Watch out for evil nuts!
Creative Staff
Story: Masaki Hiramatsu
Art: Takashi Tensugi
Translation: William Flanagan
What They Say
Just as Kazumi is starting to get the hang of life as one of the Pleiades Saints, a group of Magical Girls who were her companions before she lost her memory, she is captured right from their midst! Her abductor, Yuuri, bears a grudge against the Pleiades Saints and means to kill Kazumi as payback.
Yuuri’s powers allow her to artificially create witches – and she intends to use her magic on Kazumi! Why destroy the Pleiades Saints herself when she can have one of the Saints do it for her?!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Apparently the shadowy Kyubey-esque figure from the last volume doesn’t believe in building up proper suspense and foreshadowing, and as such starts the book by hopping down and talking to the Pleiades. Apparently his name is Juubey, and he has the ability to just straight up purify Soul Gems. He also reveals that the Grief Seeds collected in the last volume were actually fakes, which the book insists on calling “Evil Nuts,” an awkward name to say the least. The evil Magical Girl from before, Yuuri, pops back up in time to beat down the Pleiades in a rather confusing sequence and grab Kazumi.
Yuuri’s plan is to shove her evil nuts into Kazumi, leading to the rather awful dialogue of “Why aren’t the evil nuts working” being immediately followed (after some short gasping from Kazumi) by “I’m wrong! Looks like the evil nuts are working!” But apparently they aren’t working quite right, as Kazumi just kind of fights Yuuri like she probably would otherwise. Yuuri then turns into a Witch, and her back-story is revealed, showing that she was originally a girl named Airi who was friends with a familiar looking girl named Yuuri. When Yuuri turned into a witch she was killed by the Pleiades Saints, causing Airi to use her Magical Girl wish to become Yuuri. Though Kazumi is disturbed by what’s happening, she joins her comrades in bringing down Airi, deciding she must take on their pain as well.
The remainder of the volume is spent on a fight between Niko and a Magical Girl with two personalities, Luca and Ayase, each with their own power set. Will our heroes be able to take down this Soul Gem hunting powerhouse, and even if they can, are they really any better than her anyway?
In Summary
This volume is… slightly better than the atrocious first volume. At the very least, the evil Magical Girl from the previous book gets an okay back-story, and the enemy at the end has a somewhat interesting concept behind her. Of course, the action still remains prevalent and an incoherent mess, making once more for a miserable reading experience. And I feel the dialogue may have even regressed a few steps, with some downright odd lines making it into the book. With the book’s one halfway interesting character, the main antagonist of these first two volumes, now gone, a part of me worries that the series may somehow manage to degrade even further. At the very least, I don’t see much hope for it crawling its way back out of the gutter.
Content Grade: D+
Art Grade: D
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: C-
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: August 27th, 2013
MSRP: $11.99
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