Dangerous new players enter into the fray!
Creative Staff
Story: Takaya Kagami
Art: Yamato Yamamoto
Translation: Adrienne Beck
What They Say
Ferid has successfully coerced Shinoa Squad and Mika into joining him and Crowley on a field trip to Osaka. According to Ferid, the purpose of the trip is to see the truth behind the calamity that ended the word—ground zero of the apocalypse. But not all is as it seems, as vampire nobles from across the world are also converging on Osaka!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
So, we open in an… interesting manner, with our heroes discussing their plans in a rest stop bathroom. Honestly, though, this mostly just means going over what they know and going “yeah, we just kind of have to go along with Ferid for now.” It’s honestly a bit much to use essentially a whole chapter for that, but it’s at least not terribly paced and feels like a discussion the characters did need to have. Plus it keeps everything organized and understood by readers, if nothing else. Oh, and they were totally right to be wary of the situation, because Ferid lies about their destination and instead takes them to Osaka Bay, where powerful foreign vampire forces are arriving.
Anyway, things get more interesting in Osaka, starting with us finding Krul literally imprisoned inside a wall with blood dripping in front of her. Before seeing too much of her stuck in this state, though, a powerful vampire calling himself Saito wanders in, and they start talking about the past. With his kind of aloof, nonchalant manner, Saito makes for an amusing antagonist in and of himself. But this whole portion is easily the highlight of the book, as it delves in general into the relationship between vampire’s and their “parents,” who they inevitably come to hate. It’s an interesting concept, and it’s stretched out over a good variety of characters.
Oh, but anyway, we eventually see that all of this was seemingly Ferid’s trick to cause a clash between Saito and the newly arrived progenitors. Just who will come out on top in the struggle? And just what will the results be on Ferid, and in turn our human heroes who he dragged into the midst of this horde of vampires?
In Summary
This volume is a fairly interesting one, as the actual action is pretty light, but there are some pretty big character introductions and a nice tense event. I will say that things do start out a little too slow, with the first chapter feeling essentially like little more than a recap. But afterwards things definitely do heat up, and even more interestingly we get an intriguing theme for the book that spans across a good number of characters. Add to that some real amusing interactions and a few nice character moments, and you get another fairly strong entry into the series.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: November 7th, 2017
MSRP: $9.99
