Girls gone wild.
Creative Staff
Story: Mamare Touno
Character Designs: Kazuhiro Hara
Art: Koyuki
Translation/Adaptation: Taylor Engel
What They Say
An unforeseen crisis menaces the town of Akiba! When the west wind brigade assumes responsibility for the round table council’s general affairs, Kurinon–driven by her obsession with girls–maneuvers secretly in the shadows. Her goal? To discredit Soujirou and create a female utopia! (It’s somehow worse than it sounds…)
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Okay. Let’s discuss the problem of Kurinon.
There aren’t many characters in Log Horizon who are non-binary. This is a Japanese manga, I don’t expect an average manga to be progressive on this issue. If there is a character shown to be non-binary they’re usually a plot point or a joke, or there to satisfy some fetish. Log Horizon understands, at least, that some people chose to portray themselves as a certain sex or gender online that didn’t match their Earth identity. The West Wind Brigade has two characters which fall into that category, Dolce and Kurinon. Dolce is portrayed as a flamboyant gay guy, and everyone is cool with him and that’s cool. He’s a smart character and is, weirdly enough, one of the more level-headed members of the guild. Cliché, but okay.
Then there is Kurinon, whose behavior could best be described as psychotic serial harassment. She’s shown to be attracted to women to the detriment of all else, actually hates Soujirou, and is only in West Wind to ogle the other members. She is a problem and this volume is a full display of her character flaws.
Kurinon nearly destroys the West Wind Brigade and the whole town of Akiba while she’s at it. She sabotages the guild and Souji so that she can use the strange power plays the girls constantly partake in to take over the guild. She takes Nazuna out of the picture by bribing her with booze. She wants Souji’s harem bad enough to put every woman in Akiba on the male citizenry’s most hated list. She’s cunning, terribly so, and malicious to a fault. She’s shown forcing what amounts to a sexual favor out of Olive. The worst part is Souji is too kind to kick Kurinon out of the guild after she’s stopped from her rampage.
To that end, this volume has more fanservice than most. Most of that is either at Kurinon’s expense or just random old, tired gags, like guys walking in on women in the bath. The color opener page for this volume is a straight up beach illustration. It’s all exceedingly obvious and it lacks mean-spiritedness. It’s dumb but often not gross.
What saves this volume is the art and the unexpected humorous situations which occur. Seeing Souji driven to seppuku to make up for Kurinon’s machinations is screwed up but the expressions of the girls at witnessing it are amazing. Watching the girls try to distract Kurinon long enough to send a help message is also hysterical. There’s a wit and cleverness here when it’s not stooping to the lowest common denominator. Koyuki is a very good artist, and I don’t think I gave them enough credit in the previous volumes. Not only does every character look like their supposed to and even the side characters are drawn in loving detail, the facial expressions are the height of comedy. There’s a depth to design that isn’t usually given to girls, with crazy face-pulls and amazing reaction shots.
There are other events occurring during this volume. Kawara is at the newbie training camp trying to learn how to lead others. Shiroe and the Round Table are in the capital trying to form a connection with the People of the Earth. We catch glimpses and moments of them during this, both giving the story a time and place context and providing an alternate take on events. The fact that Reynesia is featured means that we’re likely going to see more of her in this manga once her story moves to Akiba.
With this volume taking care of the weird side problems the story is hopefully moving on. It ends with the moment Shiroe learns from Li Gan about the problem with dying and the loss of memories it causes. We’ve already seen Shouji die several times, and the fall out from that discovery is going to have to make it’s way back to the West Wind Brigade.
In Summary
The West Wind Brigade has always skirted the line of good taste, and the reader’s patience is put to the test in this volume. Kurinon is the world’s worst guild member, and it’s so frustrating seeing her get away with her bad behavior with what amounts to a slap on the wrist. She’s kind of a gross character and if she was a guy she wouldn’t get away with what she’s done here. Yet the reactions of the other characters to the situation, from Souji’s good-natured response to the rest of the girls’ frantic fight, it drags the story up from the mire it could have been. Many of the gags and reactions are truly funny, but the lowbrow humor is strong in this volume.
Content Grade: B –
Art Grade: A –
Packaging Grade: B +
Text/Translation Grade: A –
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: August 22nd, 2017
MSRP: $13.00
