Creative Staff
Story: Yuu Watase
Art: Yuu Watase
Translation/Adaptation: Lance Caselman
What They Say
Arata Hinohara and his companions have suffered painful losses, but they know they must go on. Arata himself is heading for a showdown with his greatest adversaries, the Six Sho, so he enters a sacred site to learn to communicate with the great power he possesses. His companions accompany him, where they find themselves pulled into startling confrontations!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With Hiruha’s and Rami’s deaths weighing on Arata, he realizes that he needs a lot more training in order to have a reasonable shot at defeating the Six Sho. In particular, he’s keenly feeling the effects of not being able to communicate with the spirit contained within his Hayagami, Tsukuyo. So the group travels to the legendary training ground, Ama no Iwakura. Passing the training there will net Arata a fragment of power, but in order to pass the training, he must overcome the most dangerous opponent anybody can face: himself.
Arata: The Legend seems to be starting to find its way now. Arata himself is beginning to fully understand what it is that he needs to do to be the prophetic hero that everybody is convinced that he will be, hence the desire to undergo training. While I continue to enjoy the overall idea of the story, I will suggest that there’s really been no new ground tread yet. This volume is mostly taken up with the fight of Arata’s (and everybody’s since the whole group decides to get in on the act) demonic half, and that’s a storyline that’s been done quite a bit to this point.
Being a Shonen fighter, there’s the typical tendency to want to turn five minutes into five hundred pages, but to this point, it has not been egregious with its pacing. I will say that anybody who knows me and knows my general impatience with the pacing often found in Shonen titles will find this funny: I almost found this volume to move too quickly. Arata deduces the method for beating his own doppelganger a bit too easily for my liking, and everybody else is only granted a few pages for their own battles. That said, I don’t know what I’m complaining about since it could have easily gone the other way. This could have easily taken two-to-three volumes to fully play out.
In Summary
Arata: The Legend continues to move along at a reasonable rate. There’s very little overall plot development contained within this volume, but what does happen I think will be important for what is to come long-term. Frankly, I feel like it could have been developed more, but I think we’ll be seeing plenty of that to come. Recommended.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: September 10th, 2013
MSRP: $9.99
