the generic two-dimensional bad guy for the rest of the series. As of right now he’s just a jerk, and there are a lot of those in real life.

We also have a bit of plot this time around, a mystery of a sort. This is representative of one of the strengths of this series, in that it isn’t overstated and assumes the reader has enough intelligence to drawn their own conclusions and figure things out. That’s a welcome change, believe me.

At a variety of places in the volume the characters are drawn in the super-deformed style and it feels immensely out of place. Given that the rest of the series has a stylized, loosely-colored format, these really aren’t necessary. Whatever the label, this isn’t manga and it shouldn’t try to be. The exaggerated emotions in these panels also ruin what could otherwise be funny lines.

This helps to accent one of the other difficulties with the series. It’s fast paced and smart, but that’s pretty much the only mode. Everyone is quipping, all the time, barely taking a break for an implied moral or a serious scene. Ultimately, the series lacks any of the changes of pace that exist in real life. These obviously happen to the characters, but they aren’t represented in the volume itself. Some people might find this format exciting, but for others it might start to feel superficial.