Niche’s back story and the rise of Reverse’s ambitions.

Creative Staff
Story: Hiroyuki Asada
Art: Hiroyuki Asada
Translation/Adaptation: Rich Amtower

What They Say
Lag has discovered that his long-lost hero Gauche Suede lost all of his heart, became tangled up in an anti-government organization called “Reverse,” and is now know as “Marauder Noir.” Noir’s trail leads Lag and Niche to the icy norther town Blue Notes Blues. It just so happens Niche was born here. Lag and Niche uncover her mysterious origins: a sacred underground lake…where her brethren still dwell.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
This volume is all Niche all the time. Both a blessing and a curse to the monthly chapter format, we spend the entire book dealing with these developments. The time goes by pretty quickly while reading it, a testament to its involvement and quality, but it seems to take up too much time.

The bulk of the plot deals with Niche’s history as well as what happened in Blue Notes Blues. Niche is actually one of two children of Maka born to a local woman who was originally offered as a sacrifice to Maka, who was worshipped as a God by the townsfolk. Once the children were born, the townsfolk, in fear, rose their prejudice to external provocation and attempted to murder the children by throwing them off a cliff. The townspeople felt that the children were a curse upon their town and that they had somehow angered Maka. When in actuality the children were intended as a gift because the woman had touched Maka’s heart unlike any human had before. While Niche disappeared into the world (wandering for 200 years until she met Lag), the sister suffered severe personal hardships, matured into an adult and returned to the cave where the Maka dwells.

These details lead to Lag and Niche having to confront her sister in the cave as the sister views Niche as a failure and a traitor. This allows for some really neat fight scenes to occur which actually got me very excited for the future of this series. Some of the attacks Niche’s sister uses with her Golden Sword hair are really cool and show what Niche may be capable of one day. Niche’s hair attacks have been fairly standard up until this point and with her sister showing what can be done a new realm of possibility opens up. Basically, her hair can act more like the Green Lantern’s ring that just a generic sword made of hair…super cool! Of course, this wouldn’t be a Tegami Bachi volume unless heart strings were pulled and honest human connections were made between the characters. That is here and it is just as effective as it has been in the past; why fix what isn’t broke.

The last half of the final chapter brings us back to Noir (who I think should have had a bigger, more active role in this arc/volume) as we see what he was doing in the Maka’s cave and being a downright nasty person. It is good quality suspense that provokes the reader just enough to anticipate the next volume. It also adds more detail to Reverse’s scheme while still maintaining that level of secrecy that makes the reader curious and involved with the plot. An overall excellent volume that isn’t as good as Tegami Bachi has been in the past but better than most of the volumes so far.

In Summary
I liked this book a lot especially after the filler filled volume 6. However, I have to wonder if my latent fears about the series are true with some of the details shown in this book. I always felt that Niche was simply added to the story to pander to the moe otaku. I like her as a character but there are just too many things about her that lends itself to super creepy territory that I fear people ‘get into’. In this volume, Niche’s sister is a full-grown adult, an extremely attractive adult mind you, and the fact that Niche is still a child lends itself to my theory. Now Niche is even more moe because she hasn’t suffered such personal drama to mature into an adult woman…we must protect her and maintain her cute innocence! Blech! I hope that isn’t the case and the story continues to focus on what makes this series worth reading…the mystery of Gauche and Lag’s journey to finding his mother.

Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: B+

Readers Rating: (2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: November 1st, 2011
MSRP: $9.99