Creative Staff
Story: Masaki Hiramatsu
Art: Takashi Tensugi
Translation: William Flanagan
What They Say
Trapped inside the witch’s barrier with the vengeful Kanna, Umika and Kaoru struggle to protect Kazumi as their beloved friend slowly succumbs to her darkening soul gem. If the girls can rally, the witch’s grief seed could be used to purify all of their gems, but even that would be only a temporary solution. Facing cruel fate and questions of her own identity, Kazumi will make the ultimate choice whether or not to join her friends in their vendetta against destiny!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Niko prepares to enact her plan alongside Kazumi, but instead finds our heroine rejecting her and returning to her normal size. A fight then erupts, with Niko throwing out even more crappy witches to brawl alongside her. In the midst of the fight Juubey goes to purify Kazumi’s soul gem, only to abruptly disappear. Saki’s witch then sacrifices itself to create a soul gem so that Kazumi can be saved.
Before the finale, Kyubey appears to reveal one last twist. It turns out that the Pleiades actually created Juubey by modifying a Kyubey corpse upon learning of his true nature. Umika then used magic to make Kyubey go unnoticed by the people within the city, and then replaced him in peoples’ memories with Juubey. Kyubey also explains that they made a mistake, as Juubey only ever gave the appearance that the soul gems were purified, making him a rather useless tool.
Finally, as Kazumi stands over Umika and Kaoru, we learn that Michiru’s grief seed was inside Kazumi’s earrings, allowing her to purify her friends. In a desperate final play, Niko/Kanna ties a ton of witches together to make one big creature. Kazumi then realizes that she herself has never made a wish, and decides to make a contract with Kyubey. Of all things she wishes to be human, which is kind of whatever as a wish, but it gives her the big power-up she needs to finish things.
In Summary
With this volume, the series comes to a close, more with a whimper than a bang. However, for this series that’s about the best that could’ve been hoped for. At the very least, the twist in this volume is nothing too stupid, even if it’s still nothing great. There’s definitely some pulls out of nowhere in the push for the end, but once again nothing too offensive. A lot of time is also spent recapping previous plot points and wasting pages answering questions that probably didn’t need to be bothered with. Of course the action is still a mess and none of the emotion comes across especially well, but it’s more a painfully bland read than an awful one, which means this series at least managed a tiny bit of an upswing at the tail end.
Content Grade: C
Art Grade: D
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: C-
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: May 27th, 2014
MSRP: $12.99
