An unfortunate return to form.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Sui Ishida
Translation: Joe Yamazaki
What They Say
Operation Auction Sweep has turned into a bloodbath as the investigators face off against the Ghouls of Aogiri Tree’s security forces. And with victory for the CCG far from assured, Investigator Toru Mutsuki must escape from behind enemy lines. His only help comes from Kuki Urie, the ex-Squad Leader of the Quinxes, whose sole allegiance is to his next promotion. With such a dubious ally and flesh-hungry Ghouls all around, does Toru even stand a chance?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As the volume starts, we rejoin the action right in the midst of the raid on the auction. And from the very start, we get an issue that remains throughout the volume, and is a recurring one from the previous incarnation of the series: There’s a big old jumble of action, but it all lacks impact or significant character moments. Like, we get Naki and Akira fighting as a random example, and things happen definitely as multiple pages go to it… but it just feels real empty. And frankly, that’s a whole lot of this volume. It’s just one big jumble of characters fighting, without anything really behind most of it.
But still, let’s cover some of the stuff that actually stands out. First off, we get Takizawa, who has descended into being a completely insane Ghoul. It works well enough, since depicting madness has always been one of the greater strengths of the series. Plus he makes a kind of intriguing parallel to our protagonist, I suppose. Speaking of which, he ends up in a fight with Haise, triggering the whole Kaneki thing to flare up inside him, which is probably the most interesting part of the book. Ah, and also, the Nutcracker gets a fight with some of Haise’s squad and… it kind of annoys me extra badly. Mainly because even ignoring the general awkward action of the series and the fact that she’s dressed in a really ridiculously sexualized outfit (and in a way that feels more like it’s meant to titillate the audience rather than be in any way subversive)… her own damn landmine type trap is used against her, and it just doesn’t really make sense. Like, why the hell would she not be more aware of what her own power is doing than her opponents were?
Oh, and special note to the fact that Toru gets perhaps even more screwed over here. Like, last time him being thrown into a terrible situation and not being able to do much about it made some sense. But here, we’re at the part where he REALLY should have gotten a turning point. Like, Urie is a selfish dick and drags him to where Big Madame and the other Ghouls are, rather than taking his injured comrade out of the field of battle like he was supposed to. And he gets thrashed for his arrogant stupidity, and all the chips are 100% in place for Toru to step in… but he doesn’t get to do anything. No, Urie goes nuts and has a breakdown, which is apparently just always a power-up in this series, and then Juzo sweeps in for the kill. So somehow, despite all the setup and abuse the character faced that seemed to be leading somewhere, Toru managed to walk away with really nothing out of this arc. Maybe that’ll still be corrected in the future, but it feels particularly frustrating to have the ball dropped like that here, if nothing else.
In Summary
With this volume the sequel series breaks and descends to crap just like its predecessor, for much the same reasons. Which is to say, the focus is heavily on combat here, and the series has only very, VERY rarely managed that well, and this certainly isn’t one of those cases. It’s just one big jumbled mess of underdeveloped fights that ultimately feel meaningless and lack any neat impact, and one of them doesn’t even really make much logical sense! I will say that there’s some inklings of something interesting with our hero and his main opponent this time around, and that saves the volume from being completely bleh. But even then, Toru gets crapped upon and undercut perhaps even worse than last time, so that’s an actively frustrating bit of character “development” to counteract that bit of good. It really is a shame, as it felt for the first two volumes that there was at least a little something of the series building upon itself and playing more to its strengths, but here we find it right back to reveling in its old flaws full force.
Content Grade: C+
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: February 20th, 2018
MSRP: $12.99
